"The manner in which time and space are bound up with each other in the four-dimensional continuum is variable. It is difficult to express this variability of the cross-connections between space and time in simple language, and different interpretations of it are possible, corresponding to different mathematical transformations of the fundamental line-element, e.g. a different choice of the variable which we interpret as "time." Perhaps the best way we can express it is by saying that the solution of the field-equations of the theory of relativity shows that there is in the universe a tendency to change its scale, which at the present time results in an expansion, but may perhaps at other times become, or have been, a shrinking. This is true of the grand scale model of the universe."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
CosmologistsAstronomers from the NetherlandsPhysicists from the NetherlandsMathematicians from the Netherlands
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willem_de_Sitter
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Willem de Sitter
Willem de Sitter (6 May 1872 – 20 November 1934) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, astronomer and cosmologist who applied the general theory of relativity to the early investigation of the structure of the universe.
61 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Willem de Sitter →
Related Quotes
"There is no direct observational evidence for the curvature [of space], the only directly observed data being the mea…"
"It was early 1932, when Einstein and I both were at the California Institute of Technology in Pasedena, and we just d…"
"[Einstein's cosmological constant] is a name without any meaning. ...We have, in fact, not the slightest inkling of w…"
"Our own galaxy system is only one of a great many, and observations made from any of the others would show exactly th…"
"Gradually... during the second half of the nineteenth century, the uncomfortable feeling of dislike of the action at …"
"In electromagnetism... the law of the inverse square had been supreme, but, as a consequence of the work of Faraday a…"
"The inconsistency of first explaining matter by atoms and then explaining atoms by matter was only slowly realised, a…"
"How does it come about that we have been able to find satisfactory hypotheses to explain electricity and magnetism, l…"
"Gravitation is not only similar to inertia in its generality, it is also measured by the same number... the mass. The…"
"Gravitation is entirely independent of everything that influences other natural phenomena. It is not subject to absor…"