Special relativity applies to situations involving high speeds, massive energy, and vast distances — all in the absence of gravity. For gravity, Einstein expanded on this work a decade later ...

Einstein put forth special relativity, which explains motion at near-light speeds. Although there are many consequences of Special Relativity, this complex theory consists of only two postulates ...

In the late 19th century, classical physics seemed complete. Scientists believed they had uncovered all the laws governing ...

On this day in 1905 Albert Einstein published his paper introducing special relativity in a German physics journal. Entitled ...

Special relativity was discovered first, by Einstein, in 1905. Two years later, in 1907, Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize for his interferometer experiments proving the constancy of the speed ...

So special relativity tells us that because light always travels at the same speed, time dilates and length contracts to compensate. Space and time - they're directly connected to each other.

Special relativity declares a similar law for all motion: The combined speed of any object's motion through space and its motion through time is always precisely equal to the speed of light.

Special relativity is beyond weird. Among its many statements are that moving clocks run slow and that moving rulers shrink. But how are we supposed to make sense of this?

If special relativity were correct, they'd remain unchanged, which cannot be correct. Instead, to conserve energy, we have to accept that light must change its wavelength ...

What is length contraction in relativity? Length contraction is a phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of special relativity. It states that the length of a moving object decreases in the ...

Clocks are at the heart of GPS. Advances in space-qualified atomic clocks that kept time to within 10 nanoseconds over a day were a key development that made GPS possible. It turns out that GPS must ...