Theory of relativity?

Question

Why is the Theory of relativity still called a Theory is it not a fact yet ?

Answer 1

Look at ex # 3 in the link below.

Answer 2

Because it hasn't been proven and probably won't until we find a way to travel faster than the speed of light which according to Einstein requires infinite energy.

Answer 3

relativity is the simple term from relation motion of one with respect to other .it is the reaction on the body.we can feel it.

Answer 4

i think they just picked a name and stuck with it.  

Answer 5

8th grade teachers need to teach better.

youve been taught it goes hypothesis, then theory, then law, correct?

no, incorrect. a theory can never become fact, no matter how much evidence supports it. theories and laws are different. laws are facts, thats all they do they just state facts. theories take it one step further and explain those facts.  

Answer 6

because a theory in science is different than a theory in common English. in science a theory is essentially an explanation of observed phenomena, generally supported by a lot of evidence. a theory in common English is just a guess essentially, in science a guess is called a hypothesis, not a theory.

and relativity has been observed, satellites have to compensate for it all the time when sending information back to earth.

Answer 7

A theory is a hypothesis that has scientific evidence from experiments to support it's conclusion. If a lot of evidence is found to support it then the theory is called a Law. A law is not fact, it is just a very well supported theory. We have a Law of conservation of energy; conservation of energy is a theory - and it has been around so long and used so much, that it is considered true. But it is still atheory and there might be rare instances (not yet found) where the theory fails. Then you will have to inspect closer to see if the theory fails or there was a missed observation and the theory is still true.

For a scientist a theory is essentially the closest thing there is that predicts observed facts, but a theory has limits to where it can be applied. Newtonian theory cannot be applied at speed near the speed of light or at atomic levels; it fails. But the theory of special relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics (the most successful theory man ever made) succeeds in those areas, respectively.

Non-scientists think that thoery means that it's just a idea without proof, which is incorrect. It is the hypothesis that has no evidence supporting it initially. An experiment is conducted that either validates or invalidates the hypothesis.

The reasons scientists refrain from calling theories as facts is because 1) they want to seperate human ideas from observational facts, 2) and at the cutting edge of science there are many theories that can fit the new facts. It helps to keep things well defined and seperate.

Hope that helps.