Einstein's Lost Model of the Universe Discovered 'Hiding In Plain Sight' 118
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."
Panspermia (Score:5, Interesting)
No beginning (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:which he at first found "abominable", (Score:5, Interesting)
"Stop trying to tell God what to do." -Bohr
"Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." - Hawking
Hoyle was right (Score:4, Interesting)
Physicists actually do believe in version of the Steady State theory, except instead of "new matter is continuously created as the universe expands", new space and new dark energy are continuously created. There's no contradiction with the Inflationary Big Bang theory at all.
Re:Einstein is not god (Score:4, Interesting)
Einstein was an excellent scientist, but in pop culture he's known for being a celebrity, not for what he actually did. Most pictures of Einstein were taken decades after he did his best work.
More people interested in the history of science should read :
- Subtle is the Lord, The science and life of Albert Einstein by Abraham Pais. The best scientific biography of Einstein.
- Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence (1905) and Early Interpretation (1905-1911) by Arthur Miller. The best historical end epistemological account of some of Einstein's best scientific works.