Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Business Voyeur
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?
Hrm... The words "High" and "Resolution" appearing in a link from a Slashdot article. Certainly this will not need a mirror...
http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl.nyud.net:8090/his tory/Einstein_archive/
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
- George Orwell
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.
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.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
This article repost was modified. Mod down. I can't believe I even need to bring this up.
...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.
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.
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:
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.
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).
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.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
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
The military commanders weren't even consulted before the bomb was dropped.
Eisenhower recommended against dropping the bomb.
Admiral Lehay opposed the bombings, stating that they achieved nothing.
The vice chairman of US bombing survey said that the a-bombs were not necessary.
However the most damning evidence came from the Director of Naval Intelligence.
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.
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.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"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'.
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand