What is Einstein's cosmological constant?

Einstein's cosmological constant is a number that Einstein introduced into his mathematics way back in 1917 for what turned out to be the wrong reason when he was studying his own equations of general relativity and applied them to the entire universe he found surprisingly and unhappily that the universe could not maintain a fixed size he found in his mathematics that the universe would either be expanding or contracting now at that time he and everyone else believed that the universe was static eternal unchanging so it was quite unfortunate from his perspective that this math that he developed for over a decade was incompatible with his basic fact of the static universe so in order to make his math compatible with the static universe he changed the math by introducing a new number the cosmological constant which it turned out could stabilize his mathematics giving rise to a universe that wouldn't expand or contract about ten years later observations showed that the universe is not static that it is expanding when Einstein realized that he kind of hit himself in the head and said I wish I'd never introduced this number and he went back to his original equations

Channel: World Science U

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Keywords: What is Einstein's cosmological constant, Albert Einstein, Expansion of the Universe, Contraction of the Universe, world science festival, world, festival, Einstein, who is Einstein, cosmological constant, why is Einstein famous, Science U, University, science unplugged, New York City, NYC, Physics, Stephen Hawking, Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity, black hole, WSU, 2016

Id: jWavrqWQ4kg

Length: 1min 20sec (80 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 08 2014