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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
5ea187bea5786
6fdf0e7ceb61c22186f
08]_mp4_300.mov" -O
The joys of curl | strings
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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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.
It appears to come from here.
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.
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.