(Image credit: Shutterstock/ Jezper (opens in new tab)) "I could never follow the maths of general relativity," he said. Murray said he preferred the special relativity equations to the more complicated formulas in Einstein's later theory. But the concepts and the maths can be grasped by anyone that wants to." You move from being outside the universe, looking down, to one of the components inside it. Suddenly, the rigid unchanging cosmos is swept away and replaced with a personal world, related to what you observe. But what it embodies is a whole new way of looking at the world, a whole attitude to reality and our relationship to it. "There is nothing there an A-level student cannot do, no complex derivatives and trace algebras. "The point is it's really very simple," said Bill Murray, a particle physicist at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. The equation above shows how time dilates, or slows down, the faster a person is moving in any direction. (Image credit: Shutterstock/ optimarc (opens in new tab))Įinstein makes the list again with his formulas for special relativity, which describes how time and space aren't absolute concepts, but rather are relative depending on the speed of the observer. The seeds of calculus began in ancient times, but much of it was put together in the 17th century by Isaac Newton, who used calculus to describe the motions of the planets around the sun. "The fundamental theorem of calculus (FTC) allows us to determine the net change over an interval based on the rate of change over the entire interval." the integral of the velocity," said Melkana Brakalova-Trevithick, chair of the math department at Fordham University, who chose this equation as her favorite. the difference in the values of the quantity at the end points of the time interval) is equal to the integral of the rate of change of that quantity, i.e. "In simple words, says that the net change of a smooth and continuous quantity, such as a distance travelled, over a given time interval (i.e. The fundamental theorem of calculus forms the backbone of the mathematical method known as calculus, and links its two main ideas, the concept of the integral and the concept of the derivative. While the first two equations describe particular aspects of our universe, another favorite equation can be applied to all manner of situations. (Image credit: Shutterstock/ agsandrew (opens in new tab)) The standard model theory has not yet, however, been united with general relativity, which is why it cannot describe gravity. It is fully self-consistent with quantum mechanics and special relativity." "That includes, of course, the recently discovered Higgs(like) boson, phi in the formula. "It has successfully described all elementary particles and forces that we've observed in the laboratory to date - except gravity," Dixon told LiveScience. The theory can be encapsulated in a main equation called the standard model Lagrangian (named after the 18th-century French mathematician and astronomer Joseph Louis Lagrange), which was chosen by theoretical physicist Lance Dixon of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California as his favorite formula.
Wohlstadter (opens in new tab))Īnother of physics' reigning theories, the standard model describes the collection of fundamental particles currently thought to make up our universe.
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