This lecture is part of a series of lectures on “Astronomy” organised by Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias in collaboration with the British Council.
Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is possibly the most perfect intellectual achievement in modern physics. Anything that involves gravity, the force that powers everything on the largest, hottest or densest of scales, can be explained by it.
From the moment Einstein first proposed the theory in 1915, it was received with enthusiasm yet also with tremendous resistance, and for the following ninety years was the source of a series of feuds, vendettas, ideological battles and international collaborations featuring a colourful cast of characters.
A gripping, colourfully told story, The Perfect Theory entangles itself with the flashpoints of modern history. In this first complete popular history of the theory, Pedro G. Ferreira shows how the theory has informed our understanding of exactly what the universe is made of and how much is still undiscovered: from the work of the giant telescopes in the deserts of Chile to the way in which the latest work on black holes is providing a fresh, new perspective on what space and time are truly made of. As we near the first centenary of Einstein's iconic theory, scientists the world over are wondering once again if we have reached the limits of the theory and just how much of the universe's future it can explain.
Pedro G. Ferreira is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor in Physics at Oriel College, Oxford. He has held research positions at the University of California at Berkeley, at CERN in Geneva. His area of expertise is Cosmology, the Early Universe and Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. He has pioneered research in the relic radiation left over from the Big Bang, the nature of the dark Universe (such as dark matter and dark energy) and has led the way in studying alternatives to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. His most recent book, “The Perfect Theory: a Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity” was shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Science Prize and is published in over twenty countries.