Original Einstein Manuscript Discovered

vinlud writes "The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1925 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics. The German-language manuscript is titled "Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas," and is dated December 1924. It is considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs. High-resolution photographs of the 16-page manuscript are posted on the institute's web site."

Amazing

[Sv-Manowar]

Its amazing that something like this can have lain undiscovered for so long, and a good thing that we can use modern technology to archive it and preserve it for future generations. It's all very well knowing what Einstein theorized, but to see the actual work is something different and humanises the achievement.

It's in German...

[aurb]

The manuscripts are in German. Can someone post a translation? :-)

Yea...Um mmmm....yea Quantum..theory of the monat

[bigbinc]

Am I the only one that read this and didn't cry in amazement??! To be quite honest, I just sat there
and raised a brow in confusion.

Bah, if the Physics ever becomes popular like warping through space using some space/time/contiuum theory, we will just throw billions of dollars at
the problem and everything will be solved.

I don't know, did anybody find ATI putting 200 million transistors on interesting? I thought that was pretty cool.

High resolution?

[HorsePunchKid]

This is pretty nifty, but the submitter and I apparently have very different thresholds for considering something "high resolution". These are less than 150dpi, unless these were originally printed on 3×4" sheets of paper or something. If you wanted to print one of these out as a poster or something (hey, don't judge me!), they wouldn't be very attractive. Maybe if you tiled them all together, though.

Am I possibly missing the links to some even-higher-resolution versions?

Re:Other than

[Anonymous Coward]

yes that is very acceptable. maybe you should study military history sometime. there are no innocent enemy civilians. anybody contributing to that country is contributing to the death of OUR soldiers. women/children/civilians work in factories help producing weapons/ammo to kill our soldiers. even just working to help feed their soldiers, aids them. there are no innocent people in the country you go to war with.

Re:Other than

[Rakishi]

...as does almost every other fuckin weapon and war. Dresden had more deaths than either atomic bomb.

The alternative was an invasion, had that happened you'd be bitching about how we should have used the bomb to save the millions that died due to the invasion.

In Berlin children and the elderly were forced to fight or be shot by their own side. Many died, most were lacking decent weaponry or supplies and simply acted as a last ditch human shield. You think the Japanese would somehow act "better" during an invasion than the Germans did?

Of course, this is not counting the thousands who would die of disease or famine as they resist invasion on their already supply starved island. Then there would have been the inevitable massive non-nuclear bombings so common during WW2, which would probably lead to many more deaths alone than the two atomic bombs did.

In a more philosophical sense, there were few real civilians as they were almost all helping the war effort one way or another (Japanese are efficient that way). The American troops were also civilians till they got dragged into this, so were the Japanese troops for that matter.

Re:Other than

[nukem996]

Actually no. We nuked Japan because we did not want the USSR to liberate Japan, like they did Germany(they were the first ones in Berlin and who killed all the remaining Nazis while we stayed about 60 miles away cleaning up any insurgents). We thought that it would make it look like the Soviets won the war and not the US. In fact many of the leaders in Japan were considering surrendering but would not surrender unconditionally like we wanted, they wanted to be able to keep there emperor who they viewed as God like. Many also believe that it was a race thing, many people hated the Japanese which is one of the reasons why we had interment camps for them. Now you go get your facts please.

Re:Other than

[drgonzo59]

The issue of "civilian" vs. "fighter" is often not a black and white kind of thing. If someone is supporting the Nazis and chose to help build the concentration camps, even though they could have had other equally paid job, are they an enemy combatant? What about those that produced Zyklon B (hydrocyanic acid) used in gas chambers, are they enemy combatants? I think they are.

Why doesn't the same apply to the people who worked for the Mitsubishi arms plant in Nagasaki? Most of the town employees where working at the plant building weapons and ammunition to kill Americans. They could have chosen to be farmers, or say teachers, instead they most likely did support the goverment policy and the war against us.

You are right, the children weren't fighting yet, but the ones in Berlin were, and if we invaded Japan a lot more children would have been dead, because they would have been forced to defend "the Empire"

One thing that is always usefull to keep in mind is that it was the Japanese that attacked the U.S. What in the hell were they thinking? It is like me attacking the local police department with a baseball bat, I know I will get in trouble and end up in jail for a long time. If I get my family and friends on it, they will end up in jail for a long time too. Someone might ask me "what in the hell were you thinking?" Same thing with Japan. It was their goverment that sealed the fate of its children and elderly when they attacked U.S. It wasn't a defensive war, it wasn't even a preemtive attack, I don't think US would have ever attacked Japan unprovoked. So when they sent the battleships and the airplanes to Pearl Harbor, they technically "killed" a lot of Japanese civilians and as well as fighters.

On the other side, let's imagine that Japan would have won the war (impossible but let's try) do you think they would hesitate bombing New York, or LA or other major city because there are civilians in it? Probably not, judging by what they did in China [fas.org]

Re:Not exactly

[Concerned Onlooker]

It seems a reasonable, if weird, position. You can feel in your core a disgust of violence, yet if you completely reject the use of force only the pricks and sociopaths will win in the end because they will always happily resort to violence.

How dare they!!!!

[Bob Gelumph]

He hasn't been dead for 50 years, let alone 75!

Aren't they violating copyright by posting images of his work?

Or is this another one of those wacky European loopholes?

Re:Other than

[Anonymous Coward]

Even being on slashdot, I find this post getting modded insightfull troubling.

The poster ignores several facts:

- Those working in the war industry don't always do so by choice (in the US they forced people to work in munitions-factories, My (danish!) grand-grandfather was one of them during WWI I believe.)
- Even if they do, they are clearly not combatants, but civilians. If we do not leave this clear distinctions, we might as well just kill everyone.
- Even assuming they are combatatnts, you can never avoid having "real" civilians in a city. They are killed too, if you bomb the others. this clearly is unacceptable.

You are right, the children weren't fighting yet, but the ones in Berlin were, and if we invaded Japan a lot more children would have been dead, because they would have been forced to defend "the Empire"

The logical conclusion from this argument is that we should eradicate an opposing country completely, otherwise they might fight back later. And even better, a pre-emptive strike would be best.

Clearly, the parent post is misguided.

Re:Other than

[Teun]

They could have chosen to be farmers, or say teachers, instead they most likely did support the goverment policy and the war against us.

That's not how a war is fought.
People are forced to do certain labour.
They might still get a regular wage, they are not slaves in the historic sence but non the less they cannot freely choose their job.

Besides that as Japaneese they had been brought up with the notion they were waging a fair war by defending the Emperor.

Einstein was one of the few that saw the future trouble caused by National Socialism and Anti-Semitism well in time and was able to get out in a relatively simple way.
Not much later he would have had to either buy his freedom or secretly sneak across the border.

Re:Other than

[Cyberax]

Yes, and people in WTC were working towards strengthening USA economic, so they were a valid military target. Right?

After all, you bombed oil plants in Iraq during the Gulf War. How WTC is different?

Re:Other than

[XchristX]

"there are no innocent people in the country you go to war with."



Hamas, Al-Quaeda and the bloody IRA say the exact same thing.
I guess white people don't like it when the same rule is applied to their women and children, but have no propblem using it to massacre those they consider to be 'der untermenschen'.

Re:How dare they!!!!

[digitalunity]

Hi, I know you were probably just joking, but just as an FYI...

In most countries, anything pre-Berne convention should be deemed as having NOT been copyrighted unless such notice is included in the work. Copyright laws now dictate that copyright is automatic, and in some countries such as the Netherlands, there are even rights that cannot be signed away.

I didn't see any copyright notices on Einstein's papers, and judging by the date they were authored, it is reasonable to conclude that the text of the documents are not protected in any way.

Re:Other than

[canuck57]

Ellis makes it clear beyond reasonable dispute that the a-bombs were dropped for POLITICAL reasons, not MILITARY reasons.

These repeated restrospective justifications that the a-bombs were dropped to "save lives" are lies. They are lies that you wish to believe because otherwise you might have to face up to the reality that sometimes the USA has done evil things. It's better to accept that the USA is fallible - just like every other democracy - and admit that the a-bombs were a MISTAKE.

The political reasons were the emperor wasn't talking peace. This drove the Jananese military to fight even though winning was hopeless. This would cause more deaths. Dropping the bomb sent the message straight to the (political) emperor that the US was resolved at winning the war and thus he had to come to grips with reality. This message was strong enough the emperor could not self deny it.

It might be best phrased, it saved American lives. Iwo Jima was bloody, as were other fronts at the time. The world was tired of war (WWW II) and anything to end it would be popular. And a land invasion of Japan would be a blood bath for both sides.

Things might be different for you if you had relatives in China, Pearl Harbour, a Nazi camp or in the eastern front that could pass down their stories of Germany and Japan.

Fighting a half assed war gets you Vietnam.

Now time for the moderators to mod this down for being critial of a popular but historically incomplete post.

Re:Other than

[mickwd]

"The issue of "civilian" vs. "fighter" is often not a black and white kind of thing."

"You are right, the children weren't fighting yet, but the ones in Berlin were, and if we invaded Japan a lot more children would have been dead, because they would have been forced to defend "the Empire""

"It was their goverment that sealed the fate of its children and elderly when they....."

Have you ever considered joining Al-Qaeda ? Your views about deaths of civilians seem remarkably similar to theirs.