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{{Redirect|Relativity}}
{{Wikisourcepar|Relativity: The Special and General Theory}}
]'s '''theory of relativity''', or simply '''relativity''', refers specifically to two theories: ] and ]. As a field of study, relativity also includes metric ] in which special relativity applies locally.

The term "relativity" was coined by ] in ] to emphasize how special relativity (which at that time was the only relativity theory) uses the ].

==Special relativity==
{{main|Special relativity}}
'''Albert Einstein''''s ] paper "]" introduced the ''special theory of relativity''. Special relativity considers that observers in ]s, which are in uniform motion relative to one another, cannot perform any experiment to determine which one of them is "stationary". This is known as the ]. While this principle was not new to Albert Einstein's work, he found that including ] in this principle required a new formalism with many surprising consequences. In particular, it required the ] in a ] to be the same for all these observers, regardless of their motion or the motion of the source of the ].

One of the strengths of special relativity is that it can be derived from only two premises:

* The laws of physics are the same in any inertial frame of reference. This means that the laws of physics observed by a hypothetical observer traveling with a relativistic particle must be the same as those observed by an observer who is stationary in the laboratory.
* The speed of light in a vacuum is constant (specifically, 299,792,458 meters per second).

==General relativity==
{{main|General relativity}}
General relativity was developed by Einstein in the years ] - ]. General relativity is a geometrical theory which postulates that the presence of ] "curves" ], and this ] affects the path of free particles (and even the path of light). It uses the mathematics of ] and ]s in order to describe ] without the use of the force of ]. This theory considers all observers to be equivalent, not only those moving with uniform speed.

==See also==

*]
*] including ]
*]
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==References==

See the ] and the ].

==External links==

* — An open access, peer-referred, solely online physics journal publishing invited reviews covering all areas of relativity research.
* — A complete online course on Relativity.
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* — A terse dose of insight on the subject.
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* — A basic introduction to concepts of Special and General Relativity, as well as astrophysics.
* — A short course offered at MIT.
* from the University of New South Wales.

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Revision as of 19:23, 23 June 2006