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Re: annus mirabilis

I went to the site. You're correct! Now that I think of it - he hasn't
presented a paper in years - must be in total disfavor. :-(

Bob at PC

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 10/30/2004 at 11:24 PM Pentcho Valev wrote:

See the programme for the launch of Einstein's year 2005:

http://www.wyp2005.org/unesco/Welcome_fichiers/page0003.htm

and try to find a word about Einstein or relativity in it. If you can't
this may mean something.

Pentcho Valev



On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:10:29 -0500, roger borowick <rborowick@CHARTER.NET>
wrote:

Hello from a lirker. I am a retired Physics instructor. I enjoy the
list. BUT, I come and go, you know when you are retired there are alot of
places to go, things to see, fish to be caught, coffee to be drunk and
buddies to BS with. So I am not current with all the topics that you have
discussed this fall. But I would like to add the following:

Next year, 2005, is the 100th anniversary of what's being called
Einstein's annus mirabilis The annus mirabilis is the collective works
that Einstein did in 1905.



... Historians call it the annus mirabilis, the miracle year.



The annus mirabilis is the collective works of Einstein in 1905. If you
do a Goggle search on "Einstein annus mirabilis" you will get a huge
listing of sources of this event to be celebrated evidently through out
the
world (exaggeration mine).



Here is a text and the source of one of the search elements done on
Einstein annus mirabilis.



There is a parlor game physics students play: Who was the greater genius?
Galileo or Kepler? (Galileo) Maxwell or Bohr? (Maxwell, but it's closer
than you might think). Hawking or Heisenberg? (A no-brainer, whatever the
best-seller lists might say. It's Heisenberg). But there are two figures
who are simply off the charts. Isaac Newton is one. The other is Albert
Einstein. If pressed, physicists give Newton pride of place, but it is a
photo finish -- and no one else is in the race.

Newton's claim is obvious. He created modern physics. His system
described
the behavior of the entire cosmos -- and while others before him had
invented grand schemes, Newton's was different. His theories were
mathematical, making specific predictions to be confirmed by experiments
in
the real world. Little wonder that those after Newton called him lucky --
"for there is only one universe to discover, and he discovered it. "

But what of Einstein? Well, Einstein felt compelled to apologize to
Newton. "Newton, forgive me;" Einstein wrote in his Autobiographical
Notes. "You found the only way which, in your age, was just about possible
for a man of highest thought and creative power." Forgive him? For what?
For replacing Newton's system with his own -- and, like Newton, for
putting
his mark on virtually every branch of physics.

That's the difference. Young physicists who play the "who's smarter" game
are really asking, "how will I measure up?" Is there a shot to match -- if
not Maxwell, then perhaps Lorentz? But Einstein? Don't go there. Match
this:

· In 1905, Einstein is 26, a patent examiner, working on physics
on his own. After hours, he creates the Special Theory of Relativity, in
which he demonstrates that measurements of time and distance vary
systematically as anything moves relative to anything else. Which means
that Newton was wrong. Space and time are not absolute -- and the
relativistic universe we inhabit is not the one Newton "discovered."

That's pretty good -- but one idea, however spectacular, does not make a
demi-god. But now add the rest of what Einstein did in 1905:

· In March, Einstein creates the quantum theory of light, the
idea
that light exists as tiny packets, or particles, that we now call photons.
Alongside Max Planck's work on quanta of heat, and Niels Bohr's later work
on quanta of matter, Einstein's work anchors the most shocking idea in
twentieth century physics: we live in a quantum universe, one built out of
tiny, discrete chunks of energy and matter.

· Next, in April and May, Einstein publishes two papers. In one
he
invents a new method of counting and determining the size of the atoms or
molecules in a given space and in the other he explains the phenomenon of
Brownian motion. The net result is a proof that atoms actually exist --
still an issue at that time -- and the end to a millennia-old debate on
the
fundamental nature of the chemical elements.

· And then, in June, Einstein completes special relativity --
which adds a twist to the story: Einstein's March paper treated light as
particles, but special relativity sees light as a continuous field of
waves. Alice's Red Queen can accept many impossible things before
breakfast, but it takes a supremely confident mind to do so. Einstein, age
26, sees light as wave and particle, picking the attribute he needs to
confront each problem in turn. Now that's tough.

· And of course, Einstein isn't finished. Later in 1905 comes an
extension of special relativity in which Einstein proves that energy and
matter are linked in the most famous relationship in physics: E=mc2. (The
energy content of a body is equal to the mass of the body times the speed
of light squared). At first, even Einstein does not grasp the full
implications of his formula, but even then he suggests that the heat
produced by radium could mark the conversion of tiny amounts of the mass
of
the radium salts into energy.

In sum -- an amazing outburst: Einstein's 1905 still evokes awe.
Historians call it the annus mirabilis, the miracle year. Einstein ranges
from the smallest scale to the largest (for special relativity is embodied
in all motion throughout the universe), through fundamental problems about
the nature of energy, matter, motion, time and space--all the while
putting
in forty hours a week at the patent office.

And that alone would have been enough to secure Einstein's reputation.
But
it is what comes next that is almost more remarkable. After 1905, Einstein
achieves what no one since has equaled: a twenty year run at the cutting
edge of physics. For all the miracles of his miracle year, his best work
is
still to come:

· In 1907, he confronts the problem of gravitation -- the same
problem that Newton confronted, and solved -- almost. Einstein begins his
work with one crucial insight: gravity and acceleration are equivalent,
two
facets of the same phenomenon. Where this "principle of equivalence" will
lead remains obscure, but to Einstein, it offers the first hint of a
theory
that could supplant Newton's.

· Before anyone else, Einstein recognizes the essential dualism
in
nature, the co-existence of particles and waves at the level of quanta. In
1911 he declares resolving the quantum issue to be the central problem of
physics.

· Even the minor works resonate. For example, in 1910, Einstein
answers a basic question: "Why is the sky blue?" His paper on the
phenomenon called critical opalescence solves the problem by examining the
cumulative effect of the scattering of light by individual molecules in
the
atmosphere.

· Then in 1915, Einstein completes the General Theory of
Relativity--the product of eight years of work on the problem of gravity.
In general relativity Einstein shows that matter and energy--all
the "stuff" in the universe--actually mold the shape of space and the flow
of time. What we feel as the "force" of gravity is simply the sensation of
following the shortest path we can through curved, four-dimensional space-
time. It is a radical vision: space is no longer the box the universe
comes
in; instead, space and time, matter and energy are, as Einstein proves,
locked together in the most intimate embrace.

· In 1917, Einstein publishes a paper which uses general
relativity to model the behavior of an entire universe. General relativity
has spawned some of the weirdest, and most important results in modern
astronomy (see Alan Lightman's article on this website), but Einstein's
paper is the starting point, the first in the modern field of cosmology--
the study of the behavior of the universe as a whole. (It is also the
paper
in which Einstein makes what he would call his worst blunder--inventing
a "cosmological constant" to keep his universe static. When Einstein
learned of Edwin Hubble's observations that the universe is expanding, he
promptly jettisoned the constant.)

· Returning to the quantum, by 1919, six years before the
invention of quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle Einstein
recognizes that there might be a problem with the classical notion of
cause
and effect. Given the peculiar, dual nature of quanta as both waves and
particles, it might be impossible, he warns, to definitively tie effects
to
their causes.

· Yet as late as 1924 and 1925, Einstein still makes significant
contributions to the development of quantum theory. His last work on the
theory builds on ideas developed by Satyendra Nath Bose, and predicts a
new
state of matter (to add to the list of solid, liquid, and gas) called a
Bose-Einstein condensate. The condensate was finally created at
exceptionally low temperatures only last year.

In sum: Einstein is famous for his distaste for modern quantum theory --
largely because its probabilistic nature forbids a complete description of
cause and effect. But still, he recognizes many of the fundamental
implications of the idea of the quantum long before the rest of the
physics
community does.

After the quantum mechanical revolution of 1925 through 1927, Einstein
spends the bulk of his remaining scientific career searching for a deeper
theory to subsume quantum mechanics and eliminate its probabilities and
uncertainties. It is the end, as far as his contemporaries believe, of
Einstein's active participation in science. He generates pages of
equations, geometrical descriptions of fields extending through many
dimensions that could unify all the known forces of nature. None of the
theories work out. It is a waste of time...and yet

Contemporary theoretical physics is dominated by what are known as
"String
theories." They are multi-dimensional. (Some versions include as many as
26
dimensions, with fifteen or sixteen curled up in a tiny ball.) They are
geometrical -- the interactions of one multi-dimensional shape with
another
produces the effects we call forces, just as the "force" of gravity in
general relativity is what we feel as we move through the curves of four-
dimensional space-time. And they unify, no doubt about it: in the math, at
least, all of nature from quantum mechanics to gravity emerges from the
equations of string theory.

As it stands, string theories are unproved, and perhaps unprovable, as
they involve interactions at energy levels far beyond any we can handle.
But they are beautiful, to those versed enough in the language of
mathematics to follow them. And in their beauty (and perhaps in their
impenetrability) they are the heirs to Einstein's primitive, first
attempts
to produce a unified field theory.

Between 1905 to 1925, Einstein transformed humankind's understanding of
nature on every scale, from the smallest to that of the cosmos as a whole.
Now, nearly a century after he began to make his mark, we are still
exploring Einstein's universe. The problems he could not solve remain the
ones that define the cutting edge, the most tantalizing and compelling.

You can't touch that. Who's smarter? No one since Newton comes close.

Thomas Levenson is a Boston-based independent film maker and author. He
is
a producer of NOVA's Einstein Revealed, and author of several books. The
latest is Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science, with Einstein
in Berlin to follow, scheduled for publication in 1998