A friend of mine has this equation painted on his wall. He wants e to get an artist friend of mine to do a nicer painting of it. He couldn't seem to explain to me very well in layman's terms what it meant though. I am completely ignorant with this stuff, but find it fascinating! Could someone explain to me what the hell this represents? Please! Guv=8piTuv
Ok...after a little investa-googling...it seems to be one of Einstein's field equations. Although...I'm sure one of the physics guys will be able to explain it better.
Waaaayyyyyyyy over my head broseph... Maybe instead of asking for laymans terms, i should just say 5 year old terms...
Fuck if I know...I just posted copy-pasta. When it comes to recipes for pot brownies...I'm your man...field equations...not so much. I'm sure AN or one of the other smart guys will be along soon enough, and tell you what it really means.
Wikipedia offers a fairly simple explanation. “The expression on the left represents the curvature of spacetime as determined by the metric; the expression on the right represents the matter/energy content of spacetime. The EFE can then be interpreted as a set of equations dictating how matter/energy determines the curvature of spacetime.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/einstein/einstein.html
To give you an approximate idea of what the equation is about, it is essentially the Einsteinian equivalent of Newton's law of Universal Gravitation \(F=GMm/r^2\).
If you say "physicist" 3 times...one will magically appear. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Thanks to everybody so far. though it still is going mostly right over my head. Also, how do I say this equation?
Bad ass! I want to see it Scott. Expanding your brain is awesome...It's one of the reasons I'm a member of Sciforums. Where else do you have access to multiple Phd's in physics willing to answer your simple questions? No where. Way to go Sciforum's physicists! you rock!
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! OH GOD NO!!!!! Thank you so much Prom for straightening this out for me. You sir, are the gentleman and scholar! Squared, Reiku, you <removed> stupid <removed>! Go <removed> yourself! Mod note: edited for language
Wikiversity has an interesting walk-through of the main points of the metric and curved space-time... The regular old Pythagorean theorem, gives distances for flat spaces, depending on the dimension of the space; the index notation makes for a convenient shorthand for tensor notation. Tensors are a generalization of the vector concept. Karl Friedrich Gauss started the investigations of metric distances and angles on curved surfaces. his student Bernhard Riemann continued that investigation and Albert Einstein was able to derive the theory of general relativity of curved space-time using those ideas of curved spaces. Introduction to general relativity