Solving Einstein's Equation for the Gravitational Field of the Sun

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Einstein tried to solve Einstein's equation for a very simple problem, namely the gravitational field of the sun. So he wrote down an exact solution to Einstein's equation called the Schwarzschild metric. It doesn't depend on time at all and it doesn't really depend on the angle either. Everything just depends on R, the distance from the sun to wherever you are.

My little pandemic-lockdown contribution to the world was a series of videos called The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. The idea was to explain physics in a pedagogical way, concentrating on established ideas rather than speculations, with the twist that I tried to include and explain any equations that seemed useful, even though no prior mathematical knowledge was presumed. I’m in the process of writing a series of three books inspired by those videos, and the first one is coming out now: The Biggest Ideas In The Universe: Space, Time, and Motion. For this solo episode I go through one of the highlights from the book: explaining the mathematical and physical basis of Einstein’s equation of general relativity, relating mass and energy to the curvature of spacetime. Hope it works!

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