Original Einstein Manuscript Discovered

vinlud writes "The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1925 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics. The German-language manuscript is titled "Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas," and is dated December 1924. It is considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs. High-resolution photographs of the 16-page manuscript are posted on the institute's web site."

Comments

Other than

[LordChaos]

... being one of the first people to make the world see that atomic warfare was not such a good idea - to which he devoted much of his later life.

Re:Other than

[Rakishi]

...as does almost every other fuckin weapon and war. Dresden had more deaths than either atomic bomb.

The alternative was an invasion, had that happened you'd be bitching about how we should have used the bomb to save the millions that died due to the invasion.

In Berlin children and the elderly were forced to fight or be shot by their own side. Many died, most were lacking decent weaponry or supplies and simply acted as a last ditch human shield. You think the Japanese would somehow act "better" during an invasion than the Germans did?

Of course, this is not counting the thousands who would die of disease or famine as they resist invasion on their already supply starved island. Then there would have been the inevitable massive non-nuclear bombings so common during WW2, which would probably lead to many more deaths alone than the two atomic bombs did.

In a more philosophical sense, there were few real civilians as they were almost all helping the war effort one way or another (Japanese are efficient that way). The American troops were also civilians till they got dragged into this, so were the Japanese troops for that matter.

Re:Other than

[Rakishi]

Japan was already starving, didn't do much to them. There is no such thing as "military complexes" as all industry was at the time basically a military installation. You'd have to bomb them back a few centuries, and even then they could secretly make weapons to send against your fleet. Suicide attacks to them weren't exactly against the rules.

From a US point of view a blockade would be expensive and probably unpopular, and Japan could last a while. Humanitarian agencies would object, complain and Japan would sooner or later get sent food anyway.

I'm rather sure that a lot more than a few hundred thousand would die of starvation before they managed to get farming up to a level where it could support the nation, probably millions would be dead as without industrialization farming could never support their population. So you advocate the starving of millions compared to the nuking of thousands, interesting position.

If you wish to see what a nation can degrade into given an insane enough government, look at North Korea. Doesn't mean the people are somehow unintelligent" or "uncivilized" simply that the government is too oppressive. Remember, for a long time most of Europe was composed of peasants (ie: mindless slaves).

Re:Other than

[drgonzo59]

The issue of "civilian" vs. "fighter" is often not a black and white kind of thing. If someone is supporting the Nazis and chose to help build the concentration camps, even though they could have had other equally paid job, are they an enemy combatant? What about those that produced Zyklon B (hydrocyanic acid) used in gas chambers, are they enemy combatants? I think they are.

Why doesn't the same apply to the people who worked for the Mitsubishi arms plant in Nagasaki? Most of the town employees where working at the plant building weapons and ammunition to kill Americans. They could have chosen to be farmers, or say teachers, instead they most likely did support the goverment policy and the war against us.

You are right, the children weren't fighting yet, but the ones in Berlin were, and if we invaded Japan a lot more children would have been dead, because they would have been forced to defend "the Empire"

One thing that is always usefull to keep in mind is that it was the Japanese that attacked the U.S. What in the hell were they thinking? It is like me attacking the local police department with a baseball bat, I know I will get in trouble and end up in jail for a long time. If I get my family and friends on it, they will end up in jail for a long time too. Someone might ask me "what in the hell were you thinking?" Same thing with Japan. It was their goverment that sealed the fate of its children and elderly when they attacked U.S. It wasn't a defensive war, it wasn't even a preemtive attack, I don't think US would have ever attacked Japan unprovoked. So when they sent the battleships and the airplanes to Pearl Harbor, they technically "killed" a lot of Japanese civilians and as well as fighters.

On the other side, let's imagine that Japan would have won the war (impossible but let's try) do you think they would hesitate bombing New York, or LA or other major city because there are civilians in it? Probably not, judging by what they did in China

Re:Other than

[nathanh]

No, these were simply the two options asfaik seen at the time as solutions which are likely to lead to the desired result. I

The military commanders weren't even consulted before the bomb was dropped.

"MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

Eisenhower recommended against dropping the bomb.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

Admiral Lehay opposed the bombings, stating that they achieved nothing.

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

The vice chairman of US bombing survey said that the a-bombs were not necessary.

"While I was working on the new plan of air attack... (I) concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945."

Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 36-37 (my emphasis)

However the most damning evidence came from the Director of Naval Intelligence.

"Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.

"Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.

"I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds."

Ellis Zacharias, How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender, Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.

Ellis makes it clear beyond reasonable dispute that the a-bombs were dropped for POLITICAL reasons, not MILITARY reasons.

These repeated restrospective justifications that the a-bombs were dropped to "save lives" are lies. They are lies that you wish to believe because otherwise you might have to face up to the reality that sometimes the USA has done evil things. It's better to accept that the USA is fallible - just like every other democracy - and admit that the a-bombs were a MISTAKE.

PS: all credit goes to DABANSHEE for the research.

Re:Other than

[XchristX]

"there are no innocent people in the country you go to war with."



Hamas, Al-Quaeda and the bloody IRA say the exact same thing.
I guess white people don't like it when the same rule is applied to their women and children, but have no propblem using it to massacre those they consider to be 'der untermenschen'.

Amazing

[Sv-Manowar]

Its amazing that something like this can have lain undiscovered for so long, and a good thing that we can use modern technology to archive it and preserve it for future generations. It's all very well knowing what Einstein theorized, but to see the actual work is something different and humanises the achievement.

Re:amazing

[wasted time]

everything's relative, I guess.

Handwriting

[jthayden]

I know German, but I'm still having trouble reading the manuscripts. His n, u, r and m all look very similar. I do like the way the entire page has a slant to the right though. Maybe some student of Freud could read something into that?

Re:Handwriting

[sl8r]

I wish people would stop furthering this "looking at the handwriting will tell me more about a person's soul/mind/whatever".

Case in point: Here in Switzerland (bastion of psycho-analysts and -therapists that it is), applying for a job sometimes requires the applicant to submit a hand-written test. Not quite sure but must've been in the early 90's when the head of the Swiss Psychologist's Association went on to say in an interview that the whole handwriting analysis is a hoax and is mainly used by dumb-ass PHBs to appear smarter than they are.

Please stop furthering this meme. It's a hoax. Kthxbye!

High Resolution???

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrm... The words "High" and "Resolution" appearing in a link from a Slashdot article. Certainly this will not need a mirror...

Coral Cache Link

[Dubpal]

Because we all know "High-resolution photographs of the 16-page manuscript are posted on the institute's web site" usually means said website is about to become very uncooperative.

http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl.nyud.net:8090/his tory/Einstein_archive/

Re:It's in German...

[Anonymous Coward]

E=MC2

Re:It's in German...

[Tablizer]

No, it's Farfegnugen.

Re:Amazing

[EvanED]

Um, you're missing the point. The text of the paper has been available for some time. They didn't discover a NEW paper, just the original of one of them.

And as such, an image of what Einstien actually wrote is the ONLY way to present it in a way that hasn't been available before.

Translation of an important footnote

[paiute]

In the margin, he had scribbled:

Und so investieren die Schüler nicht selten mehrere Monate, um einem Problem auf die Spur zu kommen. Von der Literaturrecherche bis zur Slashdotten durchlaufen sie in kleinen Gruppen alle Phasen einer Forschungsarbeit

which can be translated as:

I have elucidated the necessary relationships that describe the General and the Special Theories of Relativity. Now I must add to those the third and last: the Slashdot Theory of Relativity, namely that a URL posted to Slashdot will result in the associated server being relatively quickly removed from our frame of reference.

Re:Translation of an important footnote

[DarkHelmet]

No, you read that wrong... it should instead be:

I have found out a breakthrough on how to unify theories of Gravity and Electromagnetism. Unfortunately, the formulas are too large to write in the footnote here.

High resolution?

[HorsePunchKid]

This is pretty nifty, but the submitter and I apparently have very different thresholds for considering something "high resolution". These are less than 150dpi, unless these were originally printed on 3×4" sheets of paper or something. If you wanted to print one of these out as a poster or something (hey, don't judge me!), they wouldn't be very attractive. Maybe if you tiled them all together, though.

Am I possibly missing the links to some even-higher-resolution versions?

Re:High resolution?

[Mikey-San]

This is pretty nifty, but the submitter and I apparently have very different thresholds for considering something "high resolution".

To the submitter, it's actually huge.

It's all about your frame of reference.

Re:Article in full

[Night Goat]

This article repost was modified. Mod down. I can't believe I even need to bring this up.

Re:Article in full

[jeronimoe]

Ha! You're right. At first I thought it was fine, but then I finally got through to the real article -- there are quite a few modifications. Unfair for those who can't compare with the real one. Here's the real article in full.

Original Einstein Manuscript Discovered

By TOBY STERLING
Associated Press Writer

The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1926 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics, scholars said Saturday.

The handwritten manuscript titled "Quantum theory of the diatomic ideal gas" was dated December 1925. Considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs, it was published in the proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in January 1926.

High-resolution photographs of the 160-page, German-language manuscript and an account of its discovery were posted on the institute's Web site.

"It was quite amazing" when a student working on his master's thesis uncovered the delicate manuscript written in Einstein's distinctive scrawl, said professor Carlos Beenakker. "You can even see Einstein's thumbprints in some places, and it's full of notes in the margins and underlining from his editor."

"We're going to keep it as a reminder of his work here, which is quite a pleasurable memory for us," Beenakker said.

The German-born physicist, who was Jewish and part Gypsy, taught in Berlin between 1910 and 1933, fleeing to the United States after Adolf Hitler came to power.

Einstein, whose name is now synonymous with science, was a frequent guest lecturer at Laden in the 1920s due to his friendship with physicist Paul Oppenheimer, among whose papers the manuscript was found.

The paper predicted that at temperatures near absolute zero - around 560 degrees below zero - particles in a gas can reach a state of such low energy that they clump together in one larger pair, a "di-atom."

The idea was developed in collaboration with Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Boshe and the then-theoretical state of matter was dubbed a Bose-Einstein condensation.

In 1985, University of Colorado at Boulder scientists Eric Cornell and Carlos Wiemann created such a condensation using a gas of the element rubidium and were awarded the Nobel peace prize for physics in 2000, together with Wolfgang Amadeus Ketterle of the Californian Institute of Technology.

Beenakker said the student who found the manuscript, Rowdy Boeyink, was painfully reviewing documents in the archive for a thesis on Oppenheimer when he came across the Einstein paper and immediately recognized its importance.

He said Boeyink had found other interesting documents during his search, including a letter from Dutch physicist Niels Bohr, and was all but certain to receive top marks on his thesis.

Not exactly

[mnemonic_]

Later in his life, Einstein was rather divided over violent and non-violent resistance. For example, in a 1941 letter to a pacifist he said:

If all the young people in America were to act as you intend to act, the country would be defenseless and easily delivered into slavery.

The issue became progressively more cloudy as Einstein aged. A Guardian article details Einstein's conversations with a Japanese pen-pal after World War II:

I didn't write that I was an absolute pacifist but that I have always been a convinced pacifist. That means there are circumstances in which in my opinion it is necessary to use force.

Einstein likely changed his views because of the plight of the Jews in Nazi-ruled Germany and elsewhere. Though he was not a practicing Jew, he still felt connected to the Semite people and served the Technion Institute in Israel. By the circumstances of his time, Einstein accepted war as a necessity to combat extraordinary evils.

absolute zero, or below zero? (dept nitpicking)

[MavEtJu]

Don't you love if when they use figures without giving the units?

The paper predicted that at temperatures near absolute zero - around 460 degrees below zero -

So absolute zero is 460 degrees below zero, but I have been tought that it was 273 degrees below zero.

So if Toby Sterling is reading: The absolute zero is:

- zero Kelvin
- minus 273.15 degrees Celcius
- minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit

Feel free to properly describe it next time!

Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ...

[shmlco]

"...ask the question "what in the hell was Japan thinking when it attacked U.S.?"

What, no one studied during history class? The Japanese believed that they were being pushed into a corner by Roosevelt and felt that they had to act to protect the Empire. They were thinking that the US was going to slap them with a trade embargo, which we did, in retaliation for Japan's expansionist efforts in China.

They were thinking that, if they eliminated the threat posed by the 7th fleet, strictly a military target, the US would be unable to enforce the embargo, and they'd have an additonal 6 months to a year in which to continue their expansion and seize the resource areas they thought they needed. After which, they'd present us with a fait accompli, and at the worst, sue for peace with their new borders intact.

In short, they did what quite a few people do. They went after what they wanted, and rationalized that no one would be in a position to stop them.

Unfortunately, the American people were outraged by the sneak attack and loss of life, made worse by the mistiming of the diplomatic note announcing the state of war between Japan and the US, which arrived well AFTER the attack took place.

Re:Hey dude

[MightyMartian]

Good grief, have you ever bothered to read history? The Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally. The decision was made to retain the Emperor as a figurehead, to allow the smoother transition of Japanese society from an essentially militaristic, fascist government to a peaceful one. Considering the success of Japan in the post-war years, I'd have to say that of all the American foreign policy initiatives (such idiotic things Cuba and the Phillipines) the fashioning of modern Japan surely must stand out as an enormous success that turned a determined enemy into an industrious ally. I wish the Americans could do that more often.