Gauss and Poincaré

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Henri Poincaré

Although there was a prevailing Kantian consensus at the time, once non-Euclidean
geometries had been formalised, some began to wonder whether or not physical space is
curved. Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German mathematician, was the first to consider an
empirical investigation of the geometrical structure of space. He thought of making a test of
the sum of the angles of an enormous stellar triangle, and there are reports that he actually
carried out a test, on a small scale, by triangulating mountain tops in Germany.[19]
Henri Poincaré, a French mathematician and physicist of the late 19th century, introduced
an important insight in which he attempted to demonstrate the futility of any attempt to
discover which geometry applies to space by experiment. [20] He considered the predicament
that would face scientists if they were confined to the surface of an imaginary large sphere
with particular properties, known as a sphere-world. In this world, the temperature is taken
to vary in such a way that all objects expand and contract in similar proportions in different
places on the sphere. With a suitable falloff in temperature, if the scientists try to use
measuring rods to determine the sum of the angles in a triangle, they can be deceived into
thinking that they inhabit a plane, rather than a spherical surface. [21] In fact, the scientists
cannot in principle determine whether they inhabit a plane or sphere and, Poincaré argued,
the same is true for the debate over whether real space is Euclidean or not. For him, which
geometry was used to describe space was a matter of convention.[22] Since Euclidean
geometry is simpler than non-Euclidean geometry, he assumed the former would always be
used to describe the 'true' geometry of the world. [23]
Einstein

Albert Einstein

In 1905, Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity, which led to the concept

that space and time can be viewed as a single construct known as spacetime. In this theory,
the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers—which has the result that two
events that appear simultaneous to one particular observer will not be simultaneous to
another observer if the observers are moving with respect to one another. Moreover, an
observer will measure a moving clock to tick more slowly than one that is stationary with
respect to them; and objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they are
moving with respect to the observer.
Subsequently, Einstein worked on a general theory of relativity, which is a theory of
how gravity interacts with spacetime. Instead of viewing gravity as a force field acting in
spacetime, Einstein suggested that it modifies the geometric structure of spacetime itself.
[24]
 According to the general theory, time goes more slowly at places with lower gravitational
potentials and rays of light bend in the presence of a gravitational field. Scientists have
studied the behaviour of binary pulsars, confirming the predictions of Einstein's theories,
and non-Euclidean geometry is usually used to describe spacetime.