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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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Dear /.,
I am so sorry for my stupid comment. I fucked up, and owe you all a heartfelt apology.
As you can see, I put no thought whatsoever into the above post.
Please forgive me.
Sincerely,
-mOoZik
It's not surprising that you had a professor who hated Einstein. Scientists are notorious for hating one another- often for absurd reasons- but also often out of jealousy or simply from a difference of "professional" opinion. I once knew two research engineering professors, from the same department, who would try to get each others research grants cancelled simply because they disagreed on some theories.
> If you really want to get a handle on what Einstein did and what his work has influenced, I
> would recommend buying The Elegant Universe by Brian Green. Somehow it found it's way onto my
> Amazon wishlist a few years ago (I don't remember putting it there), and my mom bought it for me for
> xmas. I've read about half of it so far and it's amazing stuff. It's about the (super)string theory,
> which essentially ties together Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum physics. I can feel my
> brain get bigger as I read it.
And I would recommend that you also take what Green says about string theory with a grain of salt. While he's a good scientist, he like all string theorists, tend to paste over the cracks in string theory. There is no experimental evidence to support string theory, at the moment it just isn't science. He also tends to handwave away difficulties with multiple theories. He is clearly biased towards string theory, and at points I'd say unreasonably biased.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wake me up when they've got some data. All the brains in the world won't save a theory that has no supporting evidence.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
it's not that physicists hate Einstein, it's more they hate how people view Einstein. it's mostly because Einstein became the poster-boy for the media about modern physics. as we know, the media tends to simplify things and so it suggests that Einstein did relativity, photoelectric effect, etc. by himself.
given that Newton said he had seen far only because he stood on the shoulders of giants, Einstein is even more indebted to others before and during his time.
look, i'm not saying that he wasn't a remarkable physicist- when i read some of his papers, i do feel like i'm reading something that's very close to 'god'- so clear, so elegant, so beautiful.
yes, i am a physicist. and yes, i do find myself using Einstein's results. i'm glad when it happens, because i *feel* i'm close to reality.
"God does not play dice."
Perhaps his adherance to faith led to such views? Uncertainty I can imagine would put a large dent in the concept of an omniscient Lord.
Well, this was from the economist. Most people are barely up to USA Today.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Everyone's free to believe what they believe and to try to prove it to the opposition. Heck, isn't that the spirit of peer review?
Science is all about changing the theory if something comes up in nature that's not properly predicted, so I believe that there is still alot of value in having one of the greatest minds around throw all of his ability at trying to find flaws in quantum mechanics, and utterly failing to do so.
He may not have been right in not believing in the truth of quantum mechanics, but who else could come up with those 'clever thought experiments' that could have potentially been the 1 case the breaks the theory?
most people still do not understand exactly what it was he did thats because the average person has the thought capacity of a 4th grader. I mean hell, many people still believe the world was created around 6000 years ago on a given sunday by some guy. That kills me.
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
I think they do have to dumb down modern physics that much. I bet most people watched it for the cutesy graphics and snob factor than to really learn anything about string theory. You quote the Simpsons in your sig- How do you think Matt Groening would try to present String Theory? How many would watch the Simpsons if he didn't dress his clever cynical insights with juvenile potty humor?
Photons have no mass. E=mc^2 doesn't apply to light.
> I think that's why it's called string theory instead of string fact.
Spoken like a creationist talking about evolution. Science has a very different meaning of the word "theory" than than laypeople, who tend to conflate the term with "hypothesis", "idea", or just "wild guess". Good theories are rigorous and predictive. Bad theories are footnotes.
I think it is a matter of target audience. The Simpsons is on a major 'pop' broadcast network and specifically targets people for whom potty humor is (part of) the draw. Personally, I do like The Simpsons for it's subtlety.
Nova, otoh, has set itself up as a cut above the 'for the masses' standard. I've watched that show since high school (early 80's), and I remember specifics from specific episodes. It was produced to be informative first, and if pop style entertainment was a goal at all, it was far down on the list.
I've also witnessed what I believe to be a general degradation of Nova in this respect. This is just my opinion, mind you, but I think Nova is but a faint shadow of its former self.
To put this into a broader perspective, I also happen to believe the 'making science fun' in the classroom is partially responsible for the overall degradation in science education here in the US. I've taught my classes without that maxim, and proudly achieved my (only) stated goal of actually making sure my students finished the semester with more knowledge than they had at the start.
Iconoclastic, I know.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
Well, you'll probably get some flack from right-wingers for linking to a Marxist site, but whatever the politics Poincare certainly deserves some recognition. But still, much like Alfred Wallace, who discovered natural selection independently of Darwin but didn't want it to apply to humans, Poincare didn't really recognize how relativity changed everything. An in any case, what Poincare discovered was really only a form of Special Relativity. It was General Relativity which really made Einstein famous.
I think they do have to dumb down modern physics that much
Well if they had gone through a bunch of calculations, I would have gotten nothing out of it and probably wouldn't have spent more than 5 minutes on it. This program was not meant to explain string theory to physicists; it was targeted at people who have a basic knowledge of physics or less. The intention was not to show how the theory was formed but to give an overview of it.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
First off, I'm a physics grad student with nothing but the utmost respect for Einstein's work, and I make use of it's consequences frequently. He did some of the most beautiful stuff in the history of physics. Nonetheless, I think that his mythos may have arguably had a detrimental effect on theoretical physics and its public perception.
When asked what he would have thought if solar eclipse had not confirmed general relativity, Einstein famously responded something like he "would have been sorry for the dear Lord - the theory is correct!". The general picture people have is that Einstein sat in a room, thought really hard, and figured out how the world was supposed to be without ever needing to go out and LOOK at it. This idea has inspired generations of young physicists to think that the "real" route to truth about the world is mathematical insight. Over the ensuing century, however, this has essentially never been the case - the biggest breakthroughs generally come when an experiment sees something weird (i.e. discovers new particles or behaviors) and a theorist comes up with a mathematical picture that makes all the weird observations fit together. Experiments are still important - it's not just Plato sitting in his cave imagining how the world ought to be. Beautiful mathematical models of fundamental physics very frequently turn out to be experimentally wrong!
Outside of physics, the public image of Einstein has arguably breathed life into the legions of crackpots who think they know the theory of everything, claim that quantum mechanics is "obviously" wrong, etc. Everyone learns in school that Einstein was terrible at mathematics growing up and that he did his best work as a patent clerk, not at a university. Many people are encouraged by this, thinking that the best work comes from "outside the system" and need not involve a thorough understanding of the details of current science.
Unfortunately, this is not true. Einstein was quite good at mathematics (had he been a bit more versed in fancy Reimannian geometry, however, general relativity might have happened faster). He had a Ph.D. from one of the world's most prestigious grad schools. He was working as a patent clerk to pay the bills simply because he hadn't yet gotten a teaching job (they were scarce, and even in later years Einstein never did much teaching).
The point is that he knew his stuff (experimental results and current theory). Too many people think they can walk in off the street with no substantial knowledge of physics or mathematics and give a "common sense" alternative to modern physics that doesn't involve any of the "hard stuff". It usually turns out that their work contradicts some experimental result that they never bothered to learn about. I often see e-mails about such ideas that cite Einstein as an example of how an outsider with no knowledge can change a field. In principle, a gifted outsider with a new insight can change any field. In practice (as Einstein shows), it's good to know what others know first.
it's not that physicists hate Einstein, it's more they hate how people view Einstein. it's mostly because Einstein became the poster-boy for the media about modern physics. as we know, the media tends to simplify things and so it suggests that Einstein did relativity, photoelectric effect, etc. by himself.
I once participated in a seminar on "Women in Science" where we talked about the "Marie Curie Effect" as a reason why more women do not pursue careers in science. Because Marie Curie was such an outstanding scientist in a time when there were only a handful of women scientists around the world, people started expecting any woman who tried to pursue a career in science to make earth-shattering discoveries like Marie Curie did. Rather than improving the situation for women scientists, Marie Curie's success actually made it worse.
Most scientists, whether they are male or female, will never make the kinds of discoveries that are worthy of a Nobel prize or a lot of media attention. Most of us just plug away each day, making small advances that might eventually contribute to the next great paradigm shift (or not!). When a physicist says they hate Einstein or Curie, or when an astronomer says they hate Sagan, the real reason could be that they dislike the way the rest of the world sees these scientists. No real scientist can live up to the fantasy images of these people presented by the mass media and popular culture. It's kind of like the way real women don't look like the supermodels in Sports Illustrated, and most men aren't like the muscular athletes who get paid millions of dollars to advertise shoes.
It doesn't take much math to understand what he's saying. To work out the consequences, on the other hand, can take a lot. (But something like the view of magnetism as a consequence of special relativity applied to electricity only takes about half a term of calculus beyond the Calc BC AP exam; MIT has a first-term physics course which covers it).
In fact, Feynmann's QED (Quantum ElectroDynamics) doesn't require any tricky math to explain Einstein's more counterintuitive stuff.
Witten's work has led to some rather significant advances in mathematics. In my opinion, that's a good enough reason to pay attention to him now. Even if string theory is bunk. there are still some good things that are falling out of the work on it.
Oh yeah, all we have are theories.
[javac] 100 errors
As I understand, no one has though up any predictions based on string 'theory'. Since we have no predictions, we have no experiments. If we have no experiments, we have no falsification. If we have no falsification, we do not have science.
As it stands, string theory holds no more scientific weight than the idea that we live in the matrix, or that reality is the dream of Indra. All of these can reasonably explain the past. However, once we have a prediction that can potientially be discredited through an experiment, then we have science. Currently , string theory, like the Matrix or Indra's dream, make no falsifiable prediction.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
What about Bernhard Riemann? A hundred years before Einstein, he laid out the entire field of relativistic geometry in a single, brilliantly short and lucid paper. Again, his only gap seems to be that he didn't publicize, nor did he translate it to the 'real world'.
Given Einstein's lack of aptitude for maths (Minkowski was his maths teacher and had told him he 'would not come to anything'), would he have been able to come up with Relativity if Riemann hadn't written 'On The Hypotheses that lie at the Fundamentals of Geometry' long years ago?