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Quantum Trickery - Einstein's Strangest Theory
breckinshire writes "The New York Times is running an interesting story on Einstein's strangest theory. The theory was brought to light this past fall when 'scientists announced that they had put a half dozen beryllium atoms into a "cat state." [...] These atoms were each spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time.' It is an interesting writeup for even the uninitiated and also concentrates on Einsteins role as a 'founder and critic of quantum theory.'"
As Richard Feynman pointed out, "why" is a question of philosophy, not science. The question why has no end. Why do electrons repel each other? That no one knows, they just do. I might go so far as to say it can't be known. Most people stop asking why when they get an answer they're familiar with. Science deals with questions of how. How do electrons repel each other? Well, current theory says that photons travel from one electron to another and push them apart.
AccountKiller
Quite easy. A. Einstein took the Quantum Theory and tried to get very, very strange predictions from it. Basicly he did what Science is about: To test the theory, he used it to predict the outcome of certain experiments.
Most of the predictions appeared completely absurd to him, and he wrote papers about those (like the Bose-Einstein-Condensate or the synchronous state as mentioned in the article). Because of the counterintuitive results he was getting from applying Quantum Theory he doubted its validity.
But most of the described experiments weren't feasible at the time they were thought out. Some of them are right now, and the Bose-Einstein-Condensate is a reality, and this article in the NYT describes another one of the strange predictions being proved.
So with doubting the predictions of Quantum Theory and describing experiments to falsify them A. Einstein in fact lead the way to the advancement of the same theory he had his problems with. That's a fine example of how Science is supposed to work: Always try to find contradictions to the theories and describe experiments which might falsify the theory. Advancement of Science doesn't care if you believe the theories to be correct. Every new hypothesis has its bugs and rough edges which can only be corrected if someone actually finds experiments where the bugs show up.