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100 Years of Einstein
spacerabbits writes "A century after Einstein's miracle year, most people still do not understand exactly what it was he did. The Economist tries to elucidate what AE did in a recent article."
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They also have the video programs on PBS, for free viewing. :)
A blog like any other.
This works if your browser doesn't insert spaces after each line. Otherwise you'll have to remove them by hand. If I remember correctly it's a couple hundred megs.
a 1a1afb6ae049ae214fc034aad839a9198\f 362d841a61948bf2688f01f87fb\b /nova_eu_30[12-14]c[01-\
:)
curl -f "http://a768.g.akamai.net/5/768/142/3f9e\
9589/1
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08]_mp4_300.mov" -O
The joys of curl | strings
I can highly recommend this book as well. By the way, it's actually Brian GREENE, not Green. But yes, definitely, definitely, check this book out. He mostly talks about string theory but there are also a lot of other ideas discussed, like hidden variable theory (particles which are virtually undetectable directly; the only way we know they're there is that the equations that accurately predict particle behaviour/properties require these variables) and all kinds of other weird things related to this (sparticles, etc). I like this book because it sets much of modern physics down in layman's terms, yet it's comprehensive and informative even to those already familiar with the basics.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
I have the book as well, excellent read. I first saw the NOVA special on PBS and watched it over and over and over again. Fascinating stuff.
But yes, Einstein's later years were spend on trying to develop a GUT/TOE (Grand Unified Theory/Theory of Everything), basically a way to combine the smooth gentle macroscopic world of space-time in relativity and the extremely chaotic unpredictible microscopic view of quantum physics. String theory is the closest thing we have to accomplishing that goal, and with geniuses like Ed Witten working on it, I think we stand a good chance of actually discovering/creating such a theory given enough time.
I digress, but I have to state... the PBS specials are very useful and well put together. Brian Greene does an excellent job hosting the show. I espcially like the part where they first mention Ed, one string theorist says something like "we all think we're pretty smart, and he [Ed Witten] is so much smarter." It's amazing how much raw intelligence you need to really comprehend the underlying mathematical principles behind string theory.
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Yes, string theory requires some assumptions to be made for their models to work. However, with these assumptions they do a remarkable job of representing the world of quantum physics and relativity. Nothing else we have even comes close.
And you also have to keep in mind that these theories are extremely oversimplified. We do not possess the power or knowledge to understand the equations in their full form. This was very similar to Einstein's field equations when he first discovered them; I have a feeling in time we will start to grasp the ideas better. Witten himeself claimed that some cynics dubbed his new M-theory for "murky theory" since our understanding of it is so primitive.
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It should be noted that einstein won the nobel prize for his work on the photoelectric effect, which is a part of quantum mechanics.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
The general theory requires the solution of partial differential equations best expressed as tensors, and further requires knowledge of differential geometry. The special theory on the other hand just requires some basic calc...
I haven't read the book you mention, but I did catch PART of the Nova on PBS.
;)
IMHO, it was overproduced drek. It was absolutely the worst NOVA I've ever seen. Dumbed down physics and cutesy graphics and music. I had to turn it off, I just could not take it. Certainly not of the standard I've come to expect from Nova.
I had a string theorist on my Thesis Committee in grad school, and he asked some pretty interesting questions during my Oral Exam. It's a fascinating field, but if you have to dumb it down that far to make it popular and interesting (which I don't believe), save it for those who care to listen.
That said, it's hard for me to take Brian Greene very seriously. But, I bet he's better at math than me, and not by just a little bit.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
Note: "Herb" actually refers to Hermann Minkowski. (And "Izzy" and "Ari" are, of course, Isaac Newton and Aristotle.)
http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html
For laypeople, I think the best book introducing Einstein's theories in an understandable way is Relativity Visualized by L. Epstein.
Granted if you examine all elements you may be able to discover a continuous variation of wavelengths. However, when examining INDIVIDUAL elements it is clear that only discrete wavelengths may be produced.
On a side note, some (negligible)variance in the wavelengths of a spectrum can occur due to the uncertainty of the energy levels, and other phenomenon such as the doppler effect(electron is moving fast when it releases an electron in the direction of motion thus the frequency is increased).
We attempted to elucidate Einstein's miracle year last week, but I have to admit the Economist did a nice job on this article.
Energy: time to change the picture.
It appears to come from here.
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
Alexander Pope
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho! Let Einstein be!"
restored the status quo.
Sir John Collings Squire
The problem with Einstein (if you can call it a problem) is that he *was* the most important physicist since Newton.
He stands completely unchallenged in the scope and quantity of contributions he's made to physics. He's the poster boy not because of the media, but because to this day the problems he couldn't solve are the problems we're still working on today, and no one single-handedly has so much changed the way we look at the universe (except for Newton).
At least for him, he _was_ "the opera singer super model brain surgeon sports star" of physics.
I've linked this article a lot (I think it's fascinating), but it specifically talks about physicists trying to "measure up" to other greats. But, trying to measure up against Einstein is a sort of dream:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/
Here is the real quote from your paraphrase:
"Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice."
-Einstein
I think this is one of the most misunderstood quotes. Einstein is saying that yes, the models we have for understanding QM are incredibly accurate, but he doesn't feel like the models we have derived are 'the answer.' He is saying that just because the best we can do to predict QM events is with a probabalistic model does not mean that God does not know what is going to happen to each subatomic particle.
Also, on a side note, I feel that uncertainty is necessary for there to be a God. QM uncertainty is the physical means to a free will which allows us the ability to accept or reject God.
As far as we know, to replace the standard model with string theory is just to replace 19 arbitrary parameters with an arbitrary compactification, itself perhaps requiring more than 19 parameters to describe.
I totally agree with parker9! Einstein's contributions to science were important, but people seem to think that he did his work completely alone and without building upon the work done by other noteworthy scientists. If you believe what you see in the popular media (I consider anything on PBS to be part of the popular media), Einstein invented ALL of physics. This is totally untrue!
Most physicists, and anyone who has taken a college course in the history of science, realize that Einstein was not the only great physicist of the 19th and 20th century. What about Fermi, Bohr, Gamov, Bethe, Heisenberg, Meitner and Schroedinger to name a few? All of these people had a hand in developing quantum mechanics, which was just as revolutionary as Einstein's theory of relativity.
It was Otto Hahn who received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering nuclear fission of heavy nuclei, not Albert Einstein. However, if you ask any person on the street, they would probably attribute this discovery to Einstein (assuming they know what nuclear fission is!) as well as the development of quantum mechanics.
I doubt that Einstein would appreciate being called "the opera singer super model brain surgeon sports star." The things I have read about Einstein suggest that while he was very opinionated (what scientist isn't) he was also quite humble and gave credit to other scientists where credit was due. Einstein just happened to come along at the right time, when the groundwork for scientific revolution in many areas of physics had been gradually laid out throughout the 19th century. Einstein's greatest contributions were not his original ideas, but the novel way he was able to put together the work of those who came before him.
The nature of science has changed considerably since Einstein did his theoretical work. There still are a few theorists who work mostly on their own, sitting at a desk with a piece of paper and a pencil, thinking deep thoughts. There are also still a few experimental physicists (mainly condensed matter) who do meaningful laboratory work in small collaborations with only a few people. However, most scientists today cannot do their work without massive computing power or huge experiments that involve collaborating with large groups of other scientists. Take a look at the how the lengths of physics Ph.D. theses have changed over the last 50 years. In our library, many of the Ph.D. theses from the 60s and 70s are less than 100 pages long. My Ph.D. thesis was a whopping 200 pages, and many other recent theses are of similar length.
I don't think there will ever be another scientist like Einstein (or Newton or Galileo for that matter) who can single-handedly change the way we think about the universe with his or her research. The problems scientists are studying today are so big that one person cannot possibly hope to solve them all alone. Expecting every scientist to be an "Einstein" is extremely insulting, since there are so many people who are brilliant in their own way.
I don't want to be an "Einstein" anyway - he had bad hair and no fashion sense! His personal life was pretty messed up too.
David Bohm's excellent primer, "Special Relativity" (available in Dover paperback) gives a very good summary of the situation prior to Einstein's 1905 paper. Essentially, every result that Einstein's theory gave (including the famous E = mc**2, which was published by Heaviside in 1892!) had been arrived at previously by Poincare' and others as necessary consequences of a particular dynamical interpretation of Maxwell's electro-magentic theory.
Einstein's revolution was the derivation of the same results via a kinematical restatement of mechanical laws. Dynamics deals with the causes of motion, kinematics with the description of motion. The "old" relativity assumed that there were real forces acting to squeeze matter so that rods got short and clocks ran slow. Einstein's relativity showed that the same results followed immediately from adopting a particular, consistent, description of motion based on two assumptions (the constancy of the speed of light and the invariance of the laws of nature under changes of velocity.)
One of the consequences of Einstein's theory is that when we discovered matter that does not participate in electro-magentic interactions, such as neutrinos, we could confidently treat it using relativistic mechanics. The old relativity, in contrast, only applied to charged particles.
It is a remarkable and still interesting fact that so much of what Einstein explained can be explained by alternative means within the context of Newtonian dynamics, although the explanations are much less general and much harder to understand.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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I'm an experimental physicist, true, but I'm late in coming to this calling - my background is mostly in theory.
I completely agree that there are two different sorts of truth - I'll call them "mathematical" and "physical" senses of truth. String theory, for example, certainly contains many truths in the mathematical sense - there are a lot of theorems one can prove that tell us beautiful things about the structure of mathematics. Nonetheless, it may turn out to have no "physical" truth - the physical world may not happen to be that way.
I was not speaking to the concept of mathematical truth, nor arguing that "wrong" theories cannot be intrinsically interesting as branches of mathematics.