Theory for genius: Why is Einstein world’s most famous scientist?
- Andrew Robinson, Project Syndicate, London |
- Updated: Nov 26, 2015 16:58 IST
A nanochip made of quartz glass with a picture of Albert Einstein under a microscope of technology company NanoJewellery in Lindau, lake Constance in May 2013. (AFP)
Albert Einstein announced his greatest achievement, the general theory of relativity, in Berlin a century ago, on November 25, 1915. For many years, hardly any physicist could understand it. But, since the 1960s, following decades of controversy, most cosmologists have regarded general relativity as the best available explanation, if not the complete description, of the observed structure of the universe, including black holes.
And yet, even today, hardly anyone apart from specialists understands general relativity--unlike, say, the theory of natural selection, the periodic table of the elements, and the wave/particle duality in quantum theory. So why is Einstein the world’s most famous and most quoted (and misquoted) scientist--far ahead of Isaac Newton or Stephen Hawking--as well as a universal byword for genius?
Einstein’s fame is indeed puzzling. When he gave lectures about general relativity at Oxford University in 1931, the academic audience packed the hall, only to ebb away, baffled by his mathematics and his German, leaving only a small core of experts. Afterward, a cleaner rubbed the equations off the blackboard (though thankfully one blackboard was saved and is on display in Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science).
Yet, when Einstein and his wife appeared as the personal guests of Charlie Chaplin at the 1931 premiere of Chaplin’s film City Lights in Los Angeles, they had to battle their way through frantically pressing and cheering crowds (on whom the police had earlier threatened to use tear gas). The entire movie theater rose in their honor. A somewhat baffled Einstein asked his host what it all meant. “They cheer me because they all understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you,” quipped Chaplin.
In the 1940s, Einstein told a biographer: “I never understood why the theory of relativity with its concepts and problems so far removed from practical life should for so long have met with a lively, or indeed passionate, resonance among broad circles of the public… I have never yet heard a truly convincing answer to this question.” To a New York Times interviewer, he disarmingly remarked: “Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me?”
Part of the reason for Einstein’s fame is surely that his earliest, and best known, achievement--the 1905 special theory of relativity--seemed to have come out of the blue, without any prior achievement. Like Newton (but unlike Charles Darwin), he did not have anyone of distinction in his family. He was not notably excellent at school and college (unlike Marie Curie); in fact, he failed to obtain a university position after graduation. He was not part of the scientific establishment, and worked mostly alone. In 1905, he was struggling as a mere patent clerk, with a newborn child. Regardless of whether we grasp relativity, his apparently sudden burst of genius inevitably intrigues everyone.
A further reason for Einstein’s fame is that he was active in many areas far afield from physics, notably politics and religion, including Zionism. He is best known in this regard for his open opposition to Nazi Germany from 1933, his private support for building the atomic bomb in 1939, and his public criticism of the hydrogen bomb and McCarthyism in the 1950s (J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI promptly launched a secret investigation of him). In 1952, he was offered the presidency of Israel.
Clearly, Einstein’s turbulent later life and courageous stands fascinate many people who are bemused by general relativity. According to Bertrand Russell: “Einstein was not only a great scientist, he was a great man.” Jacob Bronowski proposed that “Newton is the Old Testament god; it is Einstein who is the New Testament figure…full of humanity, pity, a sense of enormous sympathy.”
Arthur C. Clarke believed that it was “Einstein’s unique combination of genius, humanist, pacifist, and eccentric” that “made him accessible - and even lovable - to tens of millions of people.” Richard Dawkins calls himself “unworthy to lace Einstein’s sockless shoes….I gladly share his magnificently godless spirituality.”
Such a combination of solitary brilliance, personal integrity, and public activism is rare among intellectuals. When one adds Einstein’s lifelong gift for witty aphorism when dealing with the press and the public, his unique and enduring fame no longer seems so puzzling.
After all, who could fail to be charmed by his popular summary of relativity: “An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour.” And then there is my own favorite: “To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.”
(Andrew Robinson is the author of Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity and Genius: A Very Short Introduction. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2015 )
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Einstein's Theory of General Relativity
by Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor | April 10, 2015 09:36pm ET
Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted that the space-time around Earth would be not only warped but also twisted by the planet's rotation. Gravity Probe B showed this to be correct.
Credit: NASA
In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. It introduced a new framework for all of physics and proposed new concepts of space and time.
Einstein then spent 10 years trying to include acceleration in the theory and published his theory of general relativity in 1915. In it, he determined that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, which is felt as gravity.
The tug of gravity
Two objects exert a force of attraction on one another known as "gravity." Sir Isaac Newton quantified the gravity between two objects when he formulated his three laws of motion. The force tugging between two bodies depends on how massive each one is and how far apart the two lie. Even as the center of the Earth is pulling you toward it (keeping you firmly lodged on the ground), your center of mass is pulling back at the Earth. But the more massive body barely feels the tug from you, while with your much smaller mass you find yourself firmly rooted thanks to that same force. Yet Newton's laws assume that gravity is an innate force of an object that can act over a distance.
Albert Einstein, in his theory of special relativity, determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and he showed that the speed of light within a vacuum is the same no matter the speed at which an observer travels. As a result, he found that space and time were interwoven into a single continuum known as space-time. Events that occur at the same time for one observer could occur at different times for another.
As he worked out the equations for his general theory of relativity, Einstein realized that massive objects caused a distortion in space-time. Imagine setting a large body in the center of a trampoline. The body would press down into the fabric, causing it to dimple. A marble rolled around the edge would spiral inward toward the body, pulled in much the same way that the gravity of a planet pulls at rocks in space. [Video: How To See Spacetime Stretch]
http://www.space.com/20823-strange-star-pair-confirms-einstein-video.html#ooid=U1Mzh5cDpC-xuAuJu1V5NS1SuwINHPJx (1:28)
Experimental evidence
Although instruments can neither see nor measure space-time, several of the phenomena predicted by its warping have been confirmed.
Einstein's Cross is an example of gravitational lensing.Credit: NASA and European Space Agency (ESA)
Gravitational lensing: Light around a massive object, such as a black hole, is bent, causing it to act as a lens for the things that lie behind it. Astronomers routinely use this method to study stars and galaxies behind massive objects.
Einstein's Cross, a quasar in the Pegasus constellation, is an excellent example of gravitational lensing. The quasar is about 8 billion light-years from Earth, and sits behind a galaxy that is 400 million light-years away. Four images of the quasar appear around the galaxy because the intense gravity of the galaxy bends the light coming from the quasar.
Gravitational lensing can allow scientists to see some pretty cool things, but until recently, what they spotted around the lens has remained fairly static. However, since the light traveling around the lens takes a different path, each traveling over a different amount of time, scientists were able to observe a supernova occur four different times as it was magnified by a massive galaxy.
In another interesting observation, NASA's Kepler telescope spotted a dead star, known as a white dwarf, orbiting a red dwarf in a binary system. Although the white dwarf is more massive, it has a far smaller radius than its companion.
"The technique is equivalent to spotting a flea on a light bulb 3,000 miles away, roughly the distance from Los Angeles to New York City," Avi Shporer of the California Institute of Technology said in a statement.
Changes in the orbit of Mercury: The orbit of Mercury is shifting very gradually over time, due to the curvature of space-time around the massive sun. In a few billion years, it could even collide with Earth.
Frame-dragging of space-time around rotating bodies: The spin of a heavy object, such as Earth, should twist and distort the space-time around it. In 2004, NASA launched the Gravity Probe B (GP-B). The precisely calibrated satellite caused the axes of gyroscopes inside to drift very slightly over time, a result that coincided with Einstein's theory.
"Imagine the Earth as if it were immersed in honey," Gravity Probe-B principal investigator Francis Everitt, of Stanford University, said in a statement.
"As the planet rotates, the honey around it would swirl, and it's the same with space and time. GP-B confirmed two of the most profound predictions of Einstein's universe, having far-reaching implications across astrophysics research."
Gravitational redshift: The electromagnetic radiation of an object is stretched out slightly inside a gravitational field. Think of the sound waves that emanate from a siren on an emergency vehicle; as the vehicle moves toward an observer, sound waves are compressed, but as it moves away, they are stretched out, or redshifted. Known as the Doppler Effect, the same phenomena occurs with waves of light at all frequencies. In 1959, two physicists, Robert Pound and Glen Rebka, shot gamma-rays of radioactive iron up the side of a tower at Harvard University and found them to be minutely less than their natural frequency due to distortions caused by gravity.
Gravitational waves: Violent events, such as the collision of two black holes, are thought to be able to create ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) is currently searching for the first signs of these tell-tale indicators.
In 2014, scientists announced that they had detected gravitational waves left over from the Big Bang using the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP2) telescope in Antarctica. Such waves are thought to be embedded in the cosmic microwave background. However, further research revealed that their data was contaminated by dust in the line of sight.
"Searching for this unique record of the very early universe is as difficult as it is exciting," Jan Tauber, the European Space Agency's project scientist for the Planck space mission to search for cosmic waves, said in a statement.
