View a demonstration to understand Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity

BRIAN GREENE: One-hundredth anniversary of Einstein's general theory of relativity-- so a little demonstration here at home to explain the essential idea. So Einstein wants to know how the force of gravity works, how the sun communicates the pull of gravity across empty space to the earth. Here's the idea he comes up with. He says that the fabric of space is nice and flat if there's nothing there, no stars no planets, which would mean that if an object rolls through that environment-- say this is a comet or a planet, it will go in a nice straight line trajectory.

But the key thing is Einstein says that if we have a heavy, massive object like the sun, Einstein says that the sun merely by being within the fabric of space, causes the fabric to curve, to warp. And then other objects, like the planets, the earth, Mars, and so forth, he says they go into orbit because they're rolling along the curved environment that the sun creates. This, according to Einstein, is how gravity is communicated from the sun to the Earth, to Mars, the other planets. This is how gravity works.

Now we did a little version of this demonstration not too long ago on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. We got a lot of really great response, and a number of great questions were asked online. So let's answer the two most frequent questions that people asked. Question number one, Alec.

ALEC GREENE: Why isn't the earth spiraling into the sun?

BRIAN GREENE: Yeah, exactly, right? When you look at the marbles, they're all spiraling in to our yellow shot put here. So would that happened to the earth? Why doesn't the earth spiral into the sun? Well, the answer is, these marbles are spiraling in because they're losing energy, because of their frictional interaction with the spandex. In empty space there is virtually no friction at all. So planets hardly lose any energy. Now they actually do lose a little bit, because the planets can cause the fabric of space to ripple a little bit. We call it gravitational radiation. So if you were to wait about 10 to 20 years, 100 billion billion years, if the earth is still here, it will, in fact, spiral into the sun. Very good. Second question, Sophia.

SOPHIA GREENE: Isn't it gravity that pulls the yellow thing down?

BRIAN GREENE: Yeah. Right, so if you think about it, the reason why our yellow shot put sun is causing in the spandex to warp, it's because gravity is pulling on the shot put. So we're kind of using gravity to explain gravity. But the key idea is that Einstein says that the sun, merely by virtue of being in space, causes the fabric of space to warp. That's the key idea at the heart of the general theory of relativity.

All right guys. So that's all for today from the [? Day ?] Greene Science Lab, Science at Home. All right, see ya.