EINSTEIN AND NEWTON.

Northern Advocate, 18 June 1923, Page 8

EINSTEIN AND NEWTON.

THEORIES SUPPLEMENT ONE ANOTHER. Commenting on the verification by the observations at last year's solar eclipse, of Einstein's prediction, the astronomical correspondent of the Loudon "Morning Post" says:—ln future the Newtonian law of gravitation must bow to the modification which Einstein has imposed upon it. This victory of the new law, however, need not be looked upon as the defeat of Newton. Newton's law, it must be remembered, was entirely empirical,* it was derived from the observed movements of the planets, and was invented for the purpose of expressing and predicting those increments. So accurately, indeed, did it fulfil this purpose that it came, in the course of time, to be considered an infallible and absolute law. There were a few cases in which the observed movements disagreed slightly with those calculated on the assumption of its truth, but gradually these were explained by the discovery of the presence of other forces, or removed by the increasing accuracy of astronomical measurement. Einstein's law, on the other hand, is not empirical; it follows logically from his theory of relativity, and is thus derived ultimately from his conceptions of space and time. The law thus obtained gives results which, for all practical purposes, are identical with those given by Newtonian law; the results of the two differ only in certain extreme cases. Thus the newlaw should be considered rather as theoretically confirming the surprising accuracy of the empirical law of Newton, only imposing upon it a modification that is negligible except i.". few extreme cases. The intrinsic value of Einstein's law of gravitation, therefore, is, with our present limited accuracy in measurement, practically nil; its real value lies in the menus it is said to afford of testing the truth of the ultimate conceptions from which it is derived, or offering a proof of Einstein's theory of relativity. But although the new law of gravitation is proved conclusively, it seems that the theory of relativity which gave it birth is still a field for dispute.