{"id":9031,"date":"2026-06-21T15:14:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T22:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/?p=9031"},"modified":"2026-06-17T15:25:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T22:25:04","slug":"twenty-twenty-six-day-one-seven-two-general-relativity-is-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/21\/twenty-twenty-six-day-one-seven-two-general-relativity-is-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"[twenty twenty six day one seven two]: general relativity is hard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I’m sure this is obvious to most people who are not dumb that the key discovery of the person known as the world’s greatest smarty pants might be a difficult subject, but I apparently have the dumb. I have been studying general relativity (“Einstein gravity”) on and off, for twenty years, and while I get some of it, other parts still just keep breaking my head. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like, why does time slow down when you accelerate? That’s, like, almost THE key prediction of GR. The explanation seems so simple, but yet, when I try to work through the links of the chain, I just can’t get it. I read the words and then try to recreate it in my little black grid-ruled notebook and end up right where I started, asking the question, “What does baffled mean?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current attempt involves having literally about a half-dozen books that have useful-seeming explanations of gravitational time dilation, which I am going through in quasi-parallel, trying to get a grip on the key feature which just doesn’t make sense to me (why particles emitted in the roof of a rocket or elevator seem to “run fast” compared to an observer sitting on the floor).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel if I could just get this, then I’d have a much deeper understanding. But the understanding I do have gives me two wrong answers: one, it shouldn’t work at all, or two, it’s always been there in the equations, and Newton should have discovered it, but simply didn’t because he didn’t think of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully I’ll get there. Wish me luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-the Centaur<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pictured: pound cake, almond milk, two general relativity textbooks, and buried between them the little black notebook where I’m trying to work all this out. Thanks, Albert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m sure this is obvious to most people who are not dumb that the key discovery of the person known as the world’s greatest smarty pants might be a difficult…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[257],"tags":[274,19],"class_list":["post-9031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-blogging-every-day","tag-hard-science","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9033,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9031\/revisions\/9033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}