Einstein

For thousands of years, philosophers and astronomers and thinkers of all sorts have imagined that the [universe:university] , the space around us, was rather like this floor in front of us. It was fixed and unchangeable, and things happen on it, just as people walk around. So the stars, the [comets:comments] , and the planets, and the other heavenly bodies moved around and traced down their parts on this completely unchanging stage of space. In the 20th century, as the result of Einstein's work, that view of the universe was completely transformed. We began to understand that there was no absolutely fixed [stage:phase] of space at all on which all celestial notions were played out. But in some sense, on the larger scale in the universe, the space itself was in this state of a continuous [dynamic:dynasty] change. That was a prediction made by Einstein, but it wasn't Einstein who held the honor of making the discovery that the universe was really like that.