General relativity
${\displaystyle G_{\mu \nu }+\Lambda g_{\mu \nu }={\kappa }T_{\mu \nu }}$
Introduction History Timeline Tests Mathematical formulation
Fundamental concepts Equivalence principle Special relativity World line Pseudo-Riemannian manifold
Phenomena Kepler problem Gravitational lensing Gravitational waves Frame-dragging Geodetic effect Event horizon Singularity Black hole Spacetime Spacetime diagrams Minkowski spacetime Einstein–Rosen bridge
Equations Formalisms Equations Linearized gravity Einstein field equations Friedmann Geodesics Mathisson–Papapetrou–Dixon Hamilton–Jacobi–Einstein Formalisms ADM BSSN Post-Newtonian Advanced theory Kaluza–Klein theory Quantum gravity
Solutions Schwarzschild (interior) Reissner–Nordström Gödel Kerr Kerr–Newman Kerr–Newman–de Sitter Kasner Lemaître–Tolman Taub–NUT Milne Robertson–Walker Oppenheimer–Snyder pp-wave van Stockum dust Weyl−Lewis−Papapetrou
Scientists Einstein Lorentz Hilbert Poincaré Schwarzschild de Sitter Reissner Nordström Weyl Eddington Friedman Milne Zwicky Lemaître Oppenheimer Gödel Wheeler Robertson Bardeen Walker Kerr Chandrasekhar Ehlers Penrose Hawking Raychaudhuri Taylor Hulse van Stockum Taub Newman Yau Thorne others
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The following is a timeline of gravitational physics and general relativity.

Before 1500

• 3rd century BC – Aristarchus of Samos proposes heliocentric model, measures the distance to the Moon and its size

1500s

• 1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus places the Sun at the gravitational center, starting a revolution in science
• 1583 – Galileo Galilei induces the period relationship of a pendulum from observations (according to later biographer).
• 1586 – Simon Stevin demonstrates that two objects of different mass accelerate at the same rate when dropped.^[1]
• 1589 – Galileo describes a hydrostatic balance for measuring specific gravity.
• 1590 – Galileo formulates modified Aristotelean theory of motion (later retracted) based on density rather than weight of objects.

1600s

Geometric diagram for Newton's proof of Kepler's second law.

• 1602 – Galileo conducts experiments on pendulum motion.
• 1604 – Galileo conducts experiments with inclined planes and induces the law of falling objects.
• 1607 – Galileo derives a mathematical formulation of the law of falling objects based on his earlier experiments.
• 1608 – Galileo discovers the parabolic arc of projectiles through experiment.
• 1609 – Johannes Kepler his first two laws of planetary motion.^[2]
• 1619 – Johannes Kepler publishes his third law of planetary motion.^[2]
• 1665 – Isaac Newton introduces an inverse-square universal law of gravitation uniting terrestrial and celestial theories of motion and uses it to predict the orbit of the Moon and the parabolic arc of projectiles.
• 1684 – Newton proves that planets moving under an inverse-square force law will obey Kepler's laws in a letter to Edmond Halley.
• 1686 – Newton uses a fixed length pendulum with weights of varying composition to test the weak equivalence principle to 1 part in 1000.^[3][4]
• 1686 – Newton publishes his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, where he develops his calculus, states his laws of motion and gravitation, proves the shell theorem, explains the tides, and calculates the figure of the Earth.^[3]

1700s

Lagrange points

• 1705 – Edmond Halley predicts the return of Halley's comet in 1758,^[5] the first use of Newton's laws by someone other than Newton himself.^[6]
• 1742 – Colin Maclaurin studies a self-gravitating uniform liquid drop at equilibrium, the Maclaurin spheroid.^[7][8]
• 1755 – Immanuel Kant advances Emanuel Swedenborg's nebular hypothesis on the origin of the Solar System.^[9]
• 1765 – Leonhard Euler discovers the first three Lagrange points.^[10][11]
• 1767 – Leonhard Euler solves Euler's restricted three-body problem.^[12]
• 1772 – Joseph-Louis Lagrange discovers the two remaining Lagrange points.^[13]
• 1796 – Pierre-Simon de Laplace independently introduces the nebular hypothesis.^[9]
• 1798 – Henry Cavendish tests Newton's law of universal gravitation using a torsion balance, leading to the first accurate value for the gravitational constant and the mean density of the Earth.^[14][15]

1800s

• 1846 – Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams, studying Uranus' orbit, independently prove that another, farther planet must exist. Neptune was found at the predicted moment and position.
• 1855 – Le Verrier observes a 35 arcsecond per century excess precession of Mercury's orbit and attributes it to another planet, inside Mercury's orbit. The planet was never found. See Vulcan.
• 1876 – William Kingdon Clifford suggests that the motion of matter may be due to changes in the geometry of space^[16]
• 1882 – Simon Newcomb observes a 43 arcsecond per century excess precession of Mercury's orbit
• 1887 – Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley in their famous experiment do not detect the ether drift.^[17][18]
• 1889 – Loránd Eötvös uses a torsion balance to test the weak equivalence principle to 1 part in one billion.^[19]
• 1893 – Ernst Mach states Mach's principle; first constructive attack on the idea of Newtonian absolute space
• 1898 – Henri Poincaré states that simultaneity is relative.
• 1899 – Hendrik Antoon Lorentz published the Lorentz transformations.

1900s

The U.S. Navy's nuclear-powered Task Force 1 underway for Operation Sea Orbit in the Mediterranean, 1964.

• 1902 – Paul Gerber explains the movement of the perihelion of Mercury using finite speed of gravity.^[20] His formula, at least approximately, matches the later model from Einstein's general relativity, but Gerber's theory was incorrect.
• 1904 – Henri Poincaré presents the principle of relativity for electromagnetism
• 1905 – Albert Einstein completes his special theory of relativity^[21] and discovers the equivalence of mass and energy,^[22] ${\displaystyle E=mc^{2}}$ in modern form.^[23][24]
• 1907 – Albert Einstein introduces the principle of equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass and uses it to predict gravitational lensing and gravitational redshift,^[25] historically known as the Einstein shift.^[26]
• 1907-9 – Hermann Minkowski introduces the Minkowski spacetime. His paper was published posthumously.^[27][28][29]
• 1909 – Max Born proposes his notion of rigidity.^[30][31]
• 1909 – Paul Ehrenfest states the Ehrenfest paradox.^[32][33]

1910s

Einstein's 1911 argument for gravitational redshift

• 1911 – Albert Einstein explains the need to replace both special relativity and Newton's theory of gravity; he realizes that the principle of equivalence only holds locally, not globally.^[34]
• 1915-16 – Albert Einstein completes his general theory of relativity.^[35] He explains the perihelion of Mercury and calculates gravitational lensing correctly and introduces the post-Newtonian approximation.^[36][37]
• 1915 – David Hilbert introduces Hilbert's action principle,^[38] another way of deriving the Einstein field equations of general relativity. Hilbert also recognizes the connection between the Einstein equations and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem.^[39]
• 1916 – Karl Schwarzschild publishes the Schwarzschild metric about a month after Einstein published his general theory of relativity.^[40][41] This was the first solution to the Einstein field equations other than the trivial flat space solution.^[42][43][44]
• 1916 – Albert Einstein predicts gravitational waves.^[45]
• 1916 – Willem de Sitter predicts the geodetic effect.^[46]
• 1917 – Albert Einstein applies his field equations to the entire Universe.^[47] Physical cosmology is born.
• 1916-20 – Arthur Eddington studies the internal constitution of the stars.^[48][49]
• 1918 – Albert Einstein derives the quadrupole formula for gravitational radiation.^[50][51]
• 1918 – Josef Lense and Hans Thirring find the gravitomagnetic frame-dragging of gyroscopes in the equations of general relativity.^[52][53][54]
• 1919 – Arthur Eddington leads a solar eclipse expedition which detects gravitational deflection of light by the Sun,^[55] which, despite opinion to the contrary, survives modern scrutiny.^[56] Other teams fail for reasons of war and politics.^[57]

1930s

The Einstein Cross, an example of gravitational lensing at work

• 1931 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar studies the stability of white dwarfs.^[67][68]
• 1931 – Georges Lemaître and Arthur Eddington predict the expansion of the Universe.^[69][70]
• 1931 – Albert Einstein introduces his cosmological constant.^[71]
• 1932 – Albert Einstein and Willem de Sitter propose the Einstein-de Sitter cosmological model.^[72]
• 1934 – Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky predict the existence of neutron stars.^[73] Although their details are wrong, their basic idea is now accepted.^[74]
• 1935 – Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen derive the Einstein-Rosen bridge, the first wormhole solution.^[75]
• 1936 – Albert Einstein predicts that a gravitational lens brightens the light coming from a distant object to the observer.^[76]
• 1937 – Fritz Zwicky states that galaxies could act as gravitational lenses.^[77]
• 1937 – Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen obtain the Einstein-Rosen metric, the first exact solution describing gravitational waves.^[78]
• 1938 – Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld, and Banesh Hoffmann obtain the Einstein-Infeld-Hoffmann equations of motion.^[79]
• 1939 – Hans Bethe shows that nuclear fusion is responsible for energy production inside stars,^[80] building upon the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism.
• 1939 – Richard Tolman solves the Einstein field equations in the case of a spherical fluid drop.^[81][82]
• 1939 – Robert Serber, George Volkoff, Richard Tolman, and J. Robert Oppenheimer study the stability of neutron stars, obtaining the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit.^[83][84][82]
• 1939 – J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hartland Snyder publish the Oppenheimer-Snyder model for the continued gravitational contraction of a star.^[85][82][86]

1970s

Image of Cygnus X-1 by the Chandra X-ray Observatory (2009)

• 1970 – Vladimir A. Belinskiǐ, Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov, and Evgeny Lifshitz introduce the BKL conjecture.
• 1970 – Hawking and Penrose prove trapped surfaces must arise in black holes.
• 1970 – the Kinnersley-Walker photon rocket.
• 1970 – Peter Szekeres introduces colliding plane waves.
• 1971 – Alfred Goldhaber and Michael Nieto give stringent limits on the photon mass.^[145] The strictest one is ${\displaystyle m_{\gamma }\leq 4\times 10^{-51}{\text{kg}}}$.^[146]
• 1971 – Stephen W. Hawking proves the area theorem for black holes.^[147]
• 1971 – Peter C. Aichelburg and Roman U. Sexl introduce the Aichelburg–Sexl ultraboost.
• 1971 – Introduction of the Khan–Penrose vacuum, a simple explicit colliding plane wave spacetime.
• 1971 – Robert H. Gowdy introduces the Gowdy vacuum solutions (cosmological models containing circulating gravitational waves).
• 1971 – Cygnus X-1, the first solid black hole candidate, discovered by Uhuru satellite.
• 1971 – William H. Press discovers black hole ringing by numerical simulation.
• 1971 – Harrison and Estabrook algorithm for solving systems of PDEs.
• 1971 – James W. York introduces conformal method generating initial data for ADM initial value formulation.
• 1971 – Robert Geroch introduces Geroch group and a solution generating method.
• 1972 – Jacob Bekenstein proposes that black holes have a non-decreasing entropy which can be identified with the area.^[148]
• 1972 – Sachs introduces optical scalars and proves peeling theorem.
• 1972 – Rainer Weiss proposes concept of interferometric gravitational wave detector in an unpublished manuscript.^[149]
• 1972 – Joseph Hafele and Richard Keating perform the Hafele–Keating experiment.^{[150][151][152]}
• 1972 – Richard H. Price studies gravitational collapse with numerical simulations.
• 1972 – Saul Teukolsky derives the Teukolsky equation.^[153]
• 1972 – Yakov B. Zel'dovich predicts the transmutation of electromagnetic and gravitational radiation.
• 1972 – Brandon Carter, Stephen Hawking, and James M. Bardeen propose the four laws of black hole mechanics,^[154]
• 1972 – James Bardeen calculates the shadow of a black hole.^[155] This was later verified by the Event Horizon Telescope.^[156]
• 1973 – Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne and John A. Wheeler publish the treatise Gravitation, a textbook that remains in use in the twenty-first century.^[157][158]
• 1973 – Stephen W. Hawking and George Ellis publish the monograph The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time.
• 1973 – Robert Geroch introduces the GHP formalism,
• 1973 – Homer Ellis obtains the Ellis drainhole,^[159] the first traversable wormhole.
• 1974 – Russell Hulse and Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. discover the Hulse–Taylor binary pulsar,
• 1974 – James W. York and Niall Ó Murchadha present the analysis of the initial value formulation and examine the stability of its solutions,
• 1974 – R. O. Hansen introduces Hansen–Geroch multipole moments,
• 1974 – Stephen Hawking discovers Hawking radiation.^[160][161]
• 1974 – Stephen Hawking shows that the area of a black hole is proportional to its entropy, as previously conjectured by Jacob Bekenstein.^[162]
• 1975 – Roberto Colella, Albert Overhauser, and Samuel Werner observe the quantum-mechanical phase shift of neutrons due to gravity.^[163] Neutron interferometry was later used to test the principle of equivalence.^{[164][165][166]}
• 1975 – Chandrasekhar and Steven Detweiler compute quasinormal modes.
• 1975 – Szekeres and D. A. Szafron discover the Szekeres–Szafron dust solutions.
• 1976 – Penrose introduces Penrose limits (every null geodesic in a Lorentzian spacetime behaves like a plane wave),
• 1978 – Penrose introduces the notion of a thunderbolt,
• 1978 – Belinskiǐ and Zakharov show how to solve Einstein's field equations using the inverse scattering transform; the first gravitational solitons,
• 1979 – Dennis Walsh, Robert Carswell, and Ray Weymann discover the gravitationally lensed quasar Q0957+561.^[167]
• 1979 – Jean-Pierre Luminet creates an image of a black hole with an accretion disk using computer simulation.^[168][169]
• 1979-81 – Richard Schoen and Shing-Tung Yau prove the positive mass theorem.^[170][171] Edward Witten independently proves the same thing.^[172]

1990s

Parameter space of various approximation techniques in general relativity

• 1992 – Stephen Hawking states his chronology protection conjecture.^[184]
• 1993 – Demetrios Christodoulou and Sergiu Klainerman prove the non-linear stability of the Minkowski spacetime.^[185][179]
• 1995 – John F. Donoghue show that general relativity is a quantum effective field theory.^[186] This framework could be used to analyze binary systems observed by gravitational-wave observatories.^[187]
• 1995 – Hubble Deep Field image taken,^[188] It is a landmark in the study of cosmology.
• 1998 – The first complete Einstein ring, B1938+666, discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope and MERLIN.^[189][190]
• 1996-98 – RELIKT-1 and COBE identify anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background.^[191][192]
• 1998-99 – Scientists discover that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.^[193][194]
• 1999 – Alessandra Buonanno and Thibault Damour introduce the effective one-body formalism.^[195] This was later used to analyze data collected by gravitational-wave observatories.^[196]

2000s

• 2003 – Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin prove the Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem.^[197][198]
• 2002 – First data collection of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
• 2002 – James Williams, Slava Turyshev, and Dale Boggs conduct stringent lunar test of violations of the principle of equivalence.^[199]
• 2005 – Daniel Holz and Scott Hughes coin the term "standard sirens".^[200]
• 2009 – Gravity Probe B experiment verifies the geodetic effect to 0.5%.^[201][202]

2010s

Improving cosmological measurements by three different satellites

• 2011 – Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) finds no statistically significant deviations from the ΛCDM model of cosmology.^[203]
• 2012 – Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image released. It was created using data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2003-2004.^[204]
• 2013 – NuSTAR and XMM-Newton measure the spin of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 1365.^[205]
• 2015 – Advanced LIGO reports the first direct detections of gravitational waves, GW150914^[206] and GW151226,^[207] mergers of stellar-mass black holes. Gravitational-wave astronomy is born.^[208] No deviations from general relativity were found.^[209][210]
• 2017 – LIGO-VIRGO collaboration detects gravitational waves emitted by a neutron-star binary, GW170817.^[211] The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the International Gamma-ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) unambiguously detect the corresponding gamma-ray burst.^[212][213] LIGO-VIRGO and Fermi constrain the difference between the speed of gravity and the speed of light in vacuum to 10⁻¹⁵.^[214] This marks the first time electromagnetic and gravitational waves are detected from a single source,^[215][216] and give direct evidence that some (short) gamma-ray bursts are due to colliding neutron stars.^[211][212]
• 2017 – Multi-messenger astronomy reveals neutron-star mergers to be responsible for the nucleosynthesis of some heavy elements,^{[217][218][219][220]} such as strontium,^[221] via the rapid-neutron capture or r-process.^[222]
• 2017 – MICROSCOPE satellite experiment verifies the principle of equivalence to 10⁻¹⁵ in terms of the Eötvös ratio ${\displaystyle \eta }$.^[223] The final report is published in 2022.^[224][225]
• 2017 – Principle of equivalence tested to 10^-9 for atoms in a coherent state of superposition.^[226]
• 2017 – Scientists begin using gravitational-wave sources as "standard sirens" to measure the Hubble constant, finding its value to be broadly in line with the best estimates of the time.^[227][228] Refinements of this technique will help resolve discrepancies between the different methods of measurements.^[229]
• 2017 – Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) arrives on the International Space Station.^[125]
• 2017-18 – Georgios Moschidis proves the instability of the anti-de Sitter spacetime.^[179]
• 2018 – Final paper by the Planck satellite collaboration.^[230] Planck operated between 2009 and 2013.
• 2018 – Mihalis Dafermos and Jonathan Luk disprove the strong cosmic censorship hypothesis for the Cauchy horizon of a uncharged, rotating black hole.^[231]
• 2018 – Advanced LIGO-VIRGO collaboration constrains equations of state for a neutron star using GW170817.^[232][233]
• 2018 – Luciano Rezzolla, Elias R. Most, and Lukas R. Weih used gravitational-wave data from GW170817 constrain the possible maximum mass for a neutron star to around 2.17 solar masses.^[234]
• 2018 – Kris Pardo, Maya Fishbach, Daniel Holz, and David Spergel limit the number of spacetime dimensions through which gravitational waves can propagate to 3 + 1, in line with general relativity and ruling out models that allow for "leakage" to higher dimensions of space.^[235][236] Analyses of GW170817 have also ruled out many other alternatives to general relativity,^{[237][238][239][240]} and proposals for dark energy.^{[241][242][243][244][245]}
• 2018 – Two different experimental teams report highly precise values of Newton's gravitational constant ${\displaystyle G}$ that slightly disagree.^{[246][247][248]}
• 2019 – Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) releases an image of supermassive black hole M87*, and measures its mass and shadow.^[249][250]
• 2019 – Advanced LIGO and VIRGO detect GW190814, the collision of a 26-solar-mass black hole and a 2.6-solar-mass object, either an extremely heavy neutron star or a very light black hole.^[251][252] This is the largest mass gap seen in a gravitational-wave source to-date.

2020s

The size of Sagittarius A* is smaller than the orbit of Mercury.

• 2020 – Principle of equivalence tested for individual atoms using atomic interferometry to ~10^-12.^[253][254]
• 2021 – Jun Ye and his team measure gravitational redshift with an accuracy of 7.6 × 10⁻²¹ using an ultracold cloud of 100,000 strontium atoms in an optical lattice.^[255][256]
• 2021 – EHT measures the polarization of the ring of M87*,^[257] and other properties of the magnetic field in its vicinity.^[258]
• 2021 – EHT releases an image of Sagittarius A*, the central supermassive black hole of the Milky Way,^[259][260] measures its shadow,^[261] and shows that it is accurately described by the Kerr metric.^[262]
• 2022 – Chris Overstreet and his team observe the gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect^{[263][264][265]} using an experimental design from 2012.^[266][267]
• 2022 – James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) publishes its first image, a deep-field photograph of the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster.^[268]
• 2022 – Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detects GRB 221009A, the brightest gamma-ray burst recorded.^{[269][270][271]}
• 2022 – JWST identifies several candidate high-redshift objects, corresponding to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.^[272][273]
• 2023 – James Nightingale and colleagues detect Abell 1201, an ultramassive black hole (33 billion solar masses), using strong gravitational lensing.^[274]
• 2023 – Matteo Bachetti and colleagues confirm that neutron star M82 X-2 is violating the Eddington limit, making it an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX).^[275][276]
• 2023 – Team led by Dong Sheng and Zheng-Tian Lu found a null result for the coupling between quantum spin and gravity to 10⁻⁹.^[277][278]
• 2023 – The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA), the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (Australia), and the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array report detection of a gravitational-wave background.^{[279][280][281][282][283]}
• 2023 – Geraint F. Lewis and Brendon Brewer present evidence of cosmological time dilation in quasars.^[284][285]

See also

• Timeline of black hole physics
• Timeline of special relativity and the speed of light
• List of contributors to general relativity

References

External links

• Timeline of relativity and gravitation (Tomohiro Harada, Department of Physics, Rikkyo University)
• Timeline of General Relativity and Cosmology from 1905
• 2015–General Relativity's Centennial. Physical Review Journals. American Physical Society (APS).