Einstein himself downplayed the theory’s power to predict “tiny observable effects”—its influence on physics. Instead, he preferred to emphasize “the simplicity of its foundation and its consistency”—its mathematical beauty. Mathematicians tended to agree, as did physicists such as Dicke’s professor at the University of Rochester. General relativity’s known effects in the universe—an anomaly in the orbit of a planet, the deflection of starlight—were obscure in the extreme; its unknown effects on the history of the universe—cosmology—were speculative in the extreme. Even so, Einstein also
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