Historians Rediscover Einstein's Forgotten Model of the Universe 35
KentuckyFC writes In 1931, after a 3- month visit to the U.S., Einstein penned a little known paper that attempted to show how his theory of general relativity could account for some of the latest scientific evidence. In particular, Einstein had met Edwin Hubble during his trip and so was aware of the latter's data indicating that the universe must be expanding. The resulting model is of a universe that expands and then contracts with a singularity at each end. In other words, Einstein was studying a universe that starts with a big bang and ends in a big crunch. What's extraordinary about the paper is that Einstein misspells Hubble's name throughout and makes a number of numerical errors in his calculations. That's probably because he wrote the paper in only 4 days, say the historians who have translated it into English for the time. This model was ultimately superseded by the Einstein-de Sitter model published the following year which improves on this in various ways and has since become the workhorse of modern cosmology.
Extraordinary misspelling? (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason I don't find Einstein making a spelling mistake particularly extraordinary. Sounds like a particularly ordinary thing for an un-edited manuscript and a unusual name like "Hubble".
If making a spelling mistake is extraordinary, then /.ers are making extraordinary posts all the time.
Einstein's Forgotten _Draft_ Model of the Universe (Score:5, Insightful)
This is basically a peer review of an unpublished draft paper by Einstein. It would have been interesting to have Einstein's response, but on the other hand Einstein-de Sitter model is the result of further dialogue.
Re:Extraordinary misspelling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Consistent incorrect spelling of a proper noun from another language as a legitimate word in your own language ... If Einstein never saw the name in writing it's a rather easy mistake to make.