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From: dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: StarDate: March 14 A Toast to Einstein
Message-ID: <508@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Mar-86 02:00:18 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.508
Posted: Fri Mar 14 02:00:18 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 21:17:42 EST
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 36

Today we celebrate the birthday of Albert Einstein -- the first person
to suggest that space can be curved.  More -- after this.

March 14  A Toast to Einstein

We celebrate a great anniversary today -- the anniversary of the birth
of Albert Einstein.

More than any other scientist, Einstein changed our modern picture of
the universe.  Before him, it was thought that outer space -- existed
independently of the material universe.  It was thought that space had
always been there, even before the birth of stars and galaxies.

Einstein's theory of relativity changed this view.  Relativity theory
describes the universe of space and matter as a whole -- an
interlocking unit.  In our understanding of the universe, space did not
exist before the Big Bang in which the universe is thought to have been
born.  The structure of space can change, said Einstein.  It can
expand, as the universe expands.  Or it can curve in bizarre and
incredible ways, as in the area around a black hole.

Einstein was born on March 14, 1879.  He was educated first in Germany,
then in Switzerland.  In 1902, he found work in a mid-level Swiss
government job -- a patent office.  The job gave him money to live on
-- and free time to work in physics.  He published his special theory
of relativity in 1905.  That's the one that deals with the
interconnectedness of space and time.  In 1915, he published the
general theory of relativity, which describes the nature of space
itself.

Before his death in 1955, Einstein had become famous as one of the
world's great scientists, whose originality changed the way we perceive
the universe.

Script by Deborah Byrd.
(c) Copyright 1985, 1986 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin