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When Albert Einstein first published the Special
Theory of relativity in 1905, he was either
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vehemently ridiculed or ignored.
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People thought it was just too weird and radical
to be real. This guy is not even a working
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scientist, he’s just a patent clerk, some
said. How dare he challenge the greatest scientist
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that ever lived – Isaac Newton, whose theories
have been proven to be correct for hundreds
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of years.
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Some politicians even insulted his religious
heritage and called it "Jewish science" – a
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way to subvert traditional culture and thinking.
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How did Einstein feel about this? Well, he
wasn’t satisfied with his theory either.
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He was unhappy because the theory only applied
to observers moving in a straight line at
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a constant speed. The theory did not apply
if Gravity was present or if the observer
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was accelerating.
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Einstein was known, however, to have a very vivid imagination. And one day, as legend has it,
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while observing a window washer on a ladder
near his patent office, he had one of his
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famous thought experiments that would go on
to change the course of scientific history.
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He imagined what would happen if the worker
were to fall. But he didn’t think of it
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the way you and I would think of it. What
was his thought experiment? And how did it
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lead to perhaps the greatest single scientific theory of the past 100 years…that’s coming
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up right now!
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Guys before I talk about Einstein’s insight,
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While watching the window washer on a ladder,
Einstein thought about what would happen if
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the window washer fell. For most people, imagining
this would just conjure up disturbing images
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of the poor guy landing on the ground below,
and the story would not have a happy ending.
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Einstein thought about it differently. He
put himself in the window washer’s perspective,
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and imagined not what would happen when he met the ground, but what he would experience as
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he was falling.
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What he realized was that if he was falling,
gravity would be the only force acting on
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him. He would be accelerating towards the
ground, but since the ground would not be
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pushing up on his body, he would feel no weight.
With no wind resistance, he would be in free
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fall. And this would be no different than
being weightless in space.
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In a way, gravity and acceleration were different
ways to describe the same thing. This is where
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Einstein had a huge insight. The way to connect
gravity with the theory of relativity was through
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the idea of acceleration, since the two are equivalent.
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Einstein imagined being in a room with no
windows. And if the room had a bathroom scale
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handy, what would happen if you stepped on
the scale. Well if anywhere stationary on
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earth, you would weigh 80 Kgs, or whatever
your weight is.
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Now he imagined being in the same room in
space. Now, what if the room was on a space
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on a space ship that accelerating in an upward
direction at 9.8 meters/second/second, which
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happens to be exactly the same as gravitational
acceleration on earth. What would happen
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if he stepped on the scale then?
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Well, the scale would read 80 kgs, just like
it did on earth. The acceleration on a spaceship
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would appear to him, inside the room as being
indistinguishable from being stationary on
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earth. If he didn’t know he was on a space
ship, he could just as well presume he was
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on earth.
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There would be no way to tell the difference.
Or would there?
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Einstein thought about this, and asked himself
if there was a way to tell the difference.
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He imagined what would happen if he took a
flashlight or a laser beam and pointed it
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from one side of the room to the other, as
the space ship was accelerating upwards.
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If he had a sensitive measuring device, he
could measure the height of the light on the
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other side of the room. He realized that the
height he would find on the other side would
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be slight lower than the source of the light.
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Why? Because the floor of the room would be
rushing upwards at ever faster speeds, as the
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light was propagating across the room. since
the room was accelerating upwards at 9.8 meters/second/second.
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The light beam would appear to curve downward.
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However, If you were on earth, and you measured
the two heights, you may think that there
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should be no difference. That light should
go straight to the other side of the room.
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Although this appears to be common sense.
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Einstein thought it can’t be because it
violate the principle of equivalence. Acceleration
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of the room on a space should be no different
than the room under the influence of gravity
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on earth.
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He realized that this meant light must bend
in the presence of a gravitational field.
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But how could this be, because light always
takes the shortest path between two points?
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It should be going straight.
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Then he realized, wait a minute, maybe the
light IS taking the shortest path between
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two points. Maybe the shortest path is not
a straight line.
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He imagined the curved surface of the earth. The shortest path between any two distant points on earth,
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if you're restricted to the surface of the earth, is never a straight line, because you have to traverse
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the curvature of earth. So the shortest path
is always curved.
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So maybe gravity somehow causes a curvature
of space itself. He hypothesized that in space,
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perhaps a straight line is NOT the shortest
path between two points, and that perhaps
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in the presence of mass and energy, space
somehow becomes curved, so that the shortest
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path that light can take is a curved path.
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This was the key insight that Einstein had
about gravity.
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But in order to express this mathematically,
it required very complicated mathematics that
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even a genius like Einstein could not easily
figure out.
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He contacted an old buddy of his from college days, mathematician Marcel Grossman.
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Grossman had just finished his PhD dissertation on the topic of, wouldn’t you know it, the geometry
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of curved spaces, called Reimannian Geometry.
With his help, Einstein figured out the mathematics
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of curved space time. And this curved geometry
is really the basis of General relativity.
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Now, you have to realize how different this was than the status quo of the time which was
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Newtonian space and time, which presumed that
time was fixed, space was fixed, and gravity
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was a mysterious force that could act at a
distance from one massive object to another
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without touching it. In this model, Gravity
did not affect the underlying space and time,
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but acted within it.
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Einstein’s theory was now that gravity was
not a force between massive objects, but something
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that emerges from the interaction of space
and massive objects. John Wheeler would later
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summarize this theory in 12 short words: “Space-time tells matter how to move; matter tells space-time
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how to curve.” That’s it. That’s General
relativity in a nutshell.
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And orbits of planets could now be explained
not by some mysterious force that acts at
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a distance, but rather an interaction that
takes place locally with mass or energy, and
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the space around it. And this can be visually
represented by the kind of graphic you see
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here to show how massive objects like planets
form orbits around other massive objects.
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It’s important to note that the trampoline
analogy you normally see on TV shows and youtube
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videos like this is a 2D plane used for visualization
purposes only. The interaction occurs obviously
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in three dimension, not just two. It looks
more like this graphic. This is much more difficult
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to visualize and animate, so it is typically
not used. But it is more accurate.
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However, in order for this theory to really
be taken seriously, it had to make a prediction
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that could be tested. And that prediction
could not be explained in any other way.
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This test came in the form of Mercury. Mercury’s
orbit had been a mystery for decades because
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it was unusual. All planets orbited the sun
in an ellipse. The planet closest to the sun,
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Mercury, also orbited in an ellipse. But it did something weird. It had something called
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a precession.
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What this means is that its elipse never closes.
The point of the orbit that was farthest from
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the sun advances a little bit every time Mercury goes around the Sun. It’s as if the ellipse
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itself is orbiting the sun.
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No one could ever figure this out using Newton’s equations.
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When Einstein applied his new curved space theory to this orbit, the new theory predicted
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exactly the precession that Mercury actually
has. Finally, a theory perfectly matched the
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observation which had been a mystery for decades.
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You can only imagine how Einstein felt when
he figured this out. There was a time when
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Einstein was the only person in the world
who realized that the universe actually works
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this way.
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But many skeptics still remained. Many scientists
still had doubts about Einstein’s theory.
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But the most fool-proof confirmation of his
theory came 4 years after he published it.
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That’s when a team led English Astronomer,
Arthur Eddington. in 1919, photographed stars
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near the sun during a total solar eclipse.
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If Einstein was right, then the position of
the stars near the sun would appear different
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than predicted location based on where they
should be as seen at night. This would happen
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because as light passed near the sun, it should
be bent by the curvature of space due to
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gravity. And that’s exactly what he found,
confirming that the theory was correct. This
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is the moment Einstein became a celebrity.
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You might ask, ok I get it. I get space curvature.
But it’s called space-time. How does time
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enter into the picture? Why is this not just
a distortion of space but also of time?
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This is where Einstein’s first theory, special
relativity comes in. The essential presumption
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in special relativity is that light always
moves at the same speed regardless of perspective
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or reference frame. This means that light
will have the same speed in an accelerating
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reference frame as it will in a resting reference
frame.
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If this is the case then it means that the
speed of light in the presence of gravity
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will be the same as its speed in empty space.
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Speed equals distance over time. S = D/T
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But since the distance traveled by the beam
of light in a gravitational field is longer
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due the curving of space, in order for the
speed of light to remain constant, time itself
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must pass slower in the gravitational field
relative to time in empty space.
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In other words, time increases proportionately
with the curvature of space near a gravitational
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field, compared to empty space, to keep the
speed of light constant in both reference
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frames. This is why time is considered distorted
by gravity along with space. It is really
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just part of the same fabric called space-time.
This has some massive implications. It implies
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that the observer experiencing no gravity at all, sees the clock in a gravitational field running
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slower. This means that the clocks on earth
run slightly slower than clocks on the international
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space station. This effect has been confirmed
by many experiments, and is taken into account
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in order keep the clocks of GPS satellites
in sync with the clocks on earth. Otherwise
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your GPS apps like google maps would give
you inaccurate locations.
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You should know that although General relativity
is an astounding achievement by one the greatest
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scientists of all time, it does not answer
everything. Questions remain. Although it
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tells us how gravity works, it doesn’t
tell us what exactly it is. Why do massive
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objects distort space time? What is the underlying
connection between mass and space-time?
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It also predicts regions of space where space
time can get so distorted that nothing escapes
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including light. This is called a black hole.
But it shows that within these black holes
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lies something that seems impossible, and
that is a mass concentrated to an infinitely
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small point with infinite density. This is
called the singularity and is theorized to
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exist within the black hole. General relativity
fails to work at this singularity.
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But infinities like this in science usually
indicate some sort of incompleteness of theories rather
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than things that actually exist.
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To figure this out what happens at these really
small scales, we need our old friend Quantum
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mechanics. But alas, the equations of quantum
mechanics make no sense in terms of singularities,
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or in terms of general relativity.
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So for now the two theories remain incompatible. If we can bring these two theories together, and
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truly understand how gravity behaves at the tiniest scales, we may answer the question of what
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gravity actually is. We will need a new theory
to figure this one out – and that theory
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is called quantum gravity.
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I’d like to thank my generous supporters
on Patreon and youtube. If you enjoy my videos,
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consider joining them, or check out some of
our other videos. I will see you in the next
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video my friend.
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