Would we have been able to understand the universe today without Albert Einstein’s intuition? Inspired by a captivating science fiction premise—an alien civilization capable of interstellar travel yet entirely ignorant of relativity—this article explores Einstein’s singular contribution to the history of science. The Theory of General Relativity arose not from a mere accumulation of experimental data, but from a remarkable intellectual audacity driven by what the physicist himself considered a “moral responsibility toward the truth.” Without his courage to challenge classical concepts and discover that space and time form a dynamic fabric, our contemporary understanding of the cosmos, the origin of the Big Bang, and even everyday technologies like GPS would be impossible today.
The enigma of Erid: thought-provoking science fiction
In the novel Project Hail Mary, an intriguing idea emerges: a technologically advanced civilization capable of interstellar travel yet ignorant of the laws of relativity.
The novel tells the story of Ryland Grace, a scientist who wakes up alone aboard a spaceship with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He slowly regains his memory and discovers that he has been sent on a desperate mission to save Earth from an alien microorganism that threatens to cause global extinction. His destination is the Tau Ceti star system.[1]
There, he discovers something extraordinary: an alien ship piloted by an intelligent being. Despite their profound biological and sensory differences, the two find a way to communicate, discovering that their respective planets, Erid and Earth, are threatened by the same phenomenon. The novel chronicles the scientific and human difficulties they encounter in their efforts to find a solution.
The author, Andy Weir, meticulously researched the science behind the story, resulting in a novel where science drives the narrative rather than acting as a backdrop. Weir introduces imaginary life forms that, despite being fictional, follow plausible biochemical principles; he realistically describes the development of a shared language between species with completely different sensory 
Nevertheless, one of the novel’s most thought-provoking premises lies elsewhere: despite having the technology for interstellar travel, the alien civilization has never discovered the laws of relativity. Albert Einstein never set foot on Erid, the alien’s home planet, and its civilization never developed the theory that describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime. This notion immediately raises a fascinating question: would we have been able to comprehend gravity on a cosmic scale without Einstein’s intuition? Where would science be today if Einstein had never lived?
Einstein’s path to General Relativity
Albert Einstein was a one-of-a-kind scientist. In 1905, while working as a patent examiner at the Bern Patent Office, he published five papers that revolutionized physics during what became known as his famous Annus mirabilis. In them, he tackled fundamental problems in classical mechanics, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics with unprecedented audacity.
His doctoral thesis, Determination of Molecular Dimensions, warranted this comment from his biographer Walter Isaacson: “His thesis actually became one of his most cited and practically useful papers, with applications in such diverse fields as cement mixing, dairy production, and aerosol products.”[2]
In June 1905, he published On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light, a paper in which he explained the photoelectric effect using the light quantum hypothesis. Decades later, this research would earn him the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Shortly thereafter, he published his study on Brownian motion, On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid Demanded by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat, which offered one of the first solid proofs for the existence of atoms ─ a concept that was still controversial at that time.
On September 26, he published On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he formulated the theory of Special Relativity. In the paper, he dismantled the classical concepts of absolute space and time and postulated the constancy of the speed of light.
That same year, he came full circle with a brief paper Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon its Energy-Content? in which he derived the most famous equation in history: E=mc²
In just a few months, Einstein had laid the foundations of quantum mechanics, cemented the physical reality of atoms, and revolutionized our understanding of space, time, mass, and energy.
His mind did not rest, however, because he considered physics as more of a moral responsibility toward the truth. Special relativity stated that nothing can travel faster than light, but Isaac Newton’s law of gravitation implied instantaneous gravitational action at a distance. Einstein saw the contradiction immediately: he needed a new theory of gravity compatible with the cosmic speed limit of light.
Through a series of thought experiments, he analyzed accelerating and rotating frames, reaching a groundbreaking conclusion: those frames could only be correctly described by non-Euclidean geometry, i.e., a curved space. If acceleration required curved geometry, gravity should likewise be understood as a manifestation of spacetime geometry. Gravity thus ceased to be an invisible force to become a property of the structure of the universe.
To express this concept mathematically, he had to venture into areas with which he was largely unfamiliar: Bernhard Riemann’s geometry and tensor calculus. To do so, he relied on the invaluable assistance of his friend, the mathematician Marcel Grossmann.
The following years were a grueling intellectual struggle. Einstein’s progress was marked by remarkable insights, mathematical errors, and perpetual self-doubt. He moved to Berlin and worked almost obsessively until, in November 1915, he finally presented the equations of General Relativity.
Recalling that process, he wrote “The years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express, the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are known only to him who has himself experienced them.”[3] The result was highly complex mathematical equations that describe how matter and energy warp spacetime. Decades later, John Wheeler summed these up in one very elegant sentence: “Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to curve.”[4]
Would General Relativity have existed without Einstein?
The question of how science might have evolved had Einstein not lived has been asked many times, with differing answers. It should be noted, first and foremost, that in the early twentieth century there was no immediate experimental pressure to supersede Newton’s theory of gravity. The only major problem was the anomaly in Mercury’s perihelion, which was advancing at about 43 arcseconds per century faster than the Newtonian equations predicted. In addition, Henri Poincaré had expressed doubts about the possibility of gravity acting instantaneously at a distance. Nevertheless, these questions were not the main focus of physics research at the time.
In fact, even after General Relativity had been formulated, the theory was met with some indifference and skepticism. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences never awarded Einstein the Nobel Prize for relativity. When he finally received the award in 1922, it was “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. Indeed, when the prize was presented, he was discouraged from making relativity the focus of his speech.[5]
As science historian Marco Mamone Capria noted: “Up to the early 1950s, general relativity was a little-frequented subject, amongst physicists – a theory that had to be praised, but that could be safely ignored.”[6]
Many historians consider it unlikely that General Relativity would have emerged earlier without Einstein, primarily because of the conceptual radicalism of his hypotheses. The theory did not arise from a gradual accumulation of experimental data, but rather from an extraordinary combination of physical intuition, geometric imagination, and intellectual audacity. The core idea—that a freely-falling observer does not feel gravity—was born from a simple thought experiment. It also required a series of bold conceptual leaps: postulating the equivalence principle as its 
Decades later, this intellectual singularity is still recognized. John Wheeler, in the biographical memoir he wrote for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1979, left this message: “If others could have given us special relativity, who else but Einstein […] could have given us general relativity?”[7]
More contemporary astrophysicists such as Darren Dougan of the University of New South Wales and astrophysicist John K. Webb of the University of Cambridge have expressed a similar idea: “General relativity was such a giant leap forward that it is arguable that had Einstein not formulated the theory, it may have remained undiscovered for a very long time.”[8]
A world without General Relativity
As physicist Hanoch Gutfreund said, “His [Einstein’s] general theory of relativity is the source of everything we know about the universe.”[9] Without it, our understanding of the cosmos would be a fragmented structure plagued by inexplicable anomalies. Modern cosmology as we know it would simply not exist: the expansion of the universe and the Big Bang theory arise from the Friedmann-Lemaître equations, which are directly derived from Einstein’s general relativity field equations. In a world without Einstein, we would probably still be imagining a static universe or one governed by modified Newtonian dynamics.
In the field of technology, the absence of this theory would impose critical limitations. The GPS system, essential for global navigation and telecommunications, would be virtually impossible without it. Because satellites orbit in a weaker gravitational field, their clocks run at a different rate than Earth’s; without relativity corrections, positioning errors would accumulate at a rate of kilometers per day.
Man would probably have reached the Moon using Newton’s approximations, but many key areas of modern space exploration would be unfathomable today. The trajectories of interplanetary probes would accumulate systematic errors, and gravity assist maneuvers (fundamental to exploring the outer solar system) would be much less reliable.
Beyond technology, the greatest loss would be intellectual: we would live in a universe of mysterious action-at-a-distance forces, unaware of the fact that space and time form a dynamic, flexible fabric. The universe would be static—an eternal and indifferent stage—and we would be blind to black holes and gravitational waves.
The figure of Einstein remains so fascinating to us because it embodies a deeply human tension: the ardent desire to understand versus the anguish of a cosmos that appeared to have no meaning. His greatest gift to mankind was not just his equations, but the courage to face his own doubts to unravel the fabric of the invisible. Like Weir’s navigators, we might have been able to cross the void using the tools of classical physics, but we would have remained oblivious to the true nature of our journey. Einstein’s work was the determination of a mind that refused to accept silence as an answer, forcing spacetime to finally reveal its deepest secret.
Manuel Ribes
Bioethics Observatory – Institute of Life Sciences
Catholic University of Valencia
References:
[1] Tau Ceti is a star in the constellation Cetus similar to the sun in mass and spectral type. At a distance of just under 12 light-years from the solar system, it is a relatively nearby star. The choice of Tau Ceti as a recurring setting in science fiction (from Isaac Asimov to Dan Simmons) is no coincidence. It is due to the unique combination of its proximity to Earth, similarity to our Sun, and the fact that, in 1960, Frank Drake selected it to search for alien radio signals for the first time in history.
[2] El “año milagroso” de Einstein en el que escribió 5 estudios científicos que revolucionaron la física BBC News Mundo 16 March 2025
[3] James Overduin Einstein’s Spacetime Gravity Probe B Stanford.edu November 2007 https://einstein.stanford.edu/SPACETIME/spacetime2.html
[4] John Archibald Wheeler Albert Einstein Biographical Memoir National Academy of Sciences. 1980
[5] Peter Symonds One hundred years since Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis World Socialist Web Site 13 July 2005
“And there was an additional proviso: that the recipient refrain from mentioning his theory of relativity in his Nobel lecture. If not for the King of Sweden, who was in the audience and wanted to hear about the theory, Einstein would have been forced into silence on his best-known, and most significant, achievement.”
[6] Marco Mamone Capria Physics Before and After Einstein IOS Press 2005 ISBN 1-58603-462-6
[7] John Archibald Wheeler Albert Einstein Biographical Memoir National Academy of Sciences. 1980
[8] Darren Dougan and John K. Webb Without Einstein it would have taken decades longer to understand gravity Newsroom UNSW Sydney 23 Nov 2015
[9] Alex Winston Hebrew University’s centennial: Einstein’s legacy and the guardian of a scientific icon The Canadian Friends of Hebrew University April 2, 2025
