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One hundred years ago, in November 1915. Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences attended a lecture in Berlin which overturned scientists’ fundamental understanding of the universe. Their lecturer revealed that, far from being fixed and constant, time and space are flexible and they can be bent by the presence of matter. So, time can be slowed down and the shortest distance between two points isn’t necessarily a straight line. The lecturer, of course, was Albert Einstein and the scientists in that Berlin lecture hall exactly a century ago were the first to hear his Theory of General Relativity.

In this week’s programme Adam Walton and guests mark the centenary of that hugely important milestone in physics with the Science Café Guide to Relativity. They unpack an extraordinary idea which predicted black holes and the Big Bang, turns astronauts into time travellers and even lies at the heart of the GPS systems we use every day. 

Joining Adam for a pre-Christmas unwrapping of Einstein’s Big Idea are Dr. Edward Gomez, Education Director for the Las Cumbres Observatory, based at Cardiff University; Dr. Prem Kumar from Swansea University’s Theoretical Particle Physics Group; and Dr. Patrick Sutton, Head of the Gravitational Physics Group at Cardiff University.