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Einstein Has Left the Building
Ant writes to tell us of an interesting editorial by John Horgan that is being run by the New York Times asking "will there ever be another Einstein?". The author looks at why Einstein holds such a hallowed position in public opinion and why it will be so hard for any one physicist to attain the same level of fame today. From the article: "The paradoxical answer, Gleick suggested, is that there are so many brilliant physicists alive today that it has become harder for any individual to stand apart from the pack. In other words, our perception of Einstein as a towering figure is, well, relative."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
From Wikipedia:
like they used to.
Is it fascism yet?
Show me the "brilliant physicists" that have published four papers in one year, each individually deserving of a Nobel Prize.
This is pretty obvious. While many people were studying physics while Einstein worked, the mathematical methods they used tended to be relatively primitive. A precocious undergraduate can easily understand the state of physics up to Einstein's first few papers. This is not to say that Einstein wasn't insightful. He certainly was. However, we're now studying the fruits of his insights, and it takes a few years of graduate school to become an expert in even a small field. If there is a next Einstein, I foresee people studying him for years after becoming a Ph.D. before they become "experts."
After all, I am strangely colored.
What about Hawking? You can't tell me many lay people with no interest in science don't at least know of him.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
"The paradoxical answer, Gleick suggested, is that there are so many brilliant physicists alive today that it has become harder for any individual to stand apart from the pack. In other words, our perception of Einstein as a towering figure is, well, relative."
There were *many* brilliant physicists in Einstein's time as well.
...they become infinitely massive. Hawking achieved 99.99999% of Einstein's fame and he ended up in a wheelchair from the stress.
This isn't a Quickie.
Gleick's just jealous (but Wolfram is livid and Feynman is rolling over in his grave).
an interesting editorial by John Horgan that is being run by the New York Times asking "will there ever be another Einstein?"
With all the parents doping up their kids on antidepressants, I'd say not likely. (We're already seeing that Generation Y can barely wipe its own nose in the workplace. )
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Einstein is also credited with a huge crossover from the theoretical to the applied aspects of physics. As a population, we tend to see the theoretical side of physics as more complex and intimidating, but the applied side as more down to earth and relevant to our day to day lives.
Einstein's work straddled this line within his lifetime, making him a figure of daunting intellectual prowess and yet still accessable (in some small manner) by the average man. Surely this combination of theory and practice has strengthened his legacy.
More over, Einstein lived at the height of the modernist movement in world history - a time when advances in technology could do no wrong. In the minds of many (and they would be wrong) he single-handedly brought about the revolution in the views society holds on technology. While Einstein is not to be entirely credited or blamed for post-modernism, he is often thought of as the turning point by the public at large.
Information technology, more than any other force, has accelerated the theoretical side of physics away from the applied aspects of the same. We are capable of manipulating mathematics with far greater precision and finess than the physical world we inhabit. As a consequence, it would seem unlikely that any physicist will straddle that line between the theoretical and applied worlds in the near future.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Yes, in the past several hundred years, at any given time, there have been brilliant physicists. I've known/worked for some of the best. There are one or two who really stand out in each era of physics, and Einstein overlapped several of these. Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Maxwell, et al are the true greats, and Einstein is in that category.
Its very easy to say today that Einstein's works are simple and obvious. Thats because they are first year teachings for most students today. However, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Someday a lot of things will seem very obvious, and those people who do the hard work of making that so will be worth of comparison with Einstein.
I would argue two points.
First, once you get an iconic person, that's it. The game is up for quite a while. Ever notice how all the caricatures of muscle-types take after Governor Arnold? Or how all psychiatrists take after Freud? This is not because we haven't had people with more muscles (we have) or analysts who have not helped larger numbers of people. When you have an icon, you might as well keep it. It's a reference that everyone already "gets".
Second, I would argue that as time goes on, it becomes harder and harder to dominate a field. Look at da Vinci. He was a brilliant man to be sure. But if he were alive today, he'd never have been able to master so many fields. There is just so much research out there about the most minute aspect of any field that no one would have time to keep up. And why would we idolize the guy worked in one very small subset, when these people of past years could dominate so many fields? In a way, they had it easy. Anything they looked at represented a new area of science much the way that any explorer who sailed from Europe a thousand years ago would have been able to claim a new territory. It's much harder now; I've tried!
Also, for those of you who have read the story, I suppose the article should not have asked "Will there be another Einstein?", but rather "Will there be another ThatGeek?". And no, there won't be as I've already registered the nick.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
I think a lot of his popularity has to deal with the fact that E=mc^2 is simple enough for anyone to remember. That and his theories were used to create the atomic bomb, ending WWII.
Those 2 things make Einstein much more tangible to the average person. One can remember what he actually did, and see an enormous practical application.
I'm reasonably certain that people around the turn of the last century were also saying similar things and i'm reasonably certain a century into the future the same will be true when they look back at us. I guess one could say maturity would depend on ones perspective.
After the invention of the atomic bomb, governments realized that physicists could actually do something useful. Funding poured in and physics became a business.
A different but similar thing happened to programming in the dotcom boom. The field got flooded with people who were in it for the money and not for the love of the game.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
What are you, an immortal vampire or something?
Part of Einstein's fame probably has a lot to do the the impedending atomic bomb.
That, but also, he was an interesting character. He's got a catchy tagline (E=MC2). He had funny hair.
The fact that he was utterly brilliant, and revolutionized the way we see the world takes a back seat to the fact that your average person sees him as they would a cartoon character. Until we get another person with a comparable combination of brilliance and memorable traits, then no, we won't see "another Einstein."
But that doesn't mean we'll never make any more progress in physics.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Actually, not one of them is considered to be in Einstein's class of intellect. The 'smartest' man in physics is supposedly Edward Witten, founder of M-theory. If you listen to the top theoretical physicists talk about him, he seems to be in the running for most brilliant physicist of all time.
In other words, our perception of Einstein as a towering figure is, well, relative.
Yeah, Isaac Newton felt the same way after the apple hit him in the head.
Einstein put Relativity on the table, which was previously unknown except to a few as something funky going on with Maxwell's equations under a Galilean transformation. This was an entirely new field. And, when extended into General Relativity, is a huge deal. Not many people get to discover a whole new field of physics like that. Newton did with mechanics. But with E&M, it was several people making discoveries, such as Ampere and Faraday and some others. And the full theory wasn't really collected nicely until Maxwell, who also corrected Ampere's Law. And that's only the classical theory, Quantum Electro-Dynamics is another huge thing. But within classical E&M, you can say Maxwell fully documented it, but it was already an explored field (no pun intended, seriously).
Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics had many people make major contributions, specifically when thermodynamics was found to be described entirely within statistical mechanical formalism. Boltzmann made major contributions, eg coming up with entropy and statistical ensembles, but his work wasn't accepted by the community and he ultimately wound up killing himself.
One physicist that may have come close to Einstein in breadth is my favorite, Lev Davidovic Landau. Any graduate student of physics should be familiar with at least some of his ten-volume "Course of Theoretical Physics", otherwise known as Landau-Lifshitz. Landau's grad students were known to be confused during meetings where he would shift topics from superconductivity to hadron interactions, etc. Landau made many amazing contributions, and also won a Nobel Prize, but he wasn't able to open up any entirely new fields of study like Einstein was able to. He made contributions to other fields, such as 2nd-order phase transitions, superconductivity and superfluidity, etc, but no entirely new fields.
Finally, Einstein was also rather active politically and socially, he didn't confine his efforts to the laboratory (well, really his desk since he was a theorist). He also had quite a unique physical appearance, which also contributed to his popularity. But I think, from a popular point of view, his contribution of relativity, which is probably one of the biggest scientific blowbacks to something that was previously accepted as scientifically true and complete, was the dominant factor. Of course scientifically he made many other major contributions, but for the newspapers, trumping over Newton is a rather 'hot' story.
make world, not war
Einstein worked at a patent office and stole Smith's Theory of Relativity.
It's funny, because I actually spent quite a long time a while back thinking about this issue. In the end, I would say it's really difficult to give a certain 'yes' or 'no' answer.
On one hand, there is the issue that information that humans possess is increasing at exponential rate, if not faster. At one point in history, you could be a painter, a sculptor, a mathematician, a philosopher, a physicist, among other things, and still be useful to the society in all of those areas. Today however, such thing is unrealistic due to the fact of how deep each area goes, and how much must be learned of the works of those who came before you in order for you to get to the level of being able to make personal contributions.
On the other hand, you do have to remember that a century or two ago, physics was thought to be a "finished" science. As in, many physicists around the world believed that the Newtonian model has given them all that is needed, and most viewed physics as a done deal. We understand how it works, nothing more is left to learn, move along. Then came Einstein and turned the whole thing upside down.
While on my commutes to and from university last semester, I downloaded audio lectures on particle physics. One of the very first things the professor said was "today, most particle physicists believe that we have a solid understanding of what the world is made up of, and that, unlike a few decades ago, we really have gotten to the bottom layer of the universe." He ended the lectures (which were extremely interesting btw) by saying that as good as the standard model of physics is, we still have 23 quantum numbers that are unattainable through mathematics, ideas which defy logic, and a bunch of other theories like string which may also be onto something.
Overall, I think that if any conclusion is to be made about the state of physics today, I would say that no, Einstein hasn't left the building. In my opinion, we are still missing something crucial about the way the world operates, but we may not realize this until advances in other technology areas such as space travel. Individuals still can make great breakthroughs, but because of issues such as the amount of foundational knowledge, the number of people working on the same things, and the money needed for some of the research, it may be more likely that future discoveries will need to be left to teams of scientists, rather than individuals.
This is a statement of staggering stupidity.
XML causes global warming.
I can't say much in regards to Einstein, but I know that it is getting harder to point out musical geniuses, because the bar is constantly being raised. There are thousands of violinists, who are perfectly happy to practice all day to produce perfect performances. Anything less and they simply won't be noticed. I heard a professional musician comment, some years ago, that nobody stands out any more, because so many are at the level of Heifitz.
:)
I played the violin for about 15 years, and had to stop, because for me the strain of a performance + the need for constant practice overshadows the joy received from playing. I now play quite happily at the back of the second violins in an orchestra - room for fun, and mistakes are rarely heard
Anyway, my point is, perhaps something similar is happening in the field of science.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
The general public didn't learn of the atomic bomb until Hiroshima, and until roughly the start of the war it was generally thought impossible by the people who knew about the possiblity at all. Einstein achieved his fame aroudn 1919 with the gravitational lensing test of General Relativity in 1919.
I'm having trouble parsing this one; if it's radical, it can hardly be common place, no?
XML causes global warming.
He was a physicist, mathematician and engineer. And this was over 2,000 years ago!
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Einstein's brilliance stems from his ability to think outside of the box, in a practical way; and before "thinking outside of the box" was a tagline and not an actual concept.
I'm no Einstein, but I do think in a Bergeronian way. I take a concept, invert it entirely, and think - Why has traditional thinking prevented this from working? and Could it actually work (contrary to popular accepted practice)? Ignore the existing reasoning for why it doesn't work. You will either a) confirm that it doesn't work; b) have an epiphany and a resultant breakthrough or c) something else
Traditional thinking dictates that a square peg can't fit into a round hole. Of course traditional thinking doesn't consider that obscure 4th Dimension - which makes it possible to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Hm, I don't think I can agree with that. Newton was unquestionably one of the most brilliant mathematicians of all time. (Most historians will put him in the three-way tie for first with Gauss and Archimedes.) As a scientist, Newton had a sort of mixed track record once you factor out his mathematical breakthroughs. A lot of the things he did were sitting around waiting to be connected up by the math, once the Calculus arrived on the scene. (For example, the inverse-square law of gravity was generally suspected to apply to gravity by many scientists of the day, include Hooke, Wren, and Halley. But none of them could actually prove that it gave the right behaviors for orbits without Newton's mathematical skills.) If you read the works of Galileo, a generation before Newton (and who Newton almost certainly must have read, although I don't have a source on that), you can see that the man was so close with his physical principles, but lacked the mathematical tools to put it all together. (And he lacked the mathematical genius to create the tools.)
Einstein, on the other hand, was NOT mathematically gifted by any stretch (although he wasn't stupid, either), but had an amazing ability to understand the physical principles and their general consequences. Plus, he was far more loveable than the cold, often caustic Newton.
Granted that Einstein is an iconic figure. Certainly there are more people DOING physics (and even doing so brilliantly) and any other thing today than in 1905 (Einstein's annus mirabilis). And relativity today is for the physics undergraduate today what Newtonian mechanics was for one in 1905. However, this doesnt change the fact that there have not been any paradigmatic shifts since quantum mechanics and its subsequent developments. The second coming will be when someone can come to grips with the measurement problem in quantum mechanics amongst a host of other huge problems.
just diving in without spending years studying someone else's work too thoroughly. I think that his reasoning is that in this manner you will not "learn too much" and you will be more open to new ideas.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Staggering indeed. Like:
"Einstein laboured under handicaps of primitive technology, facilities, etc."
LOL. From half a century downstream, the technology that the current physicists are working with will seem like a handicap in tech, facilities, &cetera. That, my friend, is relative.
Wait... Have you ever read any Strauss?
Thinking outside my Head
I always felt that Einstein's (like Newton's) brilliance was due to his work's insight and ability to portray the world reasonably precisely where it hadn't been done before. Einstein, like Newton came up with a way of explaining how the universe worked based on scientific observations that hadn't been explained up to that point in time. In both cases (and probably others where a breakthrough has been made in some branch of science) other scientists have carried on this work, enhanced it and created products based on it.
It is my firm belief that there will be more great scientists, probably eclipsing previous scientists by further improving man's understanding of the universe by a quantum leap (to coin a phrase) just as Einstein and Newton have done.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
String theory is patent rubbish and many theoretical physicists say as much. The implications for math are profound. But as a physical theory, it is untestable for one and based on shoddy foundations from what I've understood for second. More like a shotgun wedding instead a natural union like say electromagnetism. Ok, I never got past beginning graduate quantum mechanics but you get enough of a flavor for the way things are done. Checkout the comments by Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/view-glashow. html
It's not just a matter of that Einstein is more recent, it's that Newton is wrong. Even though from my understanding Newton's work was a much bigger jump at the time than was Einstein's at his (which is somewhat of a biased view as just yesterday I read most of Feynman's "Six Not-So-Easy Pieces" so am more familiar with the working leading up to special relativity, while I don't know much about the giants Newton stood upon), the fact that its Einstein's, and not Newton's, that marks our best understanding of the universe I think is a major factor in Einstein's fame.
This is, of course, related to the fact that Einstein is more recent, but still deserves mention.
(And on a side note, let me just say that learning about aspects of relativity, even as much as I can, has convinced me that if there is a god, He has quite the sense of humor and creativity.)
John Horgan?! No way! He's not like that at all. Yeah. Read The End of Science . John Horgan is a grumpy, jealous, cynical agitator.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Wasnt Stephen Hawking supposed to be the next one..
Then Stephen Hawking asaid it was probably going to be Ed Witten.
They should give up and concentrate on reanimating the actual Einstein.
My guess is it'll be whoever first proves general relativity is complete rubbish and quantum mechanics only works near earth because the flying spagetti monster changed our subspace.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Show me modern physics papers that contain math that most people with any scientific or engineering background can understand, and that are just a few pages long.
The unsolved problems that people are working on today are much more complex, so comparing the rates at which they are solved is meaningless.
When I was slogging through my 250 page PhD dissertation, I came across an article about disserations of such famous people as Schroedinger and other physicists of the 1920's - whose entire dissertations were about as long as Section 1.1 of my introduction.
Trying to compare now and then is all but irrelevant.
There can't ever be another Einstein. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem holds the trademark and they'd never allow it.
I think that all this tells us is that society has moved on (ahead) and if you want to achive the same level of fame that you have to work harder at it. For his time, Einstein still had to do a lot. Its not like it was easy. Likewise, its not easy 100 years later to achive the same level of fame. Perhaps Richard Feyman or Carl Sagan came close, but of course neither of them don't have an opera with their name in it (AFAIK).
Not to denigrate Einstein's prodigious achievements but general relativity would have been impossible were it not for Riemann's (and Gauss before him) work setting up differential geometry. Not to mention, the contributions by Lorentz, Minkowski and other contemporaries who we forget in our quest to annoint a scientific messiah. It seems that the public *needs* a quaint ubermensch to worship with rather than accepting the more mundane truth that scientific advances occur from the concerted work of many very bright people.
On a scientific level, had Einstein not existed, someone else would have done the work eventually - the tools and conditions were in place for these discoveries to be made. But on a societal level, it probably would have been necessary to invent him...
Let's not be too hasty comparing the minds of today with the likes of Einstein, Newton, etc. These men saw the world in a revolutionary manner. They also faced stiff peer review of their ideas. Which mind today can say they have done such a thing? Minor revolutions need not apply.
Perhaps they were just lucky to be born with certain ('god' given) gifts and (scientific) resources while others must suffer without, but that too is what inspires us stand in awe.
PS: everyone knows how Great People are made if they played Civ4. You just have reallocate funds to the arts and sciences. ^^
Explain to me how a guy running around talking about "billions and billions" of galaxies even begins to come close to what Einstein contributed to physics. At least Feynman made some significant contributions to quantum physics. Putting Carl Sagan in the same class as Einstein is like putting Ashley Simpson in the same class as Einstein.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
There have been a number cases throughout scientific history in which a remarkable discovery was made twice, independently and almost simultaneously. Famous examples are Newton/Leibnitz (calculus) and Darwin/Wallis (evolution by natural selection).
Without meaning to dismiss Einstein - clearly one of the modern age's most brilliant minds - perhaps the progress of science isn't so dependent on the existence of one genius with no equal in his/her age, but rather progress occurs when enough great minds have had long enough to study the current scientific canon.
This would imply that 20th Century science progressed roughly independently of whether Einstein was hit by a bus, plus or minus a decade.
Andy
Newton was a prodigious asshole, but he was also the most profound physicist, and among the best mathematicians, of all time.
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There are no rights or wrongs in physics - only improving approximations. The model Newton proposed for Gravity was as revolutionary back then as Einsteins' relativity theory was in its time; perhaps even more, and both are useful. Relativity solves some problems (observations that doesn't match predictions) with objects that move close to the speed of light, but's more complex - you can use both theories depending on the grade of accuracy vs. work you need.
In that sense, you can rest assured someone will discover something that will extend/prove 'wrong' relativity as well some time in the future. Remember, it's a theory, not a fact. A theory that matches reality very well so far though.
Newton isn't wrong. When dealing with the type of phenomenums he was, his answers are spot on. It's when you get into extreme conditions, such as nearing the speed of light, or very high gravity, that you need to factor in Einstein's corrections. If you were to calculate the motion of a pitched baseball under Newtoinian and Einsteinin phsyics, the difference would be too small to measure, and for all practical purposes, they'd give exactly the same answer.
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is so impressed with Einstein:
http://xtxinc.com/
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
My question is, if Einstein or his equivalent had a job today as a patent clerk at the USPTO, would his mind withstand the onslaught of incomprehensible patents and go onto to do great work. Could even an Einstein make the USPTO right?
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
But Einstein is the posterboy of scientific brilliance *because* standard physics of the time had so many blindspots. There has to be some unoccupied intellectual ground in for a super genius to make "a huge and profound leap." In other words, once the wheel has already been invented, it's harder to make so much progress so quickly. When intellectual fields and/or society maintain large blindspots, it's easier for an individual to make significant leaps by seeing what others can't. Maybe today physicists maintain fewer blindspots. If a clone of Einstein came onto the physics scene today, it's not clear that Einstein 2 would be all that noticable. It seems like a lot of brilliant minds are already tackling all the problems within physics, and I have to doubt there's so much room for more "huge and profound leaps."
On what grounds?
This is completely false. There are many tests that could confirm string theory. Whether there are any (below the Planck scale an accessible to human experiments) that can falsify it is another matter.
This is also far from true. The foundations are speculative but there are many physical reasons why those foundations were postulated. Polchinski gives a good overview.
I did get past graduate QM, and graduate quantum field theory, general relativity, and string theory as well, and I would respectfully suggest that you do some reading about its motivations and accomplishments before you dismiss it. You will note that Glashow doesn't even call it rubbish, let alone "patent" rubbish (implying that it is obviously wrong). He merely says that it has not yet suceeded in making any new predictions that have been confirmed by experiment — which is true, but does not make a theory "rubbish".
Personally, I think it is rather overhyped relative to its accomplishments, but the fact remains that it is the best candidate we have for either a "theory of everything" or even just for a theory of quantum gravity (and I am saying this from the perspective of someone who has worked on a competing theory).
Back in 1900 there were a few Unexplained Phenomena such as the Michaelson-Morley experiment, spectral lines, what held the positive and negative kinds of matter apart.
In retrospect we realize that these were major problems that required fundamental new theories.
There are also some Unexplained Phenomena today, it's just a question whether these are misinterpreted experiments or something new that existing theory can't explain.
When there comes to be too much unexplained stuff, people start thinking outside the box, and we get another Feynman. Or Einstein.
"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
There are loads more. Just do a search for "einstein quotes" and you'll find some truly inspiring material. The man was more than a great physicist. He was also a great thinker.
Nowadays, fame and intelligence are mutually exclusive.
Oh well, what the hell...
I believe great thinkers on Albert Einstein's level are born every week somewhere in the world. The vast majority of them:
Vast amounts of untapped human potential lie all around us. But so what? The world needs bartenders too.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'll agree that if you're using physical laws to do calculations and you use Einstein instead of Newton to calculate the flight of a baseball, you're doing way too much work.
But that doesn't make Newton right.
I'm gonna quote Feynman because he expresses my feelings very well. This is from Six Easy Pieces (p3 in my copy; you can also find it in the "atoms in motion" chapter of Lectures), but I should say that this is a thought I've had long before reading this:
Duh! I wasn't putting him in the same class as Einstein. I just said that he might come close in terms of how many people know about him. Quick ask someone to name as many scientists as they can. I bet in 5 out of 10 respondants that Carl Sagan and Richard Feyman will be in the list. And I was talking about Scientists in general. Not just physicists.
But of course leave it to someone on Slashdot to nit pick my comments.
This is not to say that Einstein wasn't insightful
At first, he was a troll.
Then he became interesting.
But he was very underrated.
His theories were all flamebait.
But he was very informative.
And insightful.
Once in a while, funny.
And now he's getting overrated?
Wow!
BTW, that's Feynman's emphasis, not mine.
Einstein too was an ideas person. Luckily, today's physics is much more fertile with new ideas than today's music!
In most cases, the major advances in physics were preceded by the discovery and measurement of new phenomena, or old phenomena to a new & unprecedented level of accuracy. A great deal of Galileo's insights were inspired by the telescope, which allowed him to see, in great detail, that the old "imperfect earth/perfect heavens" dichotomy of Aristotle and Official Church Dogma were patiently not so. This led to rapid-fire advances in astronomy, which in turn gave Newton the crucial data to test his theory of gravitation; it's easy to assume big things attract other big things - it is the exact AMOUNT that was crucial, and when he first compared the acceleration at the Earth's surface vs. the acceleration the Moon was undergoing to keep in orbit around the Earth, he found that his inverse square force assumption was way off. He stayed quiet for a decade, when new and much more accurate data came in, correcting the previous estimates of the size, and therefore the distance of the moon. And then the acceleration of the moon towards the earth was exactly right to fit the acceleration of objects near the earth's surface and the assumption of fall off of force by the square. Then he started talking about Universal Gravitation a bit more.
Einstein, and the rest of the quantum physicists, were following up on the recent discovery of both radioactivity and the unification of electricity and magnetism by Maxwell.
The point I am (longwindedly) making is that ultimately new data drove the physics. We are at a point right now where it is so expensive to probe in areas we have not looked that we have an embarrassing richness of theories to match a paucity of data. The only clear-cut result that I know of that is outside the bounds of the Standard Model of particle physics is the recent revelation that neutrinos seem to change their type (electron, mu, and tau) as time passes, based on the distribution of neutrinos received on opposite sides of the Earth from the Sun (Sci-Am, I think about a year or two ago). In biology, OTOH, we have just recently been able (due to computer horsepower) to sequence massive numbers of genes, as well as make crude computer simulations of what kind of proteins these genes would construct. It is a new tool, the computer, that is allowing biology to seize the spotlight.
There will be more Einsteins, but perhaps in biology rather than physics for a while....
(DISCLAIMER: IANA scientist, but sometimes wish I was....)
So what's the deal with life, the Universe, the Big Bang, subatomic particles, black holes, dark energy, electromagnetic radiation, gravitons, the Higgs Boson, galaxies, the nth-dimension, time, and everything? If he answers this, he's another Einstein.
Feynman is not especially well-known outside of science and geek circles. If you asked most people to name scientists, there's a good chance that Einstein would be on the list, and then perhaps Hawking, and maybe Newton or Galileo, but Feynman would, among the general populace, be fairly rare. Stephen Jay Gould would be more likely to appear, IMHO.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
"Time will tell. Sooner or later, time will tell."
Second, why should we expect another Einstein, or Newton? Given that anyone's accomplishments must be measured relative to the common populace, we would expect people of such stature to be rare.
There are many factors that go into what makes someone great. Part of it is certainly being in the right time and place. Another is the social climate. Is Einstein the equal of Newton, or vice versa? That is difficult to say. They lived in completely different times. Could one do the same accomplishments as the other? One common element that appears between the two is that they were both fairly prolific (Newton did calculus, physics, and ironically enough, why light is a wave). I'd be curious if other people could come up with other historical science figure that also had several major findings. Feynman? Turing?
YES, IMHO. Provided we have the same ENVIRONMENT, ECONOMIC and SOCIAL conditions. They seed and stimulate the right individual.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
So then would it be wrong of me to point out that you spelled Richard Feynman's name incorrectly for a second time, even after I oh so subtly pointed out that fact in my last response? Or perhaps you were speaking of an alternate reality in which a low level government official inadvertently dropped the "n" when transcribing Feynman's last name on his birth certificate? :-)
Quick ask someone to name as many scientists as they can.
I really doubt that your average Joe could come up with these guys. You'd be more likely to hear Bill Nye, or Dr. Jekyll, or that dude who created Frankenstein. Seriously, when we live in an era when fewer than 1/2 the people in this country can name the sitting VP, do you really expect them to come up with either of these guys? I'd be really surprised if 1 in 10 could even name a real scientist. In my unscientific poll of our household, everyone came up with Einstein. For a second scientist, I got Edison, Galileo, and Bill Nye.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
What about me? ;)
Who sent this down? I think it's good...
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I prefer to ask "Will there ever be a rainbow"
(I know it's OT but I also wonder if others had that image come up in their heads when they read the article title)
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
Nobody has mentioned the late Richard Feynman?
A humoristic and personable genius figure--or at least he comes off as such in his books. Maybe it's all crap--I don't know. I seriously think that his image could bolster the reputation of physicists the world over.
> most brilliant physicist of all time.
Most brilliant *theoretical* physicists, sorry but that's a different class.
You know people tend to be interested in theories only when they apply in the real world. Einstein theories did apply in the real world, string theories have not been able to do interesting testable predictions yet, unfortunately..
That is just evil.
http://outcampaign.org/
The four-day simultaneous harmonic time cube has been thoroughly debunked--he failed to account for higher dimensions, so we are actually living in an 8-day simultaneous harmonic time tesseract. Check your equations!
"...or that dude who created Frankenstein..."
That would be his parents.
Frankenstien WAS the (mad)scientist. His 'creation' was named Adam and is sometimes called "Frankenstiens monster".
Just taking my turn with picking nits. No harmfull/mean intent here.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
I wonder, are there any famous ID 'scientists', or does god get all the credit?
Throughout centuries numerous scientists have argued that the simple questions have all been answered, that only the niche, complex and esoteric aspects will be studied from here on out. In fact many physicists felt that way shortly before the end of the 19th century.
Today I'm betting that, like then, there are still plenty of fundamental questions left to answer (although we might not know how to ask them yet). And the funny thing about truly fundamental questions is that they usually have pretty simple answers. But getting there through established theories and avenues of experimentation is often impossible; it takes a major shift in thought.
But the results can still be simple. While the mathematics that Einstein ultimately employed to describe the theory are complex, the general relativity theory itself is so simple in concept that high school kids can grasp it by simple analogy--the rubber mat with heavy objects on it.
And in fact Einstein himself struggled with the math--but that did not prevent him from formulating the theory. The theory came first, then with help he found the math that could describe it. Einstein's problems with advanced math did not keep him from making major breakthroughs, and I doubt it will stop the "next Einstein" either.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"that dude who created Frankenstein"
Frankenstein (Baron von Frankenstein to you buddy) was the dude who created the monster. The monster had no name.
Many physicists today believe that Ed Witten, due to his uncanny grasp of head-exploding mathematics, is our best hope for revolutionary advances in theoretical physics today.
I knew that I was going to screw something up. No offense taken. :-)
His 'creation' was named Adam and is sometimes called "Frankenstiens monster".
Interesting. I have to admit that I never saw the movie or read the book. So maybe you can explain something to me then. Wouldn't the "Bride of Frankenstein" be the woman who married Frankenstein rather than one who would marry Frankenstein's monster?
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
I dunno. One of the things that made Einstein great, from the scientific point of view, is that he cleared away a great deal of 19th-century complexity in optics and mechanics and replaced it with a theoretical framework of such dazzling simplicity that anyone could grasp its basic principles, but of such power that understanding its full implications demands high intelligence and decades of sustained study.
It's like the way Copernicus swept away the huge complexity of the Ptolemaic astronomer's theory of planetary orbits, all those cycles and epicycles, with the simple and powerful idea of the elliptical orbit. Or how Mendeleev replaced the 18th century's bewildering lists of correlations between chemical properties of substances with the simple and powerful organizational principles of the Periodic Table.
Even in my own experience as a theoretician I find the truly brilliant ideas are not complex. They're insights that drastically simplify and clarify. They're the kind of things that, when you understand them, make you slap your head in awe and envy.
So, from this point of view, the hideous complexity of modern high-energy physics theories could well be a sign that they lack brilliance, that another Einstein is needed to clear away all the baroque epicycles, so to speak, and replace it all with something beautifully simple and far more powerful.
Of course, this might not be true -- it might instead be the case that the basic structure of the universe is simply too complex for ordinary humans to understand even its principles. But I find this hard to believe (for no logical reason, I admit).
So I personally disagree with Mr. Horgan. I think he's just channeling Albert Michelson in 1896 ("The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered....Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.") Like Michelson, Horgan thinks that because no revolution has happened in 50 years one will never happen. But it was almost 300 years between Newton and Einstein. So I'd give it another century or two before giving up.
Perhaps it is that wild and crazy hair. Most people would have considered such hair fit for a bum. However, win a nobel prize and make some big discoveries with hair like that, and you are an instant icon. Nobody could ever have hair like that now without being called a copy-cat.
If Neals Bohr had that hair first....
Table-ized A.I.
Of course, maybe he had such a humbled, awed, pacifistic and spiritual world view because of his deep understanding of it ;)
Not to belittle Einstein's genius, but if it weren't for his hair or his cute little expressions, would he be a household name? Do people really know his name because of his genius, or because he was a genius and could be turned into a pop icon of sorts. Think about many of scientists that are household names: Einstein with the crazy hair, Hawking with the wheelchair, Edison and the lightbulb, Newton and the apple. Each of these people, while geniuses, have something that pop culture can latch on to, and basically turn their name more friendly and less intimidatingly technical. My point here is: how many other geniuses have lived that we barely know of, simply because they don't have a "thing"?
This is the greatest challenge I've ever heard.
there are so many brilliant physicists alive today
...we're running a beowulf cluster of brilliant physicists?
Imagine!
recognized. Some scientists from this generation will stand out in retrospect, just as some from previous generations did. The fact that the general american public no longer knows who is at the forefront of scientific innovation merely speaks to the sad state of scientific education in the United States. If the situation does not change, we will all suffer the consequences.
and wish in the other...
Will there ever be another Einstein? YES, IMHO. Provided we have the same ENVIRONMENT, ECONOMIC and SOCIAL conditions. They seed and stimulate the right individual.
I know you mean to imply that better funding for social programs is a good thing, but the environment that created Einstein was the poverty of post WWI Germany and the hatred and violence of the Holocaust.
I get awfully sick of people who are always overselling their pet causes. Just maybe even your most virtuous laundry list of social programs has little to do with the creation of genius, whatever other good they do.
I agree to that comment in the article such that we (the applied physics community) are somewhat wrapped with the theoretical clan of Einstein wannabes. Physics back in 1905 was not separated into 2 styles (theoretical & experimental/applied). You created a theory, then a gedanke experiment, then a physical experiment and finally provide an application--doesn't happen currently. In addition, quantum mechanics and following software OOD has completely turned our thought process on its head. From that and the computer, a lot of the other disciplines (Math, Biology, Chemistry and others) are using so many physics-derived concepts that the category "physics" has become blurred aside from pure theoretical studies. Then again, most cultures nowadays are so wrapped up into politics or $profiting$ that the real science is missed to be rediscovered years later--as Einstein found.
I think the next revolutionary discoveries that are "categorized under physics" will either be in Biophysics or non-linear science (aka Chaos Theory). Lots of interesting applications and major shifts in our 'thought processes' are evident in those studies. Cynically, the next Einstein will likely come after we all are convinced that Intelligent Design is fact and Math&Science are not requirements in High School anymore (J/K)--nah, really, there will be another "Einstein" from the TFA's context... in due time.
Amen to this! Absolutely! If I had mod points, you'd get 'em.
licet differant, aequabitur
You might be right, but you may well be shown to be foolish 10 or 50 years from now. I'd bet on the latter.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The monster would also be called "Frankenstein", since it would inherit Dr. Frankenstein's family name, the mad doctor being its closest equivalent to a parent. So "Bride of Frankenstein" could refer to the wife of either one of them.
Unless, of course, the name was really Frank N. Stein, in which case the monster would have chicken brains and would therefore be unlikely to marry anyone ;).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Einstein, for reasons I don't know, is very well know, but I belive he wasn't by far the best phisichian or scientist, I belive the work of newton is by far more important and biggers.
But it seems there was some kind of hype on 20th century, when he was already old, that he was a genius. It seems much like Steve Jobs and Mac fans, there is a lot of merketing behind those myths, more than real merit sometimes.
I'm not saying they don't have merit, just that the myth growns bigger than it.
Which is ironic since Einstein had little to do with the atomic bomb, and was the most famous critic of the physical theories it was based upon.
On the other hand, much of Einsteins critics of quantom physics help push it forward and solve its difficult problems. By the time Einstein gave up counterproving it, it was pretty much accepted theory.
What was radical military tech in Einstein's time is now commonplace.
I am trolling
Will there be another mediocre white male scientist who exploits the intellectual breakthroughs of his wife in order to gain fame and infamy?
I would say most certainly yes..
Paris Hilton is a prime example
nyuk nyuk
The article misses out on a couple of things, perhaps. Einstein also stands out because he was an intensely moral man who had interesting and brave things to say on the sheer mystery of life. He was a highly gifted communicator who wrote well on a wide range of subjects far beyond his own field.
Even if you don't subscribe to the "myth of genius", men of such rounded accomplishment are very rare. Knowledge has expanded so rapidly that it is hard enough to know your own field, let alone know enough worth saying about other fields. Perhaps Einstein's was the last generation that could span, if not all knowledge, then a substantial part of it. We are all specialists these days.
Besides, we now live in a world in which enterprise and individuality of the Einsteinian kind are less appreciated. Since his heyday, so much has been subordinated to the dismal science of economics, the realm where the beancounter is king and inspiration is seen as a shocking waste of tax dollars or corporate profits. Arguably, the closest equivalent to Einstein today is not a scientist but the Dalai Lama, another gifted communicator who understands that knowledge alone is not enough.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
... not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Einstein, on the other hand, was NOT mathematically gifted by any stretch
That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard in my life. I challenge you to find even one working physicist who agrees with it.
Einstein opened their minds so they could become as good physicists as he was, that's the big diference between Einstein ant today cientists.
1. Einstein became famous and a household name in the year 1919, when during a solar eclipse, it was found and experimentaly proved, how gravity of the Sun bends light (which was predicted and measured by Einstein about 15 years back (1905))
2. Einstein became famous when he redefined Newton's definition of gravity, proving that "action of a distance" is wrong.
3. From Einstein's theory of gravity we know (and in fact we are now trying to measure it now a days) why a distant supernova changes the height of Empire State building.
4) Einstein's is famous because of the nature of his invention, we have been living in a Universe which is defined by him; for example: the concept of relativity, which is highly unintuitive concept, but the moment we understand it, we say "how the hell he understood/guess it".
5) Einstein is famous because of his definition of time-space relationship is more than a science fiction.
5) Einstein is famous for his look; he just looks like a genius; and on the top of that he is humble.
Now question is would there be another Einstein? Yes, of course, but not in our lifetime.
However, there are lots of inventions in the area of particle physics, as Richard Feynman once said, "Now I can say nobody understand particle physics", it's a extremely complicated area to understand any behaviors of those sub atomic particles; so it has little meaning to ordinary people.
Anyone can get Einstein like fame, by answering and proving one of the following questions,1. What is gravity?
2. Why is the Universe so large and so old?
3. (How) did the universe begin?
4. (How) will the universe end?
We will know at least one answer of the above within next 500 years. A new Einstein will born.
The great, memorable minds change our view of reality. Newton made it clockwork. Freud made it unconscious. Einstein made it relative. If someone else changes our universe for us again, they will be remembered.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Einstein could clearly see there were problems in the 'interpretation' of the results of the mathematical quantum mechanical equations, especially considering that the Quantum mechanics is really just a statistical model, and tried to derive a theory based on more fundamental physics.
May be this was the correct way after all. Check out the research being done at the Calphysics Institute.
In particular:
- Nature of Mass
- Origin of Inertia
- Gravitation
- Zero Point Energy
Also some interesting papers:
- Gravity and the Quantum Vacuum Inertia Hypothesis [pdf]
- Update on an Electromagnetic Basis for Inertia, Gravitation, the Principle of Equivalence, Spin and Particle Mass Ratios
- Connectivity and the Origin of Inertia
- Inertial mass and the quantum vacuum fields
- Stochastic nonrelativistic approach to gravity as originating from vacuum zero-point field van der Waals forces [pdf]
- Zero-point field induced mass vs. QED mass renormalization
- Inertial Mass and Vacuum Fluctuations in Quantum Field Theory
It may be possible that Gravity is not a fundamental force after all. It may be derived from the three fundamental quantum forces: Strong, EM, and Weak.
Mass may be derived from these forces. Hadrons (comprised of quarks) which feel the Strong force (and also the Weak and EM forces) have a stronger opposing force from the Zero Point Field (ZPF) and therefore have a high induced mass (i.e. have a higher measured mass). Electrons don't feel the Strong force - only the EM and Weak force - and so feel a lesser force from the ZPF and thus have a smaller induced mass. And finally, neutrinos only feel the Weak force and so have a tiny induced mass.
Furthermore, as Gravity is not a fundamental force, but is a derived force along with its equivalent derived force - inertia, then the ZPF can be real, without producing infinite curvature of space. The gravitational force actually comes from an anisotropic ZPF caused by the scattering of the ZPF off local matter. In flat space though far from any masses, the ZPF is on average isotropic causing only microscopic jiggling of Strong, EM, and Weakly charged particles leading to the normal quantum uncertainty and heisenburg uncertaintu principal.
Of course this is only a rough overview, there is a lot more in the links above. Check them out for a fuller understanding!
As a Disabled American I find it offensive that /. marked this post as "funny". Also the Coward who posted the tasteless remark is wrong.
Steven J. Hawkings developed a rare neurological disorder at a young age which slowly paralyzed him. Afterwards, he throw himself into studying mathmatics, physics, and other sciences with immense furocity. He released a book which became a movie called "A Brief History of Time" which is today still considered a major resourced for information on Quantum Physics. He is a college professor and is highly respected by his students and by fellow scientists around the world.
He has called the new Einstein by some. He even appeared on STTNG in a spot where Data was playing cards with him, Einstein, and Newton. How many other phyicists do you know of appeared on TV as guest stars? The only other great man of science I can recall who has had as much attention is the late, great Carl Sagan. Author of the book "Cosmos" which became a very popular PBS series, and the author of the book "Contact" which became a movie after he passed away from cancer.
Even though Steven Hawkings is bound to a wheelchair for the rest of his life and must communicate using a computer he controls with his eyes he doesn't let the fact that he is paralyzed get him down. He's an inspiration to everyone who has a disability, whether they are visually impaired (like me) or physically impaired. His body may not work right anymore, but it didn't effect his mind any. The same thing is most people associate physical disability with mental disability far too often.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
In regards to the General Theory- As the creation of a single mind, it is undoubtedly the highest intellectual achievement of humanity. (Boorse, Motz, and Weaver; The Atomic Scientists)
Really, I thought Euler had already deduced that space might be curved due to the properties of the universe, but was unable to find corroborating evidence and failed to publish his theories after decades of searching. At one time, he chose to try and determine the angles between three mountain peaks using techniques he developed for measurement, but was unable to establish that space was curved because the difference was within acceptable error for his equipment. Laser inferometry showed that he would have had to be accurate between 1-10 and 1-20 degrees in order to show that space was curved. The fact that he deduced this and sought evidence for it without any prodding or any recorded reason make Euler clearly the intellectual superior.
That is a great story, but attributed to the wrong person. Gauss was the man, not Euclid, who set about finding evidence of a curved universe by measuring the angles between three mountains. He had a strong suspicion that Euclid's fifth postulate was not true, and had done much of the work, but never published it because he did not believe his proof was definitive enough. In his lifetime, another man, Bolyai, did publish similar work, which Gauss claimed to have also discovered previously.
The entire premise of curved space comes about from the idea that Euler's fifth postulate may not, in fact, be true. Science spent 2000 years trying unsuccessfully to prove it was.
Do yourself a favor. Ignore this joker and go buy some of the books of Einstein's writings.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
... Now where have I heard somethig like that before ? ;-)
In the time of Copernicus, all astronomy was trying to accomplish was a better navigation system. The epicycle and circular orbit remains in the Copernicus model. Copernicus replaced the geocentric model of the planets with a heliocentric model. It produced slightly more accurate navigation. He wasn't trying to change the world.
Kepler discovered elliptical orbits.
It must be nice to jump a few hundred years in one sentence, associate completely unrelated motives and turn Einstein into a Messiah sent by benevolent space aliens.
Most of us can't do that.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I think that was his biggest failure to let the country be divided.
The division caused more bloodshed than the undivided country would have faced.
I wish he had succeeded.
Not that it has much to do with Einstein's value as a scientist, but it shows he was multifaceted, to say the least.
This isn't quite as insightful as the other comments in this discussion, but did anyone else notice that the icons for this story are arranged in such a way that it appears Einstein is being sucked into the vacuum cleaner?
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suwain_2
"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest"
I don't think we need great scientists so much anymore, since the Internet has allowed mankind to collaborate and specialize on levels never known before. Most change in science is evolutionary with many small breakthroughs and others tying them together and explaining what they all mean.
Way I see it, 1 million independent minds half as strong as Einstein collaborating and conducting peer-reviews on each others work and learning more about their specialties has and will continue to generate the best science ever known to man. However, this does not lead to an science celebrities on the scale of Einstein or Newton or even Bohr.
Too bad though, because these sorts of role models inspire more people to study the sciences.
The situation in physics still reminds me of 1900 when most physicists thought physics was "almost complete" after two centuries of elaborating upon Newton. There were a still loose ends however: blackbody radiation formulas blew up with infinities; the speed of light measured isotropic when physics predicted it show change in the direction of motion. Of course these "loose ends" mushroomed into entire new branches of physics.
In 2000 we have the same scenario. Many think physics is "almost unified", most of cosmology and fundamental particles have been charted or predicted. However, nature has a way of throwing curve balls at us. Will another "Einstein" grab many of these loose ends and clean it up for us?
While it may be true that there are more brilliant physicists working today making it harder for someone to stand out, I think that there are a couple of other issues involved. Several people have already mentioned that Albert was a non-conformist and the different make for better press. But the other reason that he was so popular was that he was extremely quotable.
Mark Twain was a gifted writer but a good part of his stature came not just from his work but the quips that he dropped. Give us another genuinely quotable, quirky, flamboyant playboy genius and we may have another media darling like Einstein. It was as much the press and the brilliance.
The thing about our blind spots is that by definition we can't see them, so we have no idea how many of them there are or how big there are. Maybe Einstein 2 would find one big enough to drive 90% of the universe (dark) thru.
San Francisco Photographers
that's what I was saying. When Newton invented the Calculus, he was able to complete the work that so many had wanted to do, but been unable to. His mathematical abilities are what allowed him to make the scientific discoveries, not his brilliance as a scientist.
And you have your people reversed. Newton discovered the Calculus first and then sat on it for decades. In the meantime, Leibiniz rediscovered it. Bitterness ensued.
In order to do that someone would have to create an Infinite Improbability Drive and we all know how unlikely that is.
I *am* a working physicist. You were saying?
He wasn't really that gifted at math by his own admission. I'm not saying he was a raging idiot because he was certainly capable. But there's a big gap between being able to use mathematics and being able to invent whole new areas of mathematics. And he wasn't up for the latter. Which is why, when he was working on General Relativity, he had to seek outside help with the math. (This is no insult to the man. In fact, it's a helluva compliment. He knew when he was in over his head and he had the balls to seek help. As a result, his theory saw the light of day and we're better off for it.)
Actually, Einstein didn't criticize the real work that lead to the atomic bomb, since that was really the experimental results. I don't think that quantum was up for describing nuclear fission from the theoretical perspective at that time. In fact, Einstein signed off on the letter to Roosevelt telling the president to get working on a bomb because Germany was already working on it. That pretty clearly indicates that he believed the experimental results. But he continued to work on his own alternative approach to unification of the forces (and thus removing the need for at least much of QM) until his death.
Also, don't forget that he was also one of the founders of Quantum Mechanics. He didn't like the direction it took later on.
Einstein is a great scientist no doubt, but is he the greatest? Is this the conspiracy of Americans who feel they own the world and think they can force their lies down people's throat?Americans are good in marketing - be it true or a lie.History is a witness to it.
I do agree with the comment that there are many brillient brains around the world today and it is very hard to pick the greatest of them all..Its a good change and good for mankind too.
I also feel Einstein was great but not the greatest.
Sure, there were the great discoveries he made, but other men who made astounding contributions to science aren't nearly as well known. It's in no small part because of his ability to promote himself, and the causes he believed in. Especially since he was a pacifist during the two biggest wars in history, he was particularly vocal.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Every time I read that, the content changes into an unpredictiable state.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The truth is that fields do lose their momentum. With the cancellation of the SSC and the total dominance of the Standard model, I think physics is there. Especially given that the biggest new things in Physics are the anthropic principle and a theory that isn't even wrong...
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Of course!
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Odd that the same people who wouldn't be caught dead with a picture of Hitler on their chest think it's cool to wear a Chairman Mao T-shirt. Mao arguably killed 5 times as many people as Adolf. It is indeed all about perception.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
"And by induction, all odd numbers are prime. Sometimes patterns really do stop. Even in history."
Not all odds are prime, but no primes are even.
Patterns don't start or stop, they're just misinterpreted or misunderstood.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If he'd stayed in Germany, he probably wouldn't have survived the Holocaust.
-a
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
A lot of those ideas where already out there, actually. Galileo certainly knew and appreciated the first law, for example.
Also, don't forget that Newton never said "F=ma". He said that F = dp/dt, an inherently calculus-based statement. Without the Calculus, that definition is almost useless.
As a scientist, he was actually kind of sketchy. He did some great experimental research, but also was very convinced of some really sketchy things when he should have known better, as a scienist.
Actually, you do have a point, of a sort. If they hadn't lost so badly to the Japanese, they wouldn't have tried to reform their military and wouldn't have held out so long in WW I. If they'd lost quicker, there probably wouldn't have been a revolution.
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There will be one or ones.
Those that unify general relativity and quantum theory.
Those that will give us the great unification of forces and that ever evading gravity.
Einstein, for a prominent example, should have also known better than to reject quantum mechanics when his own work suggested it, and he certainly should never have made the entirely unscientific statement regarding this rejection: "God does not play dice."
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
I sort of disagree here. I think what is most important is that we are on the outside of a black box trying to control what is within by sending in effectors and observing changes. Using this method, no matter how precise, we will never know what is in the box, and so will never know of all the possibilities that we are missing.
Is this a case where we should be thinking INSIDE the box? I suppose, like the state of Schroedinger's cat, we shall never know until we open the box, which we all know belongs to some Greek gal named Pandora...
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
You're quite right, I was thinking of Kepler, not Copernicus! Thank you for the correction.
"...or that dude who created Frankenstein..."
You may be picking nits but really the phrase stands as a commentary of the general intellectual malaise plaguing the world.
Ha!
Either way, the monster is as much Frankenstein as his creator. It is how he is known and if that is not a name/alias then what is?
As to the grandparent post, I generally disagree with the assertion that people are dumber. I believe that people are percieved as dumber. And I blame that womanizing, self-serving, jackass Einstein.
Here you have a famous scientist given the world's ear and what does he do? Make excuses for his own bad behavior is what. Can't match your socks? Tell the world, it's immaterial. Can't remember a simple phone number? Say that if it's been written down then there is no need to memorize it.
[rant]
Tell future generations that imagination is more important than knowledge?
Well, guess what Einstein? That advice cost me a shot at enrolling in a prestigious university. I have imagination falling out my backside, but it has no direction or purpose and standardized testing asks for details. Advanced degree's (Master or PhD) require retention, not learn and purge.
[/rant]
It may be that Einstein simply gave lazy/dumb people an excuse to not remember anything. But by that same standard why are we so critical of people that do not have sufficient factoids on tap? Seriously, the who's who of modern science? You would have to be a physicist or a physics junkie to have enough names on tap to hit 5 let alone 10, imho.
The "God does not play at dice with the universe" was a metaphorical way of saying he didn't believe the probabilistic perspective on QM. Even if you are unable to spot that, then you're reading it as a purely non-scientific statement of faith and it has nothing to do with him as a scientist any more than if he had said, "God is merciful."
Einstein rejected some of the conclusions of QM, but none of the parts he disputed were tested at that time. We've only just tested the "spooky action at a distance" predictions that he disliked. And a lot of his objections really came down to Bohr's interpretation of QM, which is purely a matter of philosphy and not science. Scientists are allowed to disagree with each other and even be wrong to the extent that the data allow. And they're allowed to reject other people's extensions of their own works.
If a scientist adheres to a wrong theory after the data have shown him or her to be wrong, that's bad science. There have been cases of this, to be sure. Of course, there's usually a significant period where the data are not yet overwelming for or against an idea.
Think of what might have happened if the natural philosophers in the days of Kepler, Galileo, and Copernicus had at their disposal Fourier theory. They might never have abandoned the epicycles, as these epicycles, at their heart, would be described today as terms in a Fourier series. We would have been stuck with that cumbersome theory until some genius realized that Fourier analysis was the wrong way of looking at the problem, and the advance of physics might have been retarded for a century or more.
Perhaps modern physics has a similar problem, there being knowledge of too many mathematical tools that scientists have fallen into the rut of using certain ones because they seem to work so well. In the meantime, the edifice of modern physics grows more and more top-heavy.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I've seen an interesting illustration of your excellent point in certain types of theoretical many-body physics. Basically, because it's straightforward to do computer simulations of complex many-body systems, people tend to turn to that tool first. If it gets them the answers they want, that tends to short-circuit the effort that would otherwise go into developing new theoretical insight that would solve the problem without the brute-force number crunching.
Now, all scientists certainly prefer to get their answers from brilliant, simple theoretical insight rather than brute-force numerical computation, but...if the latter is much faster and cheaper, well, you do need to publish or perish...
In the near future we will have solved the Question: What is the nature of consciousness? Once this algorithm is etched into silicon, all problems will be solvable with brute force (more memory, speed, etc). Scientists are obsolete, like chess players.
But you have hit the nail on the head. The questions being asked in the early 1900's were big but simple, and lended themselves to correspondingly important but simple answers. The unsolved questions that remain today are either big and hopelessly complex, or small and merely really complex. There will never be another "Einstein" because there simply isn't a pile of big questions with readily understandable answers remaining to be solved.
Yesterday, I had to work my way through an obscure polymer physics paper I found from 1995. The derivations were far more complex than Einstein's work and required much more mathematical sophistication. Yet this paper will probably not be read by more than a few hundred people and its authors will never receive fame and fortune because of it.
This reminds me of a broader point. As the number of scientists expands (there are more scientists working today than have retired in all of history), it becomes increasily difficult to do the following two things:
1: Follow what everyone else is doing
2: Have an insight that no one else already has had
I would estimate that 9/10 of my insights lead directly into someone else's previously published work. However, given the explosion of the literature, it is becoming harder to confirm this. I had the same insight as the authors of the paper I earlier mentioned. I spent probably a full day of work looking through the literature to see if I could find any information about this idea, and came up blank. I then actually began unknowingly reproducing the paper, and actually got comparible Monte Carlo results with a little simulation program I wrote (while failing at the derivation). Only after putting five days or so of work into the idea did I come across the paper in an obscure journal. Worse yet is getting "scooped", which occurs when you have an idea, put months of work into it, and then suddenly you find that someone publishes a paper nearly identical to the one you are working on. Unfortunately for you, they had the idea six months earlier than you did.
Comparing the results of today's scientists and those of a century prior are simply meaningless. The problems are smaller and more difficult, and the number of competitors has expanded exponentially.
It's simple, MOST people make the same mistake you did. It's been going on for years.
It may have started when the first movies (IIRC Charles Ogle played the monster in the first (silent) version of the movie) came out.
Most people refer to the original Star Wars movie as "Star Wars" and not "Star Wars: A New Hope", which is the full title.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
My other body is also not wearing any.