One hundred years ago, Einstein developed his theory of General Relativity. Today, a team of physicists from around the world, including a Whitman professor, announced they had the evidence to prove it....
New technologies make the work of many departments at Whitman more efficient, freeing up time and energy to complete questions or surveys. They also can help make visible intensely complicated theorized concepts thought up decades ago by, say, Einstein, in the case of Beck’s mirrors.
Last month the European Center for Particle Physics (CERN) and the Italian laboratory of high-energy physics in Gran Sasso detected particles moving faster than light, what has been taken to be an impossibility for over a hundred years since Einstein published his theories in 1905. The particles found breaking this cosmic speed limit were neutrinos, bits of neutral matter so small that they can pass through people and planets unhindered, and so abundant that the nuclear reactions in the sun shower our planet with billions of them every second.
Dr. Barry Barish, a leading member of the physics community, is coming to enlighten the Whitman community about general relativity on Sept. 30. Members of the physics department believe that the lecture, “Einstein's Legacy and Our Best Description of the Universe," will be beneficial for both science and nonscience majors.
