名人教你讲英文：Albert Einstein — A pacifist 和平主义者

名人教英文：albert einstein — a pacifist 和平主义者

albert einstein hated war. he was a pacifist. he joined with other scientists in pleading with (请求) europeans to start a league dedicated to (专注于) peace. einstein began to promote peace, tolerance (宽容), and justice. he was horrified by the thought of europe being torn apart by war. but by the end of the summer of 1914, fullscale war raged. injuries and death mounted on both sides. einstein saw it as senseless evil.

einstein still worked on his new ideas about space, matter, and time. he wanted to show how gravity (引力) fit with his ideas. after eight years of work, he concluded that gravity was the product of space distorted by the presence of matter. in 1916 einstein published his ideas as the "general theory of relativity". this has been called his most important achievement.

einstein said that a beam of light would be bent by gravity as it passed a star. the gravity of the star would cause the light beam to curve. in 1919 einstein's theory was tested. british astronomers photographed stars during a total eclipse of the sun. the photographs were compared with pictures of the same stars when the sun was far off. the different positions of the stars on the two different photographs proved that the sun deflects (使转向) starlight.

einstein's general theory of relativity helped explain such things as the curved shape of the universe. it also explained why the universe is expanding, what black holes are, and the "big bang" (宇宙大爆炸) theory of how the universe began.