Timeline Of Gravitational Physics And Relativity
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The following is a
timeline A timeline is a list of events displayed in chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events. Timelines can use any suitable scale representing t ...
of
gravitational physics In physics, gravity (), also known as gravitation or a gravitational interaction, is a fundamental interaction, a mutual attraction between all massive particles. On Earth, gravity takes a slightly different meaning: the observed force b ...
and
general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of grav ...
.


Before 1500

* 3rd century B.C. –
Aristarchus of Samos Aristarchus of Samos (; , ; ) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the universe, with the Earth revolving around the Sun once a year and rotati ...
proposes the
heliocentric model Heliocentrism (also known as the heliocentric model) is a superseded astronomical model in which the Earth and planets orbit around the Sun at the center of the universe. Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed th ...
.


1500s

* 1543 –
Nicolaus Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath who formulated a mathematical model, model of Celestial spheres#Renaissance, the universe that placed heliocentrism, the Sun rather than Earth at its cen ...
publishes ''On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres''. * 1583 –
Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...
deduces the period relationship of a
pendulum A pendulum is a device made of a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate i ...
from observations (according to later biographer). * 1586 –
Simon Stevin Simon Stevin (; 1548–1620), sometimes called Stevinus, was a County_of_Flanders, Flemish mathematician, scientist and music theorist. He made various contributions in many areas of science and engineering, both theoretical and practical. He a ...
demonstrates that two objects of different mass accelerate at the same rate when dropped. * 1589 – Galileo Galilei describes a
hydrostatic balance In fluid mechanics, hydrostatic equilibrium, also called hydrostatic balance and hydrostasy, is the condition of a fluid or plastic solid at rest, which occurs when external forces, such as gravity, are balanced by a pressure-gradient force. I ...
for measuring
specific gravity Relative density, also called specific gravity, is a dimensionless quantity defined as the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for solids and liquids is nea ...
. * 1590 – Galileo Galilei formulates modified Aristotelean theory of motion (later retracted) based on
density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the ratio of a substance's mass to its volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' (or ''d'') can also be u ...
rather than weight of objects.


1600s

* 1602-1608 – Galileo Galilei experiments with pendulum motion and
inclined plane An inclined plane, also known as a ramp, is a flat supporting surface tilted at an angle from the vertical direction, with one end higher than the other, used as an aid for raising or lowering a load. The inclined plane is one of the six clas ...
s; deduces his law of
free fall In classical mechanics, free fall is any motion of a physical object, body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. A freely falling object may not necessarily be falling down in the vertical direction. If the common definition of the word ...
; and discovers that
projectile A projectile is an object that is propelled by the application of an external force and then moves freely under the influence of gravity and air resistance. Although any objects in motion through space are projectiles, they are commonly found ...
s travel along parabolic trajectories. * 1609 –
Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, Natural philosophy, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best know ...
announces his first two laws of planetary motion. * 1610 – Johannes Kepler states the dark night paradox. * 1610 – Galileo Galilei publishes '' The Sidereal Messenger'', detailing his astronomical discoveries made with a telescope. * 1619 – Johannes Kepler unveils his third law of planetary motion. * 1665-66 –
Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...
introduces an inverse-square
law of universal gravitation Newton's law of universal gravitation describes gravity as a force by stating that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the s ...
uniting terrestrial and celestial theories of motion and uses it to predict the orbit of the
Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...
and the parabolic arc of projectiles (the latter using his generalization of the binomial theorem). * 1676-9 –
Ole Rømer Ole Christensen Rømer (; 25 September 1644 – 19 September 1710) was a Danes, Danish astronomer who, in 1676, first demonstrated that light travels at a finite speed. Rømer also invented the modern thermometer showing the temperature between ...
makes the first scientific determination of the
speed of light The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant exactly equal to ). It is exact because, by international agreement, a metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time i ...
. * 1684 – Isaac Newton proves that
planet A planet is a large, Hydrostatic equilibrium, rounded Astronomical object, astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets b ...
s moving under an inverse-square force law will obey
Kepler's laws In astronomy, Kepler's laws of planetary motion, published by Johannes Kepler in 1609 (except the third law, which was fully published in 1619), describe the orbits of planets around the Sun. These laws replaced circular orbits and epicycles in ...
in a letter to Edmond Halley. * 1686 – Isaac Newton uses a fixed length pendulum with weights of varying composition to test the
weak equivalence principle The equivalence principle is the hypothesis that the observed equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass is a consequence of nature. The weak form, known for centuries, relates to masses of any composition in free fall taking the same tr ...
to 1 part in 1000. * 1686 – Isaac Newton publishes his ''
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, theories and theorems that are developed and proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include numbe ...
'', where he develops his
calculus Calculus is the mathematics, mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithmetic operations. Originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the ...
, states his laws of motion and gravitation, proves the
shell theorem In classical mechanics, the shell theorem gives gravitational simplifications that can be applied to objects inside or outside a spherically symmetrical Symmetry () in everyday life refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion a ...
, describes his rotating bucket thought experiment, explains the
tides Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another. Tide tables ...
, and calculates the
figure of the Earth In geodesy, the figure of the Earth is the size and shape used to model planet Earth. The kind of figure depends on application, including the precision needed for the model. A spherical Earth is a well-known historical approximation that is ...
.


1700s

* 1705 –
Edmond Halley Edmond (or Edmund) Halley (; – ) was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720. From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena in 1676–77, Hal ...
predicts the return of
Halley's comet Halley's Comet is the only known List of periodic comets, short-period comet that is consistently visible to the naked eye from Earth, appearing every 72–80 years, though with the majority of recorded apparitions (25 of 30) occurring after ...
in 1758, the first use of Newton's laws by someone other than Newton himself. * 1728 – Isaac Newton posthumously publishes his
cannonball A round shot (also called solid shot or simply ball) is a solid spherical projectile without explosive charge, launched from a gun. Its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the barrel from which it is shot. A round shot fired from a lar ...
thought experiment.''De mundi systemate''
Isaac Newton, London: J. Tonson, J. Osborn, & T. Longman, 1728.
* 1742 –
Colin Maclaurin Colin Maclaurin (; ; February 1698 – 14 June 1746) was a Scottish mathematician who made important contributions to geometry and algebra. He is also known for being a child prodigy and holding the record for being the youngest professor. ...
studies a self-gravitating uniform liquid drop at
equilibrium Equilibrium may refer to: Film and television * ''Equilibrium'' (film), a 2002 science fiction film * '' The Story of Three Loves'', also known as ''Equilibrium'', a 1953 romantic anthology film * "Equilibrium" (''seaQuest 2032'') * ''Equilibr ...
, the Maclaurin spheroid. * 1740s –
Jean le Rond d'Alembert Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert ( ; ; 16 November 1717 – 29 October 1783) was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. Until 1759 he was, together with Denis Diderot, a co-editor of the ''Encyclopé ...
and
Leonhard Euler Leonhard Euler ( ; ; ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss polymath who was active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician, geographer, and engineer. He founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made influential ...
independently examine the
precession of the equinoxes In astronomy, axial precession is a gravity-induced, slow, and continuous change in the orientation of an astronomical body's Rotation around a fixed axis, rotational axis. In the absence of precession, the astronomical body's orbit would show ...
and
nutation Nutation () is a rocking, swaying, or nodding motion in the axis of rotation of a largely axially symmetric object, such as a gyroscope, planet, or bullet in flight, or as an intended behaviour of a mechanism. In an appropriate reference fra ...
of the Earth. In the process, they develop the dynamics of
rigid bodies In physics, a rigid body, also known as a rigid object, is a solid body in which deformation is zero or negligible, when a deforming pressure or deforming force is applied on it. The distance between any two given points on a rigid body rema ...
. * 1740s-1750s – Leonhard Euler and Alexis Clairault independently derive the equations of motion for the
three-body problem In physics, specifically classical mechanics, the three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses orbiting each other in space and then calculate their subsequent trajectories using Newton' ...
and apply them to the Moon. * 1755 –
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...
advances
Emanuel Swedenborg Emanuel Swedenborg (; ; born Emanuel Swedberg; (29 January 168829 March 1772) was a Swedish polymath; scientist, engineer, astronomer, anatomist, Christian theologian, philosopher, and mysticism, mystic. He became best known for his book on the ...
's nebular hypothesis on the origin of the
Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...
. For details of Kant's position, see Stephen Palmquist, "Kant's Cosmogony Re-Evaluated", ''Studies in History and Philosophy of Science'' 18:3 (September 1987), pp.255–269. * 1765 – Leonhard Euler discovers the first three Lagrange points. * 1767 – Leonhard Euler solves Euler's
restricted three-body problem In physics, specifically classical mechanics, the three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocity, velocities (or momentum, momenta) of three point masses orbiting each other in space and then calculate their subsequent trajector ...
. Euler L, ''Nov. Comm. Acad. Imp. Petropolitanae'', 10, pp. 207–242, 11, pp. 152–184; ''Mémoires de l'Acad. de Berlin'', 11, 228–249. * 1772 –
Joseph-Louis Lagrange Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi LagrangiaLagrange point In celestial mechanics, the Lagrange points (; also Lagrangian points or libration points) are points of equilibrium for small-mass objects under the gravitational influence of two massive orbiting bodies. Mathematically, this involves t ...
s. * 1770s-1780s – Joseph-Louis Lagrange and Pierre-Simon de Laplace investigate the stability of the Solar System. * 1780s –
Adrien-Marie Legendre Adrien-Marie Legendre (; ; 18 September 1752 – 9 January 1833) was a French people, French mathematician who made numerous contributions to mathematics. Well-known and important concepts such as the Legendre polynomials and Legendre transforma ...
and Pierre-Simon de Laplace study the gravitational attraction of
spheroids A spheroid, also known as an ellipsoid of revolution or rotational ellipsoid, is a quadric surface (mathematics), surface obtained by Surface of revolution, rotating an ellipse about one of its principal axes; in other words, an ellipsoid with t ...
in
spherical coordinates In mathematics, a spherical coordinate system specifies a given point in three-dimensional space by using a distance and two angles as its three coordinates. These are * the radial distance along the line connecting the point to a fixed point ...
and introduce the
Legendre polynomials In mathematics, Legendre polynomials, named after Adrien-Marie Legendre (1782), are a system of complete and orthogonal polynomials with a wide number of mathematical properties and numerous applications. They can be defined in many ways, and t ...
. * 1796 –
Pierre-Simon de Laplace Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French polymath, a scholar whose work has been instrumental in the fields of physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, statistics, and philosophy. He summariz ...
independently introduces the
nebular hypothesis The nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model in the field of cosmogony to explain the formation and evolution of the Solar System (as well as other planetary systems). It suggests the Solar System is formed from gas and dust orbiting t ...
. * 1798 –
Henry Cavendish Henry Cavendish ( ; 10 October 1731 – 24 February 1810) was an English experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable a ...
tests Newton's law of universal gravitation using a torsion balance, leading to the first accurate value for the
gravitational constant The gravitational constant is an empirical physical constant involved in the calculation of gravitational effects in Sir Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation and in Albert Einstein's general relativity, theory of general relativity. It ...
and the mean density of the Earth.


1800s

* 1846 –
Urbain Le Verrier Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (; 11 March 1811 – 23 September 1877) was a French astronomer and mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics and is best known for predicting the existence and position of Neptune using only mathematics. ...
and
John Couch Adams John Couch Adams ( ; 5 June 1819 – 21 January 1892) was a British mathematician and astronomer. He was born in Laneast, near Launceston, Cornwall, and died in Cambridge. His most famous achievement was predicting the existence and position o ...
, studying
Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a Supercritical fluid, supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or Volatile ( ...
' orbit, independently prove that another, farther planet must exist.
Neptune Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun. It is the List of Solar System objects by size, fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 t ...
was found at the predicted moment and position. * 1855 – Le Verrier observes a 38 arc-second per century excess
precession Precession is a change in the orientation of the rotational axis of a rotating body. In an appropriate reference frame it can be defined as a change in the first Euler angle, whereas the third Euler angle defines the rotation itself. In o ...
of Mercury's
orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit (also known as orbital revolution) is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an ...
and attributes it to another planet, inside Mercury's orbit. The planet, called Vulcan, was never found. Le Verrier's figure is revised by
Simon Newcomb Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909) was a Canadians, Canadian–Americans, American astronomer, applied mathematician, and autodidactic polymath. He served as Professor of Mathematics in the United States Navy and at Johns Hopkins ...
to 43 arc-second per century in 1882. * 1876 –
William Kingdon Clifford William Kingdon Clifford (4 May 18453 March 1879) was a British mathematician and philosopher. Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his ...
suggests that the motion of matter may be due to changes in the geometry of space. * 1884 – William Thomson (
Lord Kelvin William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (26 June 182417 December 1907), was a British mathematician, Mathematical physics, mathematical physicist and engineer. Born in Belfast, he was the Professor of Natural Philosophy (Glasgow), professor of Natur ...
) lectures on the issues with the wave theory of light with regards to the luminiferous ether. * 1887 – Albert A. Michelson and
Edward W. Morley Edward Williams Morley (January 29, 1838 – February 24, 1923) was an American scientist known for his precise and accurate measurement of the atomic weight of oxygen, and for the Michelson–Morley experiment. Biography Morley was born in New ...
in their famous experiment do not detect the ether drift. * 1889 –
Loránd Eötvös Baron Loránd Eötvös de Vásárosnamény (or simply Loránd Eötvös ; ; ; 27 July 1848 – 8 April 1919), also called Baron Roland von Eötvös in English literature, was a Hungarian physicist. He is remembered today largely for his work on ...
uses a torsion balance to test the
weak equivalence principle The equivalence principle is the hypothesis that the observed equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass is a consequence of nature. The weak form, known for centuries, relates to masses of any composition in free fall taking the same tr ...
to 1 part in one billion. * 1887 –
George Francis FitzGerald George Francis FitzGerald (3 August 1851 – 21 February 1901) was an Irish physicist known for hypothesising length contraction, which became an integral part of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. Life and work in physics FitzGer ...
explains his hypothesis that the Michelson-Morley interferometer
contracts A contract is an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more parties. A contract typically involves consent to transfer of goods, services, money, or promise to transfer any of thos ...
in the direction of motion through the luminiferous ether to
Oliver Lodge Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (12 June 1851 – 22 August 1940) was an English physicist whose investigations into electromagnetic radiation contributed to the development of Radio, radio communication. He identified electromagnetic radiation indepe ...
. * 1893 –
Ernst Mach Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( ; ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the understanding of the physics of shock waves. The ratio of the speed of a flow or object to that of ...
states
Mach's principle In theoretical physics, particularly in discussions of gravitation theories, Mach's principle (or Mach's conjecture) is the name given by Albert Einstein to an imprecise hypothesis often credited to the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach. The ...
, the first constructive critique of the idea of Newtonian absolute space. * 1897 –
Henri Poincaré Jules Henri Poincaré (, ; ; 29 April 185417 July 1912) was a French mathematician, Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosophy of science, philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathemati ...
questions whether absolute space, absolute time, and
Euclidean geometry Euclidean geometry is a mathematical system attributed to ancient Greek mathematics, Greek mathematician Euclid, which he described in his textbook on geometry, ''Euclid's Elements, Elements''. Euclid's approach consists in assuming a small set ...
are applicable to physics.


1900s

* 1902 –
Paul Gerber Paul Gerber (1854 Berlin, Germany – 13 August 1909 Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany) was a German physics teacher. He studied in Berlin from 1872 to 1875. In 1877 he became a teacher at the Realgymnasium (high school) in Stargard in Pommern. Ge ...
explains the movement of the perihelion of Mercury using finite
speed of gravity In classical theories of gravitation, the changes in a gravitational field propagate. A change in the distribution of energy and momentum of matter results in subsequent alteration, at a distance, of the gravitational field which it produces. In ...
. His formula, at least approximately, matches the later model from Einstein's general relativity, but Gerber's theory was incorrect. * 1902 – Henri Poincaré questions the concept of simultaneity in his book, ''
Science and Hypothesis ''Science and Hypothesis'' () is a book by French mathematician Henri Poincaré, first published in 1902. Aimed at a non-specialist readership, it deals with mathematics, space, physics and nature. It puts forward the theses that absolute truth i ...
''. * 1904 –
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz Hendrik Antoon Lorentz ( ; ; 18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch theoretical physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for their discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He derived ...
publishes the
Lorentz transformation In physics, the Lorentz transformations are a six-parameter family of Linear transformation, linear coordinate transformation, transformations from a Frame of Reference, coordinate frame in spacetime to another frame that moves at a constant vel ...
s, so named by Henri Poincaré. * 1902 – Henri Poincaré shows that the Lorentz transformations form a mathematical group, called the
Lorentz group In physics and mathematics, the Lorentz group is the group of all Lorentz transformations of Minkowski spacetime, the classical and quantum setting for all (non-gravitational) physical phenomena. The Lorentz group is named for the Dutch physi ...
, and derives the relativistic formula for adding velocities. * 1905 –
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...
completes his
special theory of relativity In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory of the relationship between space and time. In Albert Einstein's 1905 paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", the theory is presen ...
and examines
relativistic aberration In physics, relativistic aberration is the relativistic version of aberration of light, including relativistic corrections that become significant for observers who move with velocities close to the speed of light, as described by special relativi ...
and the transverse Doppler effect. * 1905 – Albert Einstein discovers the equivalence of mass and energy, E = mc^2 in modern form. * 1906 –
Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (; ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quantum, quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial con ...
coins the term ''Relativtheorie''. Albert Einstein later uses the term ''Relativitätstheorie'' in a conversation with Paul Ehrenfest. He originally prefers calling it Invariance Theory. * 1906 – Max Planck formulates a
variational principle A variational principle is a mathematical procedure that renders a physical problem solvable by the calculus of variations, which concerns finding functions that optimize the values of quantities that depend on those functions. For example, the pr ...
for special relativity. * 1907 – Albert Einstein introduces the principle of equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass and uses it to predict gravitational lensing and
gravitational redshift In physics and general relativity, gravitational redshift (known as Einstein shift in older literature) is the phenomenon that electromagnetic waves or photons travelling out of a gravitational well lose energy. This loss of energy correspo ...
, historically known as the Einstein shift. * 1907-8 –
Hermann Minkowski Hermann Minkowski (22 June 1864 – 12 January 1909) was a mathematician and professor at the University of Königsberg, the University of Zürich, and the University of Göttingen, described variously as German, Polish, Lithuanian-German, o ...
introduces the
Minkowski spacetime In physics, Minkowski space (or Minkowski spacetime) () is the main mathematical description of spacetime in the absence of gravitation. It combines inertial space and time manifolds into a four-dimensional model. The model helps show how a s ...
and the notion of
tensor In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects associated with a vector space. Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other ...
s to relativity. His paper was published posthumously. * 1909 –
Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics, and supervised the work of a ...
proposes his notion of rigidity. * 1909 –
Paul Ehrenfest Paul Ehrenfest (; 18 January 1880 – 25 September 1933) was an Austrian Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who made major contributions to statistical mechanics and its relation to quantum physics, quantum mechanics, including the theory ...
states the
Ehrenfest paradox The Ehrenfest paradox concerns the rotation of a "rigid" disc in the theory of relativity. In its original 1909 formulation as presented by Paul Ehrenfest in relation to the concept of Born rigidity within special relativity, it discusses an ide ...
.


1910s

* 1911 –
Max von Laue Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 "for his discovery of the X-ray diffraction, diffraction of X-rays by crystals". In addition to his scientifi ...
publishes the first textbook on special relativity. * 1911 – Albert Einstein explains the need to replace both special relativity and Newton's theory of gravity; he realizes that the principle of equivalence only holds locally, not globally. * 1912 – Friedrich Kottler applies the notion of tensors to curved spacetime. * 1915-16 – Albert Einstein completes his
general theory of relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physi ...
. He explains the
perihelion An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. The line of apsides (also called apse line, or major axis of the orbit) is the line connecting the two extreme values. Apsides perta ...
of Mercury and calculates
gravitational lens A gravitational lens is matter, such as a galaxy cluster, cluster of galaxies or a point particle, that bends light from a distant source as it travels toward an observer. The amount of gravitational lensing is described by Albert Einstein's Ge ...
ing correctly and introduces the
post-Newtonian approximation In general relativity, post-Newtonian expansions (PN expansions) are used for finding an approximate solution of Einstein field equations for the metric tensor. The approximations are expanded in small parameters that express orders of deviation ...
. * 1915 –
David Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental idea ...
independently introduces the Einstein-Hilbert action. Hilbert also recognizes the connection between the Einstein equations and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem. * 1916 –
Karl Schwarzschild Karl Schwarzschild (; 9 October 1873 – 11 May 1916) was a German physicist and astronomer. Schwarzschild provided the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity, for the limited case of a single spherical non-r ...
publishes the
Schwarzschild metric In Einstein's theory of general relativity, the Schwarzschild metric (also known as the Schwarzschild solution) is an exact solution to the Einstein field equations that describes the gravitational field outside a spherical mass, on the assumpti ...
about a month after Einstein published his general theory of relativity. This was the first solution to the Einstein field equations other than the trivial flat space solution.Eisenstaedt, "The Early Interpretation of the Schwarzschild Solution," in D. Howard and J. Stachel (eds), Einstein and the History of General Relativity: Einstein Studies, Vol. 1, pp. 213-234. Boston: Birkhauser, 1989. * 1916 – Albert Einstein predicts
gravitational wave Gravitational waves are oscillations of the gravitational field that Wave propagation, travel through space at the speed of light; they are generated by the relative motion of gravity, gravitating masses. They were proposed by Oliver Heaviside i ...
s. * 1916 –
Willem de Sitter Willem de Sitter (6May 187220November 1934) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He is known for the de Sitter universe is a cosmological model, which was named after him. Life and work Born in Sneek, Netherlands, de Sitte ...
predicts the geodetic effect. * 1917 – Albert Einstein applies his field equations to the entire Universe.
Physical cosmology Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of fu ...
is born. * 1916-20 –
Arthur Eddington Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the lu ...
studies the internal constitution of the stars.The Internal Constitution of the Stars A. S. Eddington The Scientific Monthly Vol. 11, No. 4 (Oct., 1920), pp. 297–303 * 1918 – Albert Einstein derives the quadrupole formula for gravitational radiation. * 1918 –
Emmy Noether Amalie Emmy Noether (23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She also proved Noether's theorem, Noether's first and Noether's second theorem, second theorems, which ...
publishes
Noether's theorem Noether's theorem states that every continuous symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservation law. This is the first of two theorems (see Noether's second theorem) published by the mat ...
and resolves the issue of local
energy conservation Energy conservation is the effort to reduce wasteful energy consumption by using fewer energy services. This can be done by using energy more effectively (using less and better sources of energy for continuous service) or changing one's behavi ...
in general relativity. * 1918 – Josef Lense and Hans Thirring find the gravitomagnetic
frame-dragging Frame-dragging is an effect on spacetime, predicted by Albert Einstein's General relativity, general theory of relativity, that is due to non-static stationary distributions of mass–energy. A stationary Field (physics), field is one that is ...
of
gyroscope A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining Orientation (geometry), orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in ...
s in the equations of general relativity. * 1919 – Arthur Eddington leads a solar eclipse expedition which detects gravitational deflection of light by the Sun, which, despite opinion to the contrary, survives modern scrutiny. Other teams fail for reasons of
war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...
and politics.


1920s

* 1921 – Theodor Kaluza demonstrates that a five-dimensional version of Einstein's equations unifies
gravitation In physics, gravity (), also known as gravitation or a gravitational interaction, is a fundamental interaction, a mutual attraction between all massive particles. On Earth, gravity takes a slightly different meaning: the observed force b ...
and
electromagnetism In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge via electromagnetic fields. The electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. It is the dominant force in the interacti ...
. This idea is later extended by
Oskar Klein Oskar Benjamin Klein (; 15 September 1894 – 5 February 1977) was a Swedish theoretical physics, theoretical physicist. Oskar Klein is known for his work on Kaluza–Klein theory, which is partially named after him. Biography Klein was born ...
. * 1922 – Alexander Friedmann derives the
Friedmann equations The Friedmann equations, also known as the Friedmann–Lemaître (FL) equations, are a set of equations in physical cosmology that govern cosmic expansion in homogeneous and isotropic models of the universe within the context of general relativi ...
. Translated in: * 1922 –
Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian and naturalized American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project ...
introduces the Fermi coordinates. This is developed further in 1932 by Arthur Walker into the Fermi-Walker transport. * 1923 –
George David Birkhoff George David Birkhoff (March21, 1884November12, 1944) was one of the top American mathematicians of his generation. He made valuable contributions to the theory of differential equations, dynamical systems, the four-color problem, the three-body ...
proves Birkhoff's theorem on the uniqueness of the Schwarzschild solution. * 1924 – Arthur Eddington calculates the Eddington limit. * 1924 –
Cornelius Lanczos __NOTOC__ Cornelius (Cornel) Lanczos (, ; born as Kornél Lőwy, until 1906: ''Löwy (Lőwy) Kornél''; February 2, 1893 – June 25, 1974) was a Hungarian-Jewish, Hungarian-American and later Hungarian-Irish mathematician and physicist. Accordi ...
discovers the van Stockum dust, later rediscovered by Willem Jacob van Stockum in 1938. * 1925 – Walter Adams measures the gravitational redshift of the light emitted by the companion of Sirius B, a
white dwarf A white dwarf is a Compact star, stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very density, dense: in an Earth sized volume, it packs a mass that is comparable to the Sun. No nuclear fusion takes place i ...
. * 1927 –
Georges Lemaître Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître ( ; ; 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, and mathematician who made major contributions to cosmology and astrophysics. He was the first to argue that the ...
publishes his hypothesis of the primeval atom. * 1929 –
Edwin Hubble Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology. Hubble proved that many objects previously ...
published the law later named for him.


1930s

* 1931 –
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (; 19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian Americans, Indian-American theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to the scientific knowledge about the structure of stars, stellar evolution and ...
studies the
stability Stability may refer to: Mathematics *Stability theory, the study of the stability of solutions to differential equations and dynamical systems ** Asymptotic stability ** Exponential stability ** Linear stability **Lyapunov stability ** Marginal s ...
of
white dwarf A white dwarf is a Compact star, stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very density, dense: in an Earth sized volume, it packs a mass that is comparable to the Sun. No nuclear fusion takes place i ...
s. * 1931 – Georges Lemaître and Arthur Eddington predict the
expansion of the Universe The expansion of the universe is the increase in proper length, distance between Gravitational binding energy, gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time. It is an intrinsic and extrinsic properties (philosophy), intrins ...
. * 1931 – Albert Einstein introduces his
cosmological constant In cosmology, the cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: ), alternatively called Einstein's cosmological constant, is a coefficient that Albert Einstein initially added to his field equations of general rel ...
. * 1932 – Albert Einstein and Willem de Sitter propose the Einstein-de Sitter cosmological model. * 1932 –
John Cockcroft Sir John Douglas Cockcroft (27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was an English nuclear physicist who shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ernest Walton for their splitting of the atomic nucleus, which was instrumental in the developmen ...
and
Ernest Walton Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (6 October 1903 – 25 June 1995) was an Irish nuclear physicist who shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Cockcroft "for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerate ...
verify Einstein's mass-energy equation by an experiment artificially transmuting lithium into helium. * 1934 – Dmitry Blokhintsev and F. M. Gal'perin coin the term '
graviton In theories of quantum gravity, the graviton is the hypothetical elementary particle that mediates the force of gravitational interaction. There is no complete quantum field theory of gravitons due to an outstanding mathematical problem with re ...
'.
Paul Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac ( ; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English mathematician and Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Dirac laid the foundations for bot ...
reintroduces it in 1959. * 1934 –
Walter Baade Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade (March 24, 1893 – June 25, 1960) was a German astronomer who worked in the United States from 1931 to 1959. Early life and education Baade was born the son of a teacher in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He fin ...
and
Fritz Zwicky Fritz Zwicky (; ; February 14, 1898 – February 8, 1974) was a Swiss astronomer. He worked most of his life at the California Institute of Technology in the United States of America, where he made many important contributions in theoretical an ...
predict the existence of
neutron star A neutron star is the gravitationally collapsed Stellar core, core of a massive supergiant star. It results from the supernova explosion of a stellar evolution#Massive star, massive star—combined with gravitational collapse—that compresses ...
s. Although their details are wrong, their basic idea is now accepted. * 1935 – Albert Einstein and
Nathan Rosen Nathan Rosen (; March 22, 1909 – December 18, 1995) was an American and Israeli physicist noted for his study on the structure of the hydrogen molecule and his collaboration with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky on entangled wave functions and ...
derive the Einstein-Rosen bridge, the first wormhole solution.A. Einstein and N. Rosen, "The Particle Problem in the General Theory of Relativity," ''Phys. Rev.'' 48(73) (1935). * 1935 – Howard Robertson and Arthur Walker obtain the Robertson-Walker metric. * 1936 – Albert Einstein predicts that a gravitational lens brightens the light coming from a distant object to the observer. * 1937 – Fritz Zwicky states that
galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...
could act as
gravitational lens A gravitational lens is matter, such as a galaxy cluster, cluster of galaxies or a point particle, that bends light from a distant source as it travels toward an observer. The amount of gravitational lensing is described by Albert Einstein's Ge ...
es. * 1937 – Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen obtain the Einstein-Rosen metric, the first exact solution describing gravitational waves. * 1938 – Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld, and Banesh Hoffmann obtain the Einstein-Infeld-Hoffmann equations of motion. * 1939 –
Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Eduard Bethe (; ; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics and solid-state physics, and received the Nobel Prize in Physi ...
shows that nuclear fusion is responsible for energy production inside stars, building upon the
Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism The Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism is an astronomical process that occurs when the surface of a star or a planet cools. The cooling causes the internal pressure to drop, and the star or planet shrinks as a result. This compression, in turn, heats t ...
. * 1939 –
Richard Tolman Richard Chace Tolman (March 4, 1881 – September 5, 1948) was an American mathematical physicist and physical chemist who made many contributions to statistical mechanics and theoretical cosmology. He was a professor at the California In ...
solves the Einstein field equations in the case of a spherical fluid drop. * 1939 –
Robert Serber Robert Serber (March 14, 1909 – June 1, 1997) was an American physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project. Serber's lectures explaining the basic principles and goals of the project were printed and supplied to all incoming scientific st ...
,
George Volkoff George Michael Volkoff, (February 23, 1914 – April 24, 2000) was a Russian-Canadian physicist and academic who helped, with J. Robert Oppenheimer, predict the existence of neutron stars before they were discovered. Early life He was born ...
,
Richard Tolman Richard Chace Tolman (March 4, 1881 – September 5, 1948) was an American mathematical physicist and physical chemist who made many contributions to statistical mechanics and theoretical cosmology. He was a professor at the California In ...
, and J. Robert Oppenheimer study the stability of neutron stars, obtaining the
Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit The Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (or TOV limit) is an upper bound to the mass of cold, non-rotating neutron stars, analogous to the Chandrasekhar limit for white dwarf stars. Stars more massive than the TOV limit collapse into a black hol ...
. * 1939 –
J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World ...
and Hartland Snyder publish the Oppenheimer-Snyder model for the continued gravitational contraction of a star.


1940s

* 1948 – Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman predict the
cosmic microwave background The cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR), or relic radiation, is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dar ...
. * 1949 –
Cornelius Lanczos __NOTOC__ Cornelius (Cornel) Lanczos (, ; born as Kornél Lőwy, until 1906: ''Löwy (Lőwy) Kornél''; February 2, 1893 – June 25, 1974) was a Hungarian-Jewish, Hungarian-American and later Hungarian-Irish mathematician and physicist. Accordi ...
introduces the Lanczos potential for the Weyl tensor. * 1949 –
Kurt Gödel Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( ; ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel profoundly ...
discovers Gödel's solution.


1950s

* 1953 – P. C. Vaidya Newtonian time in general relativity, Nature, 171, p260. * 1954 – Suraj Gupta sketches how to derive the equations of general relativity from quantum field theory for a massless spin-2 particle (the
graviton In theories of quantum gravity, the graviton is the hypothetical elementary particle that mediates the force of gravitational interaction. There is no complete quantum field theory of gravitons due to an outstanding mathematical problem with re ...
). His procedure was later carried out by Stanley Deser in 1970. * 1955-56 – Robert Kraichnan shows that under the appropriate assumptions, Einstein's field equations of gravitation arise from the
quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines Field theory (physics), field theory and the principle of relativity with ideas behind quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct phy ...
of a massless spin-2 particle coupled to the stress-energy tensor. This follows from his unpublished work as an undergraduate in 1947. * 1956 – Bruno Berlotti develops the post-Minkowskian expansion. * 1956 – John Lighton Synge publishes the first relativity text emphasizing spacetime diagrams and geometrical methods. * 1957 – Felix A. E. Pirani uses Petrov classification to understand
gravitational radiation Gravitational waves are oscillations of the gravitational field that travel through space at the speed of light; they are generated by the relative motion of gravitating masses. They were proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1893 and then later by ...
. * 1957 –
Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of t ...
introduces his sticky bead argument.Preskill, John and Kip S. Thorne. Foreword to ''Feynman Lectures On Gravitation''. Feynman et al. (Westview Press; 1st ed. (June 20, 2002)
PDF link
/ref> He later derives the quadrupole formula in a letter to
Victor Weisskopf Victor Frederick "Viki" Weisskopf (also spelled Viktor; September 19, 1908 – April 22, 2002) was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. He did postdoctoral work with Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, and Niels Boh ...
(1961). * 1957-8 – John Wheeler discusses the breakdown of classical general relativity near singularities and the need for
quantum gravity Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. It deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the v ...
. * 1958 –
David Finkelstein David Ritz Finkelstein (July 19, 1929 – January 24, 2016) was an emeritus professor of physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Biography Born in New York City, Finkelstein obtained his Ph.D. in physics at the Massachusetts Institute o ...
presents a new coordinate system that eliminates the Schwarzschild radius as a singularity. * 1959 – Robert Pound and Glen Rebka propose the Pound–Rebka experiment, first precision test of
gravitational redshift In physics and general relativity, gravitational redshift (known as Einstein shift in older literature) is the phenomenon that electromagnetic waves or photons travelling out of a gravitational well lose energy. This loss of energy correspo ...
. The experiment relies on the
Mössbauer effect The Mössbauer effect, or recoilless nuclear resonance fluorescence, is a physical phenomenon discovered by Rudolf Mössbauer in 1958. It involves the resonant and recoil-free emission and absorption of gamma radiation by atomic nuclei bound in a ...
. * 1959 – Lluís Bel introduces Bel–Robinson tensor and the Bel decomposition of the Riemann tensor. * 1959 – Arthur Komar introduces the Komar mass. * 1959 – Richard Arnowitt, Stanley Deser and Charles W. Misner developed
ADM formalism The Arnowitt–Deser–Misner (ADM) formalism (named for its authors Richard Arnowitt, Stanley Deser and Charles W. Misner) is a Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity that plays an important role in canonical quantum gravity and nume ...
.


1960s

* 1960 –
Martin Kruskal Martin David Kruskal (; September 28, 1925 – December 26, 2006) was an American mathematician and physicist. He made fundamental contributions in many areas of mathematics and science, ranging from plasma physics to general relativity and ...
and
George Szekeres George Szekeres AM FAA (; 29 May 1911 – 28 August 2005) was a Hungarian–Australian mathematician. Early years Szekeres was born in Budapest, Hungary, as Szekeres György and received his degree in chemistry at the Technical University of ...
independently introduce the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates for the
Schwarzschild vacuum In Einstein's theory of general relativity, the Schwarzschild metric (also known as the Schwarzschild solution) is an exact solution to the Einstein field equations that describes the gravitational field outside a spherical mass, on the assumpti ...
. * 1960 – John Graves and Dieter Brill study the causal structure of an electrically charged black hole. * 1960 – Thomas Matthews and Allan R. Sandage associate
3C 48 3C48 is a quasar discovered in 1960; it was the second source conclusively identified as such. 3C48 was the first source in the Third Cambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources for which an optical identification was found by Allan Sandage and Thomas ...
with a point-like optical image, show radio source can be at most 15 light minutes in diameter, * 1960 – Ivor M. Robinson and
Andrzej Trautman Andrzej Mariusz Trautman (; born January 4, 1933) is a Polish mathematical physicist who has made contributions to classical gravitation in general and to general relativity in particular. He made contributions to gravitation as early as 1958. T ...
discover the Robinson-Trautman null dust solution * 1960 – Robert Pound and Glen Rebka test the gravitational redshift predicted by the equivalence principle to approximately 1%. * 1961 – Tullio Regge introduces the
Regge calculus In general relativity, Regge calculus is a formalism for producing simplicial approximations of spacetimes that are solutions to the Einstein field equation. The calculus was introduced by the Italian theoretician Tullio Regge in 1961. Availabl ...
. * 1961 – Carl H. Brans and Robert H. Dicke introduce
Brans–Dicke theory In physics, the Brans–Dicke theory of gravitation (sometimes called the Jordan–Brans–Dicke theory) is a competitor to Einstein's general theory of relativity. It is an example of a scalar–tensor theory, a gravitational theory in which the ...
, the first viable alternative theory with a clear physical motivation. * 1961 –
Pascual Jordan Ernst Pascual Jordan (; 18 October 1902 – 31 July 1980) was a German theoretical and mathematical physicist who made significant contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. He contributed much to the mathematical form of matri ...
and
Jürgen Ehlers Jürgen Ehlers (; 29 December 1929 – 20 May 2008) was a German physicist who contributed to the understanding of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. From graduate and postgraduate work in Pascual Jordan's relativity research group ...
develop the ''kinematic decomposition'' of a timelike congruence, * 1961 – Robert Dicke, Peter Roll, and R. Krotkov refine the
Eötvös experiment The Eötvös experiment was a physics experiment that measured the correlation between inertial mass and gravitational mass, demonstrating that the two were one and the same, something that had long been suspected but never demonstrated with the ...
to an accuracy of 10−11. * 1962 – John Wheeler and Robert Fuller show that the Einstein-Rosen bridge is unstable. * 1962 –
Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, Philosophy of science, philosopher of science and Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics i ...
and Ezra T. Newman introduce the
Newman–Penrose formalism The Newman–Penrose (NP) formalism The original paper by Newman and Penrose, which introduces the formalism, and uses it to derive example results.Ezra T Newman, Roger Penrose. ''Errata: An Approach to Gravitational Radiation by a Method of Sp ...
. * 1962 – Ehlers and Wolfgang Kundt classify the symmetries of Pp-wave spacetimes. * 1962 – Joshua Goldberg and Rainer K. Sachs prove the
Goldberg–Sachs theorem The Goldberg–Sachs theorem is a result in Einstein's theory of general relativity about vacuum solutions of the Einstein field equations relating the existence of a certain type of congruence with algebraic properties of the Weyl tensor. More ...
.; originally published in Acta Phys. Pol. 22, 13–23 (1962). * 1962 – Ehlers introduces Ehlers transformations, a new solution generating method, * 1962 – Richard Arnowitt, Stanley Deser, and Charles W. Misner introduce the ADM reformulation and global hyperbolicity, * 1962 – Istvan Ozsvath and Englbert Schücking rediscover the circularly polarized monochromomatic gravitational wave. * 1962 – Hans Adolph Buchdahl discovers Buchdahl's theorem. * 1962 –
Hermann Bondi Sir Hermann Bondi (1 November 1919 – 10 September 2005) was an Austrian-British people, British mathematician and physical cosmology, cosmologist. He is best known for developing the steady state model of the universe with Fred Hoyle and Thom ...
introduces Bondi mass. * 1962 –
Hermann Bondi Sir Hermann Bondi (1 November 1919 – 10 September 2005) was an Austrian-British people, British mathematician and physical cosmology, cosmologist. He is best known for developing the steady state model of the universe with Fred Hoyle and Thom ...
, M. G. van der Burg, A. W. Metzner, and Rainer K. Sachs introduce the asymptotic symmetry group of asymptotically flat, Lorentzian spacetimes at null (''i.e.'', light-like) infinity. * 1963 – Roy Kerr discovers the Kerr vacuum solution of Einstein's field equations, * 1963 – Redshifts of 3C 273 and other quasars show they are very distant; hence very luminous, * 1963 – Newman, T. Unti and L.A. Tamburino introduce the NUT vacuum solution, * 1963 –
Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, Philosophy of science, philosopher of science and Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics i ...
introduces Penrose diagrams and Penrose limits. * 1963 –
Maarten Schmidt Maarten Schmidt (28 December 1929 – 17 September 2022) was a Dutch-born American astronomer who first measured the distances of quasars. He was the first astronomer to identify a quasar, and so was pictured on the March cover of ''Time'' mag ...
and Jesse Greenstein discover quasi-stellar objects, later shown to be moving away from Earth due to the expansion of the Universe. * 1963 – First Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics held in Dallas, 16–18 December. * 1964 –
Steven Weinberg Steven Weinberg (; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic inter ...
shows that a quantum field theory of interacting massless spin-2 particles is Lorentz invariant only if it satisfies the principle of equivalence. * 1964 –
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (; 19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian Americans, Indian-American theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to the scientific knowledge about the structure of stars, stellar evolution and ...
determines a stability criterion. * 1964 – R. W. Sharp and Charles Misner introduce the Misner–Sharp mass. * 1964 – Hong-Yee Chiu coins the term "'
quasar A quasar ( ) is an extremely Luminosity, luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole with a mass rangi ...
" for quasi-stellar radio sources. * 1964 –
Sjur Refsdal Sjur Refsdal (30 December 1935 – 29 January 2009) was a Norwegian astrophysicist, born in Oslo. He is best known for his pioneer work on gravitational lensing, including the Chang-Refsdal lens. Biography In 1970 he earned a doctorate at the ...
suggests that the Hubble constant could be determined using gravitational lensing. * 1964 – Irwin Shapiro predicts a gravitational time delay of radiation travel as a test of general relativity. * 1965 – Roger Penrose proves the first singularity theorem. * 1965 – Penrose discovers the structure of the light cones in gravitational plane wave spacetimes. * 1965 – Ezra Newman and others introduce Kerr-Newman metric. * 1965 –
Arno Penzias Arno Allan Penzias (; April 26, 1933 – January 22, 2024) was an American physicist and radio astronomer. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physi ...
and Robert Wilson accidentally discover the
cosmic microwave background radiation The cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR), or relic radiation, is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dar ...
. This rules out the
steady-state model In cosmology, the steady-state model or steady-state theory was an alternative to the Big Bang theory. In the steady-state model, the density of matter in the expanding universe remains unchanged due to a continuous creation of matter, thus ...
of
Fred Hoyle Sir Fred Hoyle (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper, B2FH paper. He also held controversial stances on oth ...
and Jayant Narlikar. * 1965 –
Joseph Weber Joseph Weber (May 17, 1919 – September 30, 2000) was an American physicist. He gave the earliest public lecture on the principles behind the laser and the maser and developed the first gravitational wave detectors, known as Weber bars. Ear ...
puts the first Weber bar
gravitational wave Gravitational waves are oscillations of the gravitational field that Wave propagation, travel through space at the speed of light; they are generated by the relative motion of gravity, gravitating masses. They were proposed by Oliver Heaviside i ...
detector into operation. * 1966 – Sachs and Ronald Kantowski discover the Kantowski-Sachs dust solution. * 1967 – John Archibald Wheeler popularizes "black hole" at a conference. * 1967 – Jocelyn Bell and
Antony Hewish Antony Hewish (11 May 1924 – 13 September 2021) was a British radio astronomer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 (together with fellow radio-astronomer Martin Ryle) for his role in the discovery of pulsars. He was also awarded the ...
discover
pulsars A pulsar (''pulsating star, on the model of quasar'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointin ...
. * 1967 – Robert H. Boyer and R. W. Lindquist introduce
Boyer–Lindquist coordinates In the mathematical description of general relativity, the Boyer–Lindquist coordinates are a generalization of the coordinates used for the metric of a Schwarzschild black hole that can be used to express the metric of a Kerr black hole. Th ...
for the Kerr vacuum. * 1967 – Bryce DeWitt publishes on canonical quantum gravity. * 1967 –
Werner Israel Werner Israel, (October 4, 1931 – May 18, 2022) was a theoretical physicist known for his contributions to gravitational theory, and especially to the understanding of black holes. Biography Israel was born in Berlin, Germany in 1931. H ...
proves a special case of the
no-hair theorem The no-hair theorem states that all stationary black hole solutions of the Einstein–Maxwell equations of gravitation and electromagnetism in general relativity can be completely characterized by only three independent ''externally'' observabl ...
and the converse of Birkhoff's theorem. * 1967 – Kenneth Nordtvedt develops PPN formalism. * 1967 – Mendel Sachs publishes factorization of Einstein's field equations. * 1967 – Hans Stephani discovers the Stephani dust solution. * 1968 – F. J. Ernst discovers the
Ernst equation In mathematics, the Ernst equation is an integrable non-linear partial differential equation, named after the American physicist . The Ernst equation The equation reads: \Re(u)(u_+u_r/r+u_) = (u_r)^2+(u_z)^2. where \Re(u) is the real part ...
. * 1968 – B. Kent Harrison discovers the Harrison transformation, a solution-generating method. * 1968 –
Brandon Carter Brandon Carter, (born 1942) is an Australian theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who explores the properties of black holes, and was the first to name and employ the anthropic principle in its contemporary form. He is a researcher at t ...
solves the geodesic equations for Kerr–Newmann electrovacuum with Carter's constant. * 1968 – Hugo D. Wahlquist discovers the Wahlquist fluid. * 1968 –
James Hartle James Burkett Hartle (August 17, 1939 – May 17, 2023) was an American theoretical physicist. He joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1966, and was a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. Hart ...
and
Kip Thorne Kip Stephen Thorne (born June 1, 1940) is an American theoretical physicist and writer known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. Along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Pri ...
obtain the Hartle–Thorne metric. * 1968 – Irwin Shapiro and his colleagues present the first detection of the Shapiro delay. * 1968 – Kenneth Nordtvedt studies a possible violation of the weak equivalence principle for self-gravitating bodies and proposes a new test of the weak equivalence principle based on observing the relative motion of the Earth and Moon in the Sun's gravitational field. * 1969 – William B. Bonnor introduces the Bonnor beam. * 1969 –
Joseph Weber Joseph Weber (May 17, 1919 – September 30, 2000) was an American physicist. He gave the earliest public lecture on the principles behind the laser and the maser and developed the first gravitational wave detectors, known as Weber bars. Ear ...
reports observation of
gravitational waves Gravitational waves are oscillations of the gravitational field that travel through space at the speed of light; they are generated by the relative motion of gravitating masses. They were proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1893 and then later by H ...
a claim now generally discounted. * 1969 – Penrose proposes the (weak)
cosmic censorship hypothesis The weak and the strong cosmic censorship hypotheses are two mathematical conjectures about the structure of gravitational singularities arising in general relativity. Singularities that arise in the solutions of Einstein's equations are typical ...
and the Penrose process, * 1969 – Misner introduces the mixmaster universe. * 1969 –
Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat (; 29 December 1923 – 11 February 2025) was a French mathematician and physicist. She made seminal contributions to the study of general relativity, by showing that the Einstein field equations can be put into the form of ...
and
Robert Geroch Robert Geroch (born 1 June 1942 in Akron, Ohio) is an American theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. He has worked prominently on general relativity and mathematical physics and has promoted the use of category theory ...
discuss global aspects of the
Cauchy problem A Cauchy problem in mathematics asks for the solution of a partial differential equation that satisfies certain conditions that are given on a hypersurface in the domain. A Cauchy problem can be an initial value problem or a boundary value problem ...
in general relativity. * 1965-70 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and colleagues develops the
post-Newtonian expansion In general relativity, post-Newtonian expansions (PN expansions) are used for finding an approximate solution of Einstein field equations for the metric tensor (general relativity), metric tensor. The approximations are expanded in small paramet ...
s. * 1968-70 – Roger Penrose,
Stephen Hawking Stephen William Hawking (8January 194214March 2018) was an English theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between ...
, and George Ellis prove that singularities must arise in the Big Bang models.


1970s

* 1970 – Vladimir Alekseevich Belinski,
Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov (, ; 17 October 1919 – 9 January 2021) was a leading Soviet theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to many areas of theoretical physics, including general relativity, quantum field theory, as well ...
, and
Evgeny Lifshitz Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz (; ; 21 February 1915 – 29 October 1985) was a leading Soviet physicist and brother of the physicist Ilya Lifshitz. Work Born into a Ukrainian Jewish family in Kharkov, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire (now K ...
introduce the BKL conjecture. * 1970 – Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose prove trapped surfaces must arise in black holes. * 1971 –
David Scott David Randolph Scott (born June 6, 1932) is an American retired test pilot and NASA astronaut who was the List of Apollo astronauts#People who have walked on the Moon, seventh person to walk on the Moon. Selected as part of the NASA Astronaut ...
demonstrates that a hammer and a feather fall at the same rate on the Moon. * 1971 – Alfred Goldhaber and Michael Nieto give stringent limits on the photon mass. The strictest one is m_ \leq 4 \times 10^ \text. * 1971 – Stephen Hawking proves that the area of a black hole can never decrease. * 1971 – Peter C. Aichelburg and Roman U. Sexl introduce the Aichelburg–Sexl ultraboost. * 1971 – Introduction of the Khan–Penrose vacuum, a simple explicit colliding plane wave spacetime. * 1971 – Robert H. Gowdy introduces the Gowdy vacuum solutions (cosmological models containing circulating gravitational waves). * 1971 – Cygnus X-1, the first solid black hole candidate, discovered by Uhuru satellite. * 1971 – William H. Press discovers black hole ringing by numerical simulation. * 1971 – Harrison and Estabrook algorithm for solving systems of PDEs. * 1971 – James W. York introduces conformal method generating initial data for ADM initial value formulation. * 1971 –
Robert Geroch Robert Geroch (born 1 June 1942 in Akron, Ohio) is an American theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. He has worked prominently on general relativity and mathematical physics and has promoted the use of category theory ...
introduces Geroch group and a solution generating method. * 1972 –
Jacob Bekenstein Jacob David Bekenstein (; May 1, 1947 – August 16, 2015) was a Mexican-born American-Israeli theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics and to other aspects of the connections betwee ...
proposes that black holes have a non-decreasing
entropy Entropy is a scientific concept, most commonly associated with states of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the micros ...
which can be identified with the area. * 1972 – Sachs introduces optical scalars and proves peeling theorem. * 1972 –
Rainer Weiss Rainer "Rai" Weiss ( , ; born September 29, 1932) is a German-American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitation, gravitational physics and astrophysics. He is a professor of physics emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...
proposes concept of interferometric gravitational wave detector in an unpublished manuscript. * 1972 – Joseph Hafele and Richard Keating perform the Hafele–Keating experiment. * 1972 – Richard H. Price studies
gravitational collapse Gravitational collapse is the contraction of an astronomical object due to the influence of its own gravity, which tends to draw matter inward toward the center of gravity. Gravitational collapse is a fundamental mechanism for structure formati ...
with numerical simulations. * 1972 – Saul Teukolsky derives the Teukolsky equation. * 1972 – Yakov B. Zel'dovich predicts the transmutation of electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. * 1972 – Brandon Carter, Stephen Hawking, and James M. Bardeen propose the four laws of black hole mechanics. * 1972 – James Bardeen calculates the
shadow A shadow is a dark area on a surface where light from a light source is blocked by an object. In contrast, shade occupies the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross-section of a shadow is a two-dimensio ...
of a black hole. This was later verified by the Event Horizon Telescope. * 1973 – Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne and John A. Wheeler publish the treatise ''
Gravitation In physics, gravity (), also known as gravitation or a gravitational interaction, is a fundamental interaction, a mutual attraction between all massive particles. On Earth, gravity takes a slightly different meaning: the observed force b ...
'', a textbook that remains in use in the twenty-first century. * 1973 – Stephen W. Hawking and George Ellis publish the monograph ''
The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...
''. * 1973 – Robert Geroch introduces the GHP formalism. * 1973 – Homer Ellis obtains the Ellis drainhole, the first traversable wormhole. * 1974 – Russell Hulse and Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. discover the Hulse–Taylor binary pulsar, * 1974 – James W. York and Niall Ó Murchadha present the analysis of the initial value formulation and examine the stability of its solutions. * 1974 – R. O. Hansen introduces Hansen–Geroch multipole moments. * 1974 – Stephen Hawking discovers
Hawking radiation Hawking radiation is black-body radiation released outside a black hole's event horizon due to quantum effects according to a model developed by Stephen Hawking in 1974. The radiation was not predicted by previous models which assumed that onc ...
. * 1975 – Stephen Hawking shows that the area of a black hole is proportional to its entropy, as previously conjectured by Jacob Bekenstein. * 1975 – Roberto Colella, Albert Overhauser, and Samuel Werner observe the quantum-mechanical phase shift of neutrons due to gravity. Neutron interferometry was later used to test the principle of equivalence. * 1975 – Chandrasekhar and Steven Detweiler compute the effects of perturbations on a Schwarzschild black hole. * 1975 – Szekeres and D. A. Szafron discover the Szekeres–Szafron dust solutions. * 1976 – Penrose introduces Penrose limits (every null geodesic in a Lorentzian spacetime behaves like a plane wave), * 1978 – Penrose introduces the notion of a ''thunderbolt'', * 1978 – Belinskiǐ and Zakharov show how to solve Einstein's field equations using the
inverse scattering transform In mathematics, the inverse scattering transform is a method that solves the initial value problem for a Nonlinear system, nonlinear partial differential equation using mathematical methods related to scattering, wave scattering. The direct scatte ...
; the first gravitational solitons, * 1979 –
Dennis Walsh Dennis Walsh (12 June 1933 – 1 June 2005) was an English astronomer. He was an early radio astronomer, as well as an optical astronomer. He was best known for his discovery in 1979 of the first example of a gravitational lens, B0957+561, u ...
,
Robert Carswell Robert Carswell may refer to: * Robert Carswell, Baron Carswell (1934–2023), British law lord * Robert Carswell (cricketer) (born 1936), New Zealand cricketer * Robert Carswell (MP) for Wallingford (UK Parliament constituency) * Robert Carswell ( ...
, and Ray Weymann discover the gravitationally lensed
quasar A quasar ( ) is an extremely Luminosity, luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole with a mass rangi ...
Q0957+561 The Twin Quasar (also known as Twin QSO, Double Quasar, SBS 0957+561, TXS 0957+561, Q0957+561 or QSO 0957+561 A/B), was discovered in 1979 and was the first identified gravitational lens, gravitationally lensed double quasar, not to be confused ...
. * 1979 – Jean-Pierre Luminet creates an image of a black hole with an accretion disk using computer simulation. * 1979 – Steven Detweiler proposes using pulsar timing arrays to detect gravitational waves. * 1979-81 – Richard Schoen and Shing-Tung Yau prove the positive energy theorem, positive mass theorem. Edward Witten independently proves the same thing.


1980s

* 1980 – Vera Rubin and colleagues study the rotational properties of UGC 2885, demonstrating the prevalence of dark matter. * 1980 – Gravity Probe A verifies gravitational redshift to approximately 0.007% using a space-born hydrogen maser. * 1980 – James Bardeen explains structure in the Universe using cosmological perturbation theory. * 1981 – Alan Guth proposes Inflation (cosmology), cosmic inflation in order to solve the Flatness problem, flatness and horizon problems. * 1982 – Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr., Joseph Taylor and Joel Weisberg show that the rate of energy loss from the binary pulsar PSR B1913+16 agrees with that predicted by the general relativistic quadrupole formula to within 5%. * 1983 – James Hartle and Stephen Hawking propose the Hartle–Hawking state, no-boundary wave function for the Universe. * 1983-84 – RELIKT-1 observes the cosmic microwave background. * 1986 – Helmut Friedrich proves that the de Sitter spacetime is stable. * 1986 – Bernard F. Schutz, Bernard Schutz shows that cosmic distances can be determined using sources of gravitational waves without references to the cosmic distance ladder. Standard-siren astronomy is born. * 1988 – Mike Morris (physicist), Mike Morris, Kip Thorne, and Yurtsever Ulvi obtain the Morris-Thorne wormhole. Morris and Thorne argue for its pedagogical value. * 1989 –
Steven Weinberg Steven Weinberg (; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic inter ...
discusses the cosmological constant problem, the discrepancy between the measured value and those predicted by modern theories of elementary particles. * 1989-93 – The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) identifies anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background.


1990s

* 1992 – Stephen Hawking states his chronology protection conjecture. * 1993 – Demetrios Christodoulou and Sergiu Klainerman prove the non-linear stability of the Minkowski spacetime. * 1995 – John F. Donoghue show that general relativity is a quantum effective field theory. This framework could be used to analyze binary systems observed by gravitational-wave observatories. * 1995 – Hubble Deep Field image taken. It is a landmark in the study of cosmology. * 1998 – The first complete Einstein ring, B1938+666, discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope and MERLIN. * 1998-99 – Scientists discover that the expansion of the Universe is Accelerating expansion of the universe, accelerating. * 1999 – Alessandra Buonanno and Thibault Damour introduce the effective one-body formalism. This was later used to analyze data collected by gravitational-wave observatories.


2000s

* 2003 – Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin prove the Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem. * 2002 – First data collection of the LIGO, Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). * 2002 – James Williams, Slava Turyshev, and Dale Boggs conduct stringent lunar test of violations of the principle of equivalence. * 2005 – Daniel Holz and Scott Hughes coin the term "standard sirens". * 2009 – Gravity Probe B experiment verifies the geodetic effect to 0.5%.


2010s

* 2010 – A team at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) verifies relativistic time dilation using optical atomic clocks. * 2011 – Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) finds no statistically significant deviations from the Lambda-CDM model, ΛCDM model of cosmology. * 2012 – Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image released. It was created using data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2003 and 2004. * 2013 – NuSTAR and XMM-Newton measure the spin of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 1365. * 2015 – Advanced LIGO reports the first direct detections of gravitational waves, GW150914 and GW151226, mergers of stellar-mass black holes. Gravitational-wave astronomy is born. No deviations from general relativity were found. * 2017 – LIGO-Virgo Collaboration, LIGO-VIRGO collaboration detects gravitational waves emitted by a neutron-star binary, GW170817. The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the International Gamma-ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) unambiguously detect the corresponding gamma-ray burst. LIGO-VIRGO and Fermi constrain the difference between the speed of gravity and the speed of light in vacuum to . This marks the first time electromagnetic and gravitational waves are detected from a single source, and give direct evidence that some (short) gamma-ray bursts are due to colliding neutron stars. * 2017 – Multi-messenger astronomy reveals neutron-star mergers to be responsible for the nucleosynthesis of some heavy elements, such as strontium, via the rapid-neutron capture or r-process. * 2017 – MICROSCOPE satellite experiment verifies the principle of equivalence to in terms of the Eötvös ratio \eta. The final report is published in 2022. * 2017 – Principle of equivalence tested to 10−9 for atoms in a coherent state of Quantum superposition, superposition. * 2017 – Scientists begin using gravitational-wave sources as "standard sirens" to measure the Hubble constant, finding its value to be broadly in line with the best estimates of the time. Refinements of this technique will help resolve Hubble's law#Hubble tension, discrepancies between the different methods of measurements. * 2017 – Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) arrives on the International Space Station. * 2017-18 – Georgios Moschidis proves the instability of the anti-de Sitter spacetime. * 2018 – Final paper by the Planck (spacecraft), Planck satellite collaboration. Planck operated between 2009 and 2013. * 2018 – Mihalis Dafermos and Jonathan Luk disprove the strong cosmic censorship hypothesis for the Cauchy horizon of an uncharged, rotating black hole. * 2018 – European Southern Observatory (ESO) observes gravitational redshift of radiation emitted by matter orbiting Sagittarius A*, the central supermassive black hole of the Milky Way, and verifies the innermost stable circular orbit for that object. * 2018 – Advanced LIGO-VIRGO collaboration constrains equations of state for a neutron star using GW170817. * 2018 – Luciano Rezzolla, Elias R. Most, and Lukas R. Weih used gravitational-wave data from GW170817 constrain the possible maximum mass for a neutron star to around 2.17 solar masses. * 2018 – Kris Pardo, Maya Fishbach, Daniel Holz, and David Spergel limit the number of spacetime dimensions through which gravitational waves can propagate to 3 + 1, in line with general relativity and ruling out models that allow for "leakage" to higher dimensions of space. Analyses of GW170817 have also ruled out many other alternatives to general relativity, and proposals for dark energy. * 2018 – Two different experimental teams report highly precise values of Newton's gravitational constant G that slightly disagree. * 2019 – Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) releases an image of supermassive black hole Messier 87#Supermassive black hole M87*, M87*, and measures its mass and shadow. Results are confirmed in 2024. * 2019 – Advanced LIGO and VIRGO detect GW190814, the collision of a 26-solar-mass black hole and a 2.6-solar-mass object, either an extremely heavy neutron star or a very light black hole. This is the largest mass gap seen in a gravitational-wave source to-date.


2020s

* 2020 – Principle of equivalence tested for individual atoms using Atom interferometer, atomic interferometry to ~10−12. * 2020 – ESO observes Apsidal precession#General relativity, Schwarzschild precession of the star S2 (star), S2 about Sagittarius A*. * 2021 – Jun Ye and his team measure gravitational redshift with an accuracy of 7.6 × 10−21 using an Ultracold atom, ultracold cloud of 100,000 strontium atoms in an optical lattice. * 2021 – EHT measures the polarization of the ring of M87*, and other properties of the magnetic field in its vicinity. * 2021 – EHT releases an image of Sagittarius A*, measures its shadow, and shows that it is accurately described by the Kerr metric. * 2022 – Chris Overstreet and his team observe the gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect using an experimental design from 2012. * 2022 – James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) publishes its first image, a Webb's First Deep Field, deep-field photograph of the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster. * 2022 – Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detects GRB 221009A, the brightest gamma-ray burst recorded. * 2022 – JWST identifies several candidate high-redshift objects, corresponding to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. * 2023 – James Nightingale and colleagues detect Abell 1201 BCG, Abell 1201, an ultramassive black hole (33 billion solar masses), using strong gravitational lensing. * 2023 – Matteo Bachetti and colleagues confirm that neutron star M82 X-2 is violating the Eddington limit, making it an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX). * 2023 – Team led by Dong Sheng and Zheng-Tian Lu found a null result for the coupling between quantum spin and gravity to 10−9. * 2023 – The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA), the Parkes Observatory, Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (Australia), and the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, Chinese Pulsar Timing Array report detection of a Gravitational wave background, gravitational-wave background. * 2023 – Geraint F. Lewis and Brendon Brewer present evidence of cosmological time dilation in quasars. * 2024 – The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) collaboration imposes stringent limits on violations of Lorentz invariance proposed in certain theories of
quantum gravity Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. It deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the v ...
using GRB 221009A.


See also

* Timeline of black hole physics * Timeline of special relativity and the speed of light * List of contributors to general relativity * List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein


References


External links


Timeline of relativity and gravitation
(Tomohiro Harada, Department of Physics, Rikkyo University)
2015–General Relativity's Centennial
''Physical Review Journals''. American Physical Society (APS). {{DEFAULTSORT:Timeline Of Gravitational Physics And Relativity Astrophysics Gravity Physics timelines, Gravitational physics and relativity