Re: Article: A Century of Einstein

From: Paul Stowe (ps_at_acompletelyjunkaddress.net)
Date: 08/31/04 

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 23:50:21 GMT

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 22:37:24 GMT, "Robert Karl Stonjek" <stonjek@ozemail.com.au>
wrote:

> A Century of Einstein
> Scientific American has covered Einstein's theories--and the refinements
> and reactions to them--ever since scientists began to grasp the import
> of his landmark 1905 papers. Read on for a sampling of our reports, some
> by leading physicists of their times
> By Daniel C. Schlenoff
>
> It took several years for Scientific American, and mainstream physics for
> that matter, to start mulling over the radical proposals Albert Einstein
> expounded in 1905. His repudiation of the intuitive understanding of the
> cosmos was hard to accept:
>
> "In 1905, came a fundamental and (as the future historian will probably say)
> an epoch-making contribution in the shape of an unassuming and dry-looking
> dissertation, 'Concerning the Electro-dynamics of Moving Bodies,' by A.
> Einstein, a Swiss professor of physics. It appeared in the Annalen der
> Physik, the German counterpart of our Philosophical Magazine. It created no
> sensation at the time. It was hardly noticed. Yet, at the present time, you
> cannot open a journal devoted to physics without finding some fresh
> contribution to the ever-increasing literature on the subject: Einstein's
> Principle of Relativity.
> --E. E. Fournier D'Albe"
> Scientific American Supplement,
> November 11, 1911
>
> "But is the 'Principle of Relativity' true? That is for experiment to
> decide. Its postulates have been and are now being pursued by the relentless
> logic of mathematics, and they must stand or fall as the deductions thus
> reached agree or conflict with experimental evidence. Just now, however, the
> 'Principle of Relativity' seems to be irresistibly fascinating to
> mathematicians, but equally abhorrent to that host of physicists who can no
> more conceive of time as a function of velocity than they can imagine space
> to be curved or picture for themselves a fourth dimension."
> Scientific American,
> June 8, 1912
>
> From Scientific American
> http://cl.extm.us/?fe951d707365067971-fe2a1672776c0378751176

                        "Was Einstein Right?"

      "Unlike nearly all his contemporaries, Albert Einstein thought
       quantum mechanics would give way to a classical theory. Some
       researchers nowadays are inclined to agree -- George Musser"

 Page 88...

      "Creative Friction: AN ANALOGY is to Brownian motion. The
       jiggling of dust motes looks random, but as Einstein himself
       demonstrated, it is caused by unseen molecules following
       classical laws. In fact, this analogy is. tantalizingly
       tight. The equations of quantum mechanics bear an uncanny
       resemblance to those of the kinetic theory of molecules and,
       more generally, statistical mechanics , In some formulations,
       Planck's constant, the basic parameter of quantum theory,
       plays the mathematical role of temperature. It is as though
       quantum mechanics describes some kind of gas or ensemble of
       "molecules"-a chaotic soup of more primitive entities."

 Page 89, "Scientific American" Special Issue, September 2004

 Hey Freddi, :) Check out also "The String Theory Landscape" Pgs 79-87
 Note them-thar vortices (Ring torroids)...

 Paul Stowe

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