Expanding or Contracting?

The primary message of this article is that as he originally developed it, Einstein's theory of General Relativity requires that the Universe be either expanding or contracting. Because at the time there was no evidence for such a Universe, Einstein added a correction factor to keep the Universe static.

When applied to the real Universe, the equations of General Relativity predict that the Universe cannot be static – it must be either expanding or contracting. While an expanding Universe is an accepted concept today, it was a radical idea in 1919. Certainly they knew that the heavens were not unchanging, but it was largely believed that the Universe, as a whole, was static.

The cosmological constant that Einstein added to the questions of General Relativity did not affect the results of the 1919 eclipse. However, Hubble later discovers that the Universe is, indeed, expanding (as will be discussed in the 1929 issue of the Cosmic Times). George Gamow, in is autobiography, My World Line, says, "Much later, when I was discussing cosmological problems with Einstein, he remarked that the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest blunder of his life."