My (lack of) understanding of the theory of relativity

I will start this off with an obvious disclaimer. I know next to nothing about the subject. I watched a doco on TV recently which is the main inspiration for this topic. That and the fact that I have nothing better to do at this moment. (Sunday afternoon).

The theory was created by Einstein a long long time ago. I think the theory means that time is not a constant. Everything, space, time and other crap is all dependent on gravity. Black holes have so much power that they can actually pull at the fabric of time. There was also some studies by Stephen Hawking about what gets sucked into a black hole that was very interesting. He proved (don’t ask me how as there was no proof that black holes even existed when he did the research) that on the cusp of a black hole only positive neutrons get pulled into the black hole leaving all the negative ones around the rim which emits radiation. Anyway black holes are so damn strong that they can do this.

I’ve just read through the first two paragraphs and realised that I haven’t really explained anything yet. I think I have proved to myself that I know nothing on the topic. I can only spit out random facts. I don’t have the ability to actually co ordinaite them into any structure which makes reading easy. Oh well, I think this has something to do with the fact that I actually haven’t tried to write something longer then two sentences since Uni. Anyway I’ll give it another shot.

Maybe a visual would help. Imagine a sheet of thin cloth. Now imagine this being our universe. When you place an item on it like a planet, the weight of the planet will cause the fabric to dip. The bigger the planet, the deeper the dip is and the more gravitational pull it will have.  

The theory proved that clocks run slower under low gravity situations. Also something that is extremely interesting is the work that is currently being done at the Hadron Collider in Switzerland. They shot particles in different directions and make them hit eachother at close to the speed of light. They are doing research on the big bang, trying to create the same situation that was happening then. Since the particles are moving that close to the speed of light they actually become little time travellers. How cool is that.

Another pointless little fact that has nothing to do with this. The human eye works by taking around thirty sit shots per second. In times of life threatening moments the brain will re-direct energy from other non essential activities at that time and re-direct them to where it’s needed, eg legs if you need to run away. The frame rate then doubles which has the effect that time is actually slowing. Anyway I’m out of pointless info to this one. This blog was so horrible it may be my last.