Convergence

Thousands of exoplanets are known to orbit nearby stars, with further evidence that every star in our Milky Way Galaxy has planets. Beyond their discovery, a new era of “exoplanet characterization” is underway with an astonishing diversity of exoplanets driving the fields of planet formation and evolution, interior structure, atmospheric science, and orbital dynamics to new depths. The push to find smaller and smaller planets down to Earth size is succeeding and motivating the next generation of space telescopes to have the capability to find and identify planets that may have suitable conditions for life or even signs of life by way of atmospheric biosignature gases. After thousands of years of people wondering “Are we alone?”, we are the first generation in human history to be able to make quantitative progress in answering this age-old question.

Albert Einstein developed the general theory of relativity 100 years ago as an answer to fundamental problems of contemporary physics. Yet the theory remained a marginal phenomenon of physics, especially in comparison to quantum theory, until the second half of the 20th century. That's when the renaissance in general relativity combined with the rise of relativistic astrophysics, turning general relativity into a key instrument in astrophysics. This talk will trace the genesis of general relativity, look at Einstein's research and the work of many other scientists who contributed to the theory, and show how general relativity eventually became not only a highly active field of research but one of the principal challenges to the conceptual unification of physics.