Physical Society Colloquium

CAP World Year of Physics Lecture

Was Einstein Right?

Clifford Will

Washington University in St. Louis

How has the most celebrated scientific theory of the 20^th century held up under the exacting scrutiny of planetary probes, radio telescopes, and atomic clocks? After 100 years, was Einstein right? In this lecture, celebrating the 100^th anniversary of Einstein's `miracle year' and the World Year of Physics, we relate the story of testing relativity, from the 1919 measurements of the bending of light to the 1980s measurements of a decaying double-neutron-star system that reveal the action of gravity waves, to a 2004 space experiment to test whether spacetime `does the twist'. We will show how a revolution in astronomy and technology led to a renaissance of general relativity and how it plays an important role in daily life.

Sponsored by the McGill Department of Physics, CAP, Concordia University, Royal Society of Canada and Perimeter Institute.