Einstein’s Century-Old Assumption Proved Wrong

A Monash University physicist has proven wrong Einstein’s century-old assumption that predicting the motion of a system moving much slower than the speed of light using his theory of special relativity and Newton’s non-relativistic theory would always yield approximately the same results.

Associate Professor Lan Boon Leong showed that, typically, the Newtonian prediction, although close to the relativistic prediction for some time, eventually deviates completely from it.

"However, how fast the agreement between the two predictions breaks down depends on whether the system is chaotic or not. A chaotic system is a system whose subsequent motion depends very sensitively on its initial motion. The breakdown occurs very fast if the system is chaotic,” said Dr. Lan.

These results were published recently in Chaos, a highly-cited journal of the American Institute of Physics, and the Journal of Physics Malaysia.

Dr. Lan’s discovery raises an important question: when the two theories yield completely different predictions for the motion of a slow-moving system, which prediction is correct?

To find out, Dr. Lan is working on an experiment where the two different theoretical predictions will be compared with the experimental result.

“My guess is that the relativistic prediction is correct. Since Einstein’s theory of special relativity has survived many experimental tests in the high speed regime, it would be very strange indeed for the theory to be invalid for low speed motion,” he said.