Comments on: Einstein speaks

By: citrine

citrine — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 19:02:40 +0000

Zero37,

I think that it is because he brought into Physics an entirely new worldview (or two?). This is dramatically evident in SR and GR but he also paved the way for QM (in spite of all his reservations about non-determinism).

By: Zero37

Zero37 — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:42:12 +0000

Speaking of Einstein as ‘the master,’ I wonder what this site’s adherents think regarding a pub discussion that I’m constantly having with people:

Is Einstein comperable to anyone else in the field? I have a great deal of respect for Professors Hawking, Feynman and Heidelberg, but I’ve long said that you can’t even dig back to Newton and find anyone of the same caliber. This just because Special Relativity was so far ahead of its time. He’s like what Fermat would have been if he had actually discovered the recent proof of Fermat’s last theorem.

Then again, some people say that Einstein looks like he took the biggest leap simply because he falls at the exact juncture where phyics goes from being understandable-to-the-educated-layperson to not-understandable-by-anyone.

Thoughts?

By: Karen

Karen — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 22:23:34 +0000

Too Kool:

I especially like the link to the audio of Einstein speaking on his E=mc2 equation.

The David Bodanis book of the same name (E=mc2) is also a very easy read on the explanation of the development of each part of the equation for us non-scientists [with a lot of the history too]- but I assume you have a lot of knowledge already on this subject.

I found a link to quotes by Einstein, but as I’m not certain they are all legit…hard to say how good it is - but you might want to take a look for your self sometime and might see something there you can use.

http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html

Thanks.

By: Garrett

Garrett — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:57:14 +0000

Heh, at least it was wrong.

By: The world is not magic | Cosmic Variance

The world is not magic | Cosmic Variance — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:40:39 +0000

[…] Sean « Einstein speaks […]

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:04:16 +0000

We did talk a little about this before. The basic point is that the outer regions of galaxies are a place were gravity is extremely weak, and we have absolutely every reason to believe that linear perturbation theory (and thus the Newtonian limit) works perfectly well. You would have to have an extremely compelling argument to convince anyone that it was worth looking into the possibility that this approximation was breaking down, and Cooperstock and Tieu don’t have such an argument.

By: Garrett

Garrett — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:26:09 +0000

Ah, so apparently the title should have been:

Completely Dark Matter-less Galactic Rotation
(may contain some dark matter)

By: hack

hack — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 18:33:06 +0000

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0508377

Apparently the paper has already been long discredited. Unbeknownst to Slashdot.

By: hack

hack — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 18:06:24 +0000

I demand a quick summary judgment of the new paper from Canada referenced by Garrett.

By: Garrett

Garrett — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:45:15 +0000

Hey Sean, have you seen this recent paper?

“General Relativity Resolves Galactic Rotation Without Exotic Dark Matter”
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0507619

I looked through it quickly and it looks good. But I just have a hard time believing no one would have tried this approach before now.