Einstein's Lost Model of the Universe Discovered 'Hiding In Plain Sight'

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Dick Ahlstrom reports that Irish researchers have discovered a previously unknown model of the universe written in 1931 by physicist Albert Einstein that had been misfiled and effectively "lost" until its discovery last August while researchers been searching through a collection of Einstein's papers put online by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "I was looking through drafts, but then slowly realised it was a draft of something very different," says Dr O'Raifeartaigh. "I nearly fell off my chair. It was hidden in perfect plain sight. This particular manuscript was misfiled as a draft of something else." Read more, below.

"In his paper, radically different from his previously known models of the universe, Einstein speculated the expanding universe could remain unchanged and in a " steady state" because new matter was being continuously created from space. "It is what Einstein is attempting to do that would surprise most historians, because nobody had known this idea. It was later proposed by Fred Hoyle in 1948 and became controversial in the 1950s, the steady state model of the cosmos," says O'Raifeartaigh. Hoyle argued that space could be expanding eternally and keeping a roughly constant density. It could do this by continually adding new matter, with elementary particles spontaneously popping up from space. Particles would then coalesce to form galaxies and stars, and these would appear at just the right rate to take up the extra room created by the expansion of space. Hoyle's Universe was always infinite, so its size did not change as it expanded. It was in a 'steady state'. "This finding confirms that Hoyle was not a crank," says Simon Mitton. "If only Hoyle had known, he would certainly have used it to punch his opponents." Although Hoyle's model was eventually ruled out by astronomical observations, it was at least mathematically consistent, tweaking the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity to provide a possible mechanism for the spontaneous generation of matter. Einstein's paper attracted no attention because Einstein abandoned it after he spotted a mistake and then didn't publish it but the fact that Einstein experimented with the steady-state concept demonstrates Einstein's continued resistance to the idea of a Big Bang, which he at first found "abominable", even though other theoreticians had shown it to be a natural consequence of his general theory of relativity."

which he at first found "abominable",

[Anonymous Coward]

Einstein was not particularly good at embracing all of the consequences of his own work. He was firmly opposed to quantum theory, "Gott würfelt nicht!" (God does not throw dice) even though his Nobel prize for physics was actually for quantum theoretic work (figuring out the frequency of light quants I think) rather than his theories of relativity.

Re: which he at first found "abominable",

[jovius]

Depends on dice. The universal constants are not randomly changing at least, so the outcome is based on certain rules.

Creativity vs. Being a Crank

[hey!]

Both creative people and cranks have lots of wild ideas. The difference is that a crank reflexively defends his ideas with irrational vehemence. A creative person usually discard his ideas, because he knows there's always more where that comes from.

Einstein is not god

[iris-n]

This kind of article bothers me immensely. It treats Einstein as the God of Science, and uses the fact the he worked on something as evidence that this idea is no crackpottery. Well, guess what, Einstein also shat, farted, pissed, had bad ideas, and even commited mathematical mistakes.

And one should never evaluate a scientific idea based on who's working on it. The Steady-State model of the universe is not a crackpot idea, simply because it is consistent with the laws of GR and (superficially) consistent with observational evidence. Philosophically, thought, it does seem quite silly, and I myself would never have regarded it as more than a mathematical curiosity, had it not been already falsified when I was born.

A more modern example would be 't Hooft's work on superdeterminisc models for quantum theory. The guy is obviously a genius, but this idea is pure insanity, and it saddens me to see people taking it seriously just because a Nobel prize is working on it.

Re:which he at first found "abominable",

[Mashdar]

"Stop trying to tell God what to do." -Bohr

Re:which he at first found "abominable",

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

He also abhorred the violent creation of the Israeli nation, and was actively anti-Zionist.

Yet his work has been captured by the Hebrew University, and is used to glorify a nation who's creation he saw as tragic, and who's establishment he repudiated.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/einstein-on-palestine-and-zionism/ [dissidentvoice.org]
 

Re:which he at first found "abominable",

[Sique]

You got something wrong. "Being in favor of QT" is something quite different than "contribution to QT". Albert Einstein always saw QT as some clumsy patch to explain some weird observations (e.g. the non-existance of the ultraviolett catastrophe). He was always believing that QT should and will be replaced with something much more deterministic, more in the lines of the Field Theory he was working on in his later years. Yes, Albert Einstein contributed some important details to QT (the external photoelectric effect, for which he got awarded the Nobel prize, the Bose-Einstein-statistics and even the prediction of the properties of supraconduction). But ironically, at least the last two were created by Albert Einstein partly to show the problems with QT, because it predicted some really counterintuitive results. Albert Einstein was convinced that both would not exist in reality, for him, for him, they were examples of how fundamentally wrong QT must be. The Bose-Einstein-condensate and supraconduction were proven to exist only after Albert Einstein's death. I wonder how he would have reacted if those "monstrosities of the brain" had been created during his lifetime.

Re:Creativity vs. Being a Crank

[AthanasiusKircher]

Both creative people and cranks have lots of wild ideas. The difference is that a crank reflexively defends his ideas with irrational vehemence.

I've known cranks who were just obsessed with one thing and could never see beyond it, but I've also known many cranks who were very creative. I don't think the sets are as mutually exclusive as you claim.

A creative person usually discard his ideas, because he knows there's always more where that comes from.

I think this has more to do with ego than whether someone is creative or not. People hold fast to their ideas for all sorts of irrational reasons -- career, other people's praise of them, general acceptance within a peer group, politics, etc. Being a crank is more about personality type, in my view, than whether or not someone is "creative." The most effective cranks I have known are generally quite creative (and adaptive), enough so that it sometimes takes a long time for other people to realize they are simply wackos -- and they even attract followers to their irrational cause. (The shared characteristic in the crank and his audience in this case being a lack of specific knowledge or perspective to recognize how ludicrous the claims are.)