Introducing Relativity by Bruce Bassett and Ralph Edney, Icon, £9.99/$11.95, ISBN 1840463724 Reviewed by Marcus Chown
WE DON’T live in an ultra-high-speed world, nor do we live in a world of ultra-strong gravity. If we did, the effects of Einstein’s special theory of relativity (which describes life close to the speed of light) and of his general theory of relativity (which additionally describes phenomena in curved space, or gravity to you and me) would be glaringly obvious to the average five-year-old. As it is, our brains get warped almost as much as the warped space-time we are trying to visualise as we struggle to get our…
