CONCORD AREA HUMANISTS present: Albert Einstein, Genius and Humanist Hero, by Dr. Steven Reznek

Scientists knew that light waves are a solution of Maxwell's electromagnetic field equations. In 1887 Michelson and Morley attempted to detect the medium that propagated the light waves and found the surprising result was that, unlike all other wave phenomena, the speed of light was the same independent of the velocity of the observer. Henrick Lorentz postulated a revolutionary idea – that time and space are not independent.

Einstein's genius was to see that the interrelation of space and time has very deep implications. He adopted two postulates. The speed of light waves is independent of the velocity of the observer and the laws of physics are the same for different observers even though they are moving relative to each other. He called the second postulate "Relativity".

Results of his Theory of Relativity include time dilation and space contraction. Neither matter nor information can travel faster than the speed of light. And the intrinsic energy of a mass is equal to the value of the mass times the square of the speed of light.

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