Here is some interesting science news that is easy to understand

Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity are among the greatest achievements of 20th-century physics.

Special relativity explained how space and time are linked and showed that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. This is easy for scientists to verify experimentally in particle accelerators.

However, this left Einstein with a problem: how to explain gravity? It appeared to behave like a force that was transmitted instantly over vast distances, but this was impossible if nothing could travel faster than light.

In 1916 Einstein came up with general relativity, which reinterpreted gravity not as a force but as a “field” generated by objects such as planets and which distorted nearby space according to the mass of that object.

However, general relativity has many weaknesses. One is that it seems incompatible with quantum mechanics, the theory that addresses how matter behaves at sub-atomic levels. Another is that it has proven impossible to find a way of verifying it experimentally.

After more than 90 years, scientists believe they may have found experimental proof for general relativity, one of Albert Einstein’s greatest theories.

Scientists announced yesterday that early results from Gravity Probe B (GP-B), the space mission carrying the first experiments capable of testing the theory, suggested that Einstein was right.

The researchers cautioned that they still had several months of work to confirm the result. However, the announcement, made at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, is seen as highly significant.

See this entire article at Times On Line - Space probe suggests Einstein was spot on