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How Einstein Lost His Bearings, and With Them, General Relativity (quantamagazine.org)
Kevin Hartnett, writing for Quanta magazine: Albert Einstein released his general theory of relativity at the end of 1915. He should have finished it two years earlier. When scholars look at his notebooks from the period, they see the completed equations, minus just a detail or two. "That really should have been the final theory," said John Norton, an Einstein expert and a historian of science at the University of Pittsburgh. But Einstein made a critical last-second error that set him on an odyssey of doubt and discovery -- one that nearly cost him his greatest scientific achievement. The consequences of his decision continue to reverberate in math and physics today.
Here's the error. General relativity was meant to supplant Newtonian gravity. This meant it had to explain all the same physical phenomena Newton's equations could, plus other phenomena that Newton's equations couldn't. Yet in mid-1913, Einstein convinced himself, incorrectly, that his new theory couldn't account for scenarios where the force of gravity was weak -- scenarios that Newtonian gravity handled well. "In retrospect, this is just a bizarre mistake," said Norton. To correct this perceived flaw, Einstein thought he had to abandon what had been one of the central features of his emerging theory. Einstein's field equations -- the equations of general relativity -- describe how the shape of space-time evolves in response to the presence of matter and energy. To describe that evolution, you need to impose on space-time a coordinate system -- like lines of latitude and longitude -- that tells you which points are where. Another interesting read on Quanta: Why Stephen Hawking's Black Hole Puzzle Keeps Puzzling.
Here's the error. General relativity was meant to supplant Newtonian gravity. This meant it had to explain all the same physical phenomena Newton's equations could, plus other phenomena that Newton's equations couldn't. Yet in mid-1913, Einstein convinced himself, incorrectly, that his new theory couldn't account for scenarios where the force of gravity was weak -- scenarios that Newtonian gravity handled well. "In retrospect, this is just a bizarre mistake," said Norton. To correct this perceived flaw, Einstein thought he had to abandon what had been one of the central features of his emerging theory. Einstein's field equations -- the equations of general relativity -- describe how the shape of space-time evolves in response to the presence of matter and energy. To describe that evolution, you need to impose on space-time a coordinate system -- like lines of latitude and longitude -- that tells you which points are where. Another interesting read on Quanta: Why Stephen Hawking's Black Hole Puzzle Keeps Puzzling.
In this era of computers and CPU's and constant distraction, he wouldn't have managed to get to even first realization. The Theory of Relativity was a triumph of abstract thought; this is something that doesn't really happen anymore.
Whoa! Interesting nerdy stuff! no politics! no psuedo science!
Hot damn!!
This is very interesting, thanks very much.
What actually happens when matter turns to energy and back?
What's the difference between energy that is electromagnetic and energy that is motion?
Why the difference?
Can you turn motion energy into photon energy?
Why not?
Where does the value of C come from?
Why is there a limit at all?
Why is that limit exceeded by observation?
How come there are so many forces?
Why is gravity only an attraction force and others not?
What is time?
Why does inertia and momentum require time?
Why don't things happen instantaneuosly?
What if they do? How would we perceive that?
What would motion look like in a world where everything happens instantaneously?
What would that be perceived as to beings whose brains are built on the motion of electons?
I'm curious, perhaps someone can explain.
Gravity exists in the real word, independent of any coordinate system and it behaves consistently. There's no reason why it shouldn't be able to be described as such; we just don't know what that description is.
Saying that "oh noez Einstein ur on a wild goose chase!" is pretty darn silly.
'Mormon' was the correct answer - South Park
I heard it was "my God it's full of stars!"
"The Christians, they were right!"
Probably more like, "Damn, this sucks."
Yes, just one detail
Youâ(TM)re all wrong; he didnâ(TM)t have last words, he couldnâ(TM)t talk.
"he problem is you don't realize it until you can accurately calculate about 15 decimal places"
Huh? You can calculate to any number of decimal places by hand. What's your point?
Mostly random stuff.
"Hey, how come I'm still in this chair."
I have no idea if what the AC above wrote has any merit apart having the tools that can verify the maths accurately can make a huge difference. For instance, 22 / 7 is Pi to three significant figures but then it starts to diverge fairly seriously. If you time-travelled back a few thousand years and told a scientist that 22 / 7 really was Pi, it would have seemed right and have been verified with the (inaccurate by today's standard) tools/maths available. Which in turn would have caused a huge leap in all kinds of things and technology. But it might well have become entrenched as the truth and divergence with 22 / 7 might have been seen as some kind of phenomenon that was as yet unexplained just like dark matter/energy is today. Especially as doing maths by hand means you're not going to check everything to high precision every time unlike these days of allowing a computer to do the calculations.
So the point is that being able to routinely calculate to a high number of decimal places can be important.
Einstein is completely wrong. The problem is you don't realize it until you can accurately calculate about 15 decimal places.
So Einstein was correct to about 14 decimal places. Doesn't actually sound too bad. Thanks for supporting Einstein.
many of us are working hard on it in the math and experimentally.
Us? You'll have to excuse me if I find this hard to believe... Actually I do believe people are working very hard on this. Not very effectively, but very hard yes.
Oh, hi Ken. Thanks for sharing your videos with us. But why post here 3x as AC? Just come out and own it.
It's okay to lose your bearings.
As long as you still have your marbles.
the monumental effort to reconcile general relativity with quantum theory flounders in part because of the difficulty of developing a theory of quantum gravity that has the same general covariance Einstein achieved with his field equations. “In some sense you could argue the reason we don’t have an adequate quantum theory of gravity is we don’t know how to express the solutions to Einstein’s equations in a way that completely removes any kind of coordinate dependence,” said Weatherall.
It sounds like he recognized that there was something he couldn't explain, so he backed off a bit and looked for the explanation rather than charge forward and risk looking foolish.
"lost his bearings" and "greatest physicist of all time"
Don't do either of these, whoever writes about it.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
That even on their best day bright, intelligent people can have a bad day? Maybe he didn't get laid or maybe he did and thought of a different angle. You'll never know the exact answer unless you were there so stop speculating.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Einstein did not "lose" general relativity, he just delayed publishing because he had doubts and was investigating them. The summary even says so on first paragraph.
... back.
WTF is this?
Hawking passes and we get Slashdot Esquire magazine?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Nerds!!!!
To be more clear. We need to have hyper control over a very large vacuum chamber and we need to measure an object falling via lasers and we need the accuracy of that measurement to be about 15 decimal places.
To gain tremendous scientific integrity. It takes a truly great scientist to question his own theory and risk not "being the first". In the end though, this is better for the scientific community as a whole. Science is about asking questions, observation, and hypothesizing outcomes and it shouldn't stop just to "be the first". Just look at the ego centric origins of the theory of evolution and you will see a "me first" cock measuring contest (or finch measuring contest but I'm sure they are both birds and related). Hint you might find it wasn't Charles Darwin even though his name is stamped all over it.
because I'm not Ken.
Not only is Ken Wheeler testably false, but the falsify-ability of the electric/magnetic universe theories created the need for relativity.
If you think there's some physicist conspiracy to keep Einstein in that position, you're stupid wrong. When someone breaks Einstein with a repeatable, testable theory, they will unseat Einstein the same way Einstein unseated Newton.
In this era of computers and CPU's and constant distraction, he wouldn't have managed to get to even first realization.
some people use these fora for personal aggrandizement, much to their eternal shame.
...and yet every experiment to verify Relativity has shown Einstein to have been correct, whether it was 4 years after, or 100 years after publishing. Your stupid fucking electric universe bullshit requires Relativity to be wrong, yet everything points to Einstein being right.
Your pseudoscience cult is just fucking stupid.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
There's a whole slew of videos explaining this stuff on youtube now, like these two (also look at Don Kennedy and Nick Lucid). I particularly like the photon box as an explanation of inertial mass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSKzgpt4HBU
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHRqibyNMpw
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Eww - videos. How about explaining it in writing?
"Gravity is magnetism". This is incorrect.
Puzzle: N_GGERS
Question: people who annoy you.
Randy marsh: i think I know it but I'm not sure I can say it.
Host: times running out.
Randy: ok I'd like to solve the puzzle....Nig....
Host: ooooooo the answer we were looking for was "Naggers"
Eww - videos. How about explaining it in writing?
With a car analogy.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
When you figure things out correctly, the paradoxes and anomalies resolve.
No they don't. Paradoxes and anomalies become resolved only with unquestioning belief.
Yeah, everything is obvious in retrospect. When you are being spoon-fed the answers from the answer key.
Einstein figured out something amazing about the universe. He received a Nobel Prize for it.
Often these educational presentations are meant to be engaging and a bit provocative. It helps a lot if the Great Man can be shown to be human, making errors, and committing "bizarre mistakes". However this can get tedious when an over-enthusiastic education specialist winds up, even inadvertently, portraying their target as less smart, less wise than themselves and their audience. "Oh look, the Great Man was a bumbling idiot! He had the answer and then he dropped it in his soup."
Everyone is a genius in retrospect. That's why such genius is instead called, "easy pickings" and not genius. You get no Nobel Prizes for retrospective genius.
No! *I'm* not Ken.