Could Einstein Have Been Wrong Like Newton?

Scientists continue to study galaxies and galaxy clusters in the universe.

In fact, these investigations have continued throughout history. But as you know, the first detailed examination was made by Galileo Galilei, who took a closer look at the stars with his telescope.

Galileo is known as the first person to say no, the earth is not the center of the universe. It is an important milestone in the history of science.

He came to this conclusion when he noticed four moons of Jupiter when he looked more closely with his telescope. 

Some celestial bodies in the sky revolve around another celestial body, but the church says the universe revolves around the earth. How can this be?

Galileo, who realized that all the planets, including the earth, revolved around the sun and fell out with the church for claiming this, ended his life first in prison for a while and then under house arrest.

These four moons of Jupiter are called the Galileo moons (IO, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto). 

Today we know that there are many more moons orbiting Jupiter (92), and that it also has rings like Saturn. 

This discovery was made by spacecraft sent near them.

How far technology has come, right?

Of course, thanks to the later generations who took the opportunity to study the universe more closely with telescopes, we know much more about the secrets of the universe today than we did back then.

In 1932 and 1933, when Jan Hendrik Oort and Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky were studying distant galaxy clusters in the sky, they noticed that the galaxies were spinning around each other much faster than they should. 

According to their calculations, it was not possible for these galaxies to be together with such a fast rotation. In order for them not to be separated from each other at such a speed, there must be a mass somewhere out there that is about 400 times larger than the visible mass. But there is no visible mass. Something invisible is holding these galaxies together.

What could this invisible something be?

They call this invisible thing, which has a mass 400 times greater than the visible mass, dark matter.

They actually discovered something very important. However, their idea was not taken into consideration in the scientific world of those days.

Because Einstein had just shaken Newton's throne that he had been sitting on for centuries, and now he sat on that throne himself. The scientific world is still busy digesting the principle of general relativity that Einstein brought to the agenda.

How could this happen? 

If there is a mass out there somewhere, it must emit light, and if the mass calculated from the emitted light is not enough for galaxies spinning at this speed to stay together due to the center escape effect, how is it possible to explain this? 

As I said, this problem was ignored by the scientific world for many years.

Even years later, in 1970, Vera Rubin and her colleagues shared the same fate as Zwicky and had a hard time publishing a paper on the "spiral galaxy" they had noticed. In this spiral galaxy, too, the rotational speed of the stars is much higher than it should be.

In 2006, a similar situation was observed when the spiral rotation speeds of our nearest galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy, were analyzed.

Although there is still no proof of its existence today, yes, the so-called dark matter could be real.

The scientific world started to look for evidence on this subject especially after 2006.

According to calculations made in the 1970s, it is estimated that 70% of our universe is made up of dark matter and 25% of the universe is dark energy. The masses and energies of visible celestial bodies are accepted to be as low as 5% of the universe.

Today, the world of science is intensely studying dark matter and its energetic form called dark energy. 

On the one hand, it is being examined whether there are particles in subatomic particles that enable the existence of dark matter and dark energy, and on the other hand, every nook and cranny of the universe is being searched for evidence of the existence of dark matter.

Of course, all these calculations are based on Einstein's principle of general relativity, which he developed in place of the theory of gravitation in classical physics.

Just as Jan Hendrik Oort and Fritz Zwicky, who proposed the idea of dark matter in the 1933s, or Vera Rubin's work was not allowed to be published in serious scientific journals, today it seems that the work of some scientists who think Einstein's general theory of relativity may be wrong is not valued much.

Today, popular science is more interested in searching for traces of dark matter and dark energy in the universe.

But what if there really is no such thing as dark matter? 

Therefore, what if there is no such thing as dark energy?

What do you mean? I've been writing all along that galaxies are spinning faster than they should, stars are spinning faster.

What if it's not dark matter doing this?

OK, let's say that these statements and observations are true, I have nothing against that.

What I am saying is what if Einstein was wrong?

Couldn't Einstein have been wrong?

Or let me put it more accurately in another way.

What if the formulas developed by Einstein are not enough to calculate the actual situation in systems with too much mass? What if something is missing in the formula?

Didn't the same thing happen to Newton? Three hundred years later Einstein came out and said your formulas are incomplete! He said your assumptions are wrong. He said time is not constant. He said space-time exists.

How did Einstein arrive at these things? Not by revelation, I guess.

Because some celestial phenomena could not be explained with Newton's formulas. 

With Einstein's formulas, things that could not be explained at that time could be explained. 

One of them was the instability in Mercury's orbit around the sun. 

Scientists of the time even thought of an imaginary planet to explain Mercury's orbital instabilities with Newton's or Kepler's laws. 

Vulcan was supposed to be a planet of this much mass, somewhere 21 million kilometers from the sun. No one had seen it yet, but it had to be Vulcan. Day and night everyone searched the sky for Vulcan.

Because with such a planet, Mercury's orbital instability could be explained. 

They searched hard, but they couldn't find it.

Einstein's general theory of relativity solved the problem. Since Mercury was very close to the sun, it was affected by the deviation in spacetime caused by the sun and its orbit was deviated. 

Even today, some things cannot be explained by Einstein's formulas.

In order to explain what is going on in the universe with Einstein's formulas, a lot of effort and money is being spent to find evidence for dark matter and dark energy, the existence of which may never be proven.

Just as everyone once searched for the non-existent planet Vulcan, today everyone is searching for the non-existent matter.

Maybe the solution is not in dark matter! 

Maybe the problem is in Einstein's formulas! 

Couldn't Einstein have been wrong?

Okay, to be fair to him, I think he is one of the most brilliant scientists of all time.

Let me ask the question a little differently:

Couldn't Einstein's formulas be inadequate to explain these celestial phenomena?

Maybe one day someone will come up with a new formula, saying, "Not like this, not like that". Some already have. They just can't make their voices heard very much.

Science is constantly experimenting and coming up with new theories if the results don't hold.

While searching for evidence of dark matter and dark energy, it would be useful to work on new formulas. 

Let's see, maybe one day we will find out, is there dark matter or not? Or is the formula wrong!

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow