Original Einstein Manuscript Discovered 325
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."
Other than (Score:3, Interesting)
Not exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue became progressively more cloudy as Einstein aged. A Guardian article [guardian.co.uk] details Einstein's conversations with a Japanese pen-pal after World War II:
Einstein likely changed his views because of the plight of the Jews in Nazi-ruled Germany and elsewhere. Though he was not a practicing Jew, he still felt connected to the Semite people and served the Technion Institute in Israel. By the circumstances of his time, Einstein accepted war as a necessity to combat extraordinary evils.
Re:Not exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not exactly (Score:3, Informative)
Your parent post was referring to atomic warfare, however, which I think was less of a contentious subject for him.
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Though it may be necessary, it is still evil, and should only be approached with the greatest trepidation and after all good options have been exhausted.
Re:Other than (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Other than (Score:2)
While that may have been to some extent an unwritten view, the official one asfaik was to prevent an invasion. Then again, nothing ever does stop conspiracy theories does it?
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).
They got to Berlin first because Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt agreed beforehand that the area would belong to the Soviets no matter who took it over. I believe the argument was that it would be a waste of Allied lives to take over Berlin only to have to give it back to the Soviets, may as well have them make the sacrifice.
. 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.
That is true asfaik; I believe the emperor would also retain some powers and his divine status. The US still kept the emperor although with no power and no longer officially divine. Such a conditional surrender may have proved devastating in terms of rebuilding Japan in such a way as to prevent future conflicts.
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.
Yes racism is fun, anti-semitism was also rampant everywhere at the time not just Germany. Then again, after what the Japanese did to prisoners of war and those they conquered a certain level of hatred during the end of the war was understandable.
Now you go get your facts please.
Same to you.
Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ... (Score:2)
Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ... (Score:2)
Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ... (Score:2)
Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ... (Score:5, Informative)
What, no one studied during history class? The Japanese believed that they were being pushed into a corner by Roosevelt and felt that they had to act to protect the Empire. They were thinking that the US was going to slap them with a trade embargo, which we did, in retaliation for Japan's expansionist efforts in China.
They were thinking that, if they eliminated the threat posed by the 7th fleet, strictly a military target, the US would be unable to enforce the embargo, and they'd have an additonal 6 months to a year in which to continue their expansion and seize the resource areas they thought they needed. After which, they'd present us with a fait accompli, and at the worst, sue for peace with their new borders intact.
In short, they did what quite a few people do. They went after what they wanted, and rationalized that no one would be in a position to stop them.
Unfortunately, the American people were outraged by the sneak attack and loss of life, made worse by the mistiming of the diplomatic note announcing the state of war between Japan and the US, which arrived well AFTER the attack took place.
Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ... (Score:2)
The reasonable answer to being pushed into a corner is to appologize for the attrocities commited in China, to return all the conquered territory and to turn against Hitler and become as neutral as possible and perhaps even a US ally. That is what generally Romania did. It was first allied with Germany, as Germany really wanted Romania's energy resourses. But after they saw that it all was going to hell, they switched sides. They lost territory and became a province of the Soviets, but it perhaps spared the lives of its people. Nothing prevented Japan from stopping its expansion and just staying peacefully on its island, minding its own business.
In short, they did what quite a few people do. They went after what they wanted, and rationalized that no one would be in a position to stop them.
While in general it is good to be assertive and try to get what you want, in their case it is like me wanting a Ferrari and then going and stealing one.
Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ... (Score:2)
You're entirely right that they could have backed down -- but really. .. how many nation states (or people, for that matter) are going to back down and admit they were wrong? After all, from their perspective, we were the ones sticking our nose into THEIR business...
Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ... (Score:2)
However, there was still a real question as to whether or not we would mobilize that capacity, as it was apparent that our country was firmly in the grip of an isolationist stance. And even if we DID mobilize at some point in time, we were sure to become entangled in Europe with our Allies first.
Re:For Japanese attrocities in China ... (Score:3, Interesting)
You seem to have difficulty in distinguishing between individual people and entire races. Cant you imagine in that small brain of yours that *just maybe* not the entire japanese race were evil murderers and didnt deserve to die horrible deaths.
By your own logic al qaeda should attack civilians for the military acts of some US soldiers.
Try to think about that for a second.
Re:Other than (Score:2, Informative)
If you take a look at the Yalta conference, you have to wonder if Roosevelt was the most incompetent President ever, or just liked getting fucked up the ass by "Uncle Joe" Stalin.
Consider: in exchange for declaring war on Japan (which they did at the last possible moment), USSR got
Re:Other than (Score:3, Interesting)
Point 3 made sense actually after the conference, Stalin got Berlin anyway so he may as well waste his own man in claiming it instead of the Allies wasting their own men only to give it to Stalin anyway.
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Yeah shocking, isn't it? Hating people you're at war with.
Re:Other than (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
Because there are only ever two options.
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Re:Other than (Score:2)
There is also the issue of the necessity of the second bomb at Nagasaki. By the time it was dropped the Japanese were still dealing with confused reports of what had happened at Hiroshima (the Japanese military command didn't actually believe it). Very little time as given for the Japanese to fully come to grips with what they now faced, and it is entirely possible that once the full details of Hiroshima were determined (which was a few days after Nagasaki) a surredner may well have been forthcming regardless of whether a second bomb was dropped. This is, again, debatable - second guessing history is a fools game really - but it is likely Japan would have surrendered regardless of the Nagasaki bombing.
Jedidiah.
Re:Other than (Score:5, Informative)
The military commanders weren't even consulted before the bomb was dropped.
Eisenhower recommended against dropping the bomb.
Admiral Lehay opposed the bombings, stating that they achieved nothing.
The vice chairman of US bombing survey said that the a-bombs were not necessary.
However the most damning evidence came from the Director of Naval Intelligence.
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.
PS: all credit goes to DABANSHEE [slashdot.org] for the research.
Re:Other than (Score:2)
I'm sure you could find a similar number of high ranking officials with a contrary view but they are allways in the lime light anyway.
It is the fact we hear these statements so rarely that gives them an extra dimention.
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Wow, quite a statement. And completely false. Truman always insisted (and there is no reason to doubt it) that saving American lives was a prime reason for him to drop the bomb. After Iwo Jima, where the casualty rate was a thousand soldiers a day even while the Japanese defenders were starving and running out of food and water made it obvious that the invasion of a weakened and starved Japan would result in at least ten thousand American soldiers dead.
Moreover, war is politics by other means. So this supposed distinction between military and political reasons is quite artificial. Every single battle we fought in the war was for political reasons, as we could have surrendered (like the French did) rather than fight.
Re:Other than (Score:3, Informative)
To make this more clear, Truman was a politician and he knew that he could never be reelected if it ever became known that he had sat on a weapon that could have finished the war at once while American soldiers died in the Pacific theatre.
All the same this does not negate the fact that dropping the bomb was (i) convenient politically and (ii) resulted in all likelihood in a lower number of deaths in Japan.
In other words, any way one looks at it, dropping the bomb made sense: in terms of internal politics, in terms of global politics, and in saving deaths.
Remember the battle for Berlin, entirely surrounded and isolated had a death toll of over 70,000 Soviet soldiers and 150,000 German soldiers. And that was just one battle! Imagine how many would have been lost in the battle for Honshu, before reaching Tokyo and then in Tokyo itself.
Re:Other than (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
Re:Hey dude (Score:2)
We had an unconditional surrender, although the emperor was kept as a non-divine figurehead. This was not required although the US probably decided it would lead to the best post-war atmosphere. In addition, I'm rather sure that the Japanese terms involved no occupation of Japan, letting the Japanese prosecute their own war criminals and at least some powers still left to the emperor.
Re:Hey dude (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Other than (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan was already starving, didn't do much to them. There is no such thing as "military complexes" as all industry was at the time basically a military installation. You'd have to bomb them back a few centuries, and even then they could secretly make weapons to send against your fleet. Suicide attacks to them weren't exactly against the rules.
From a US point of view a blockade would be expensive and probably unpopular, and Japan could last a while. Humanitarian agencies would object, complain and Japan would sooner or later get sent food anyway.
I'm rather sure that a lot more than a few hundred thousand would die of starvation before they managed to get farming up to a level where it could support the nation, probably millions would be dead as without industrialization farming could never support their population. So you advocate the starving of millions compared to the nuking of thousands, interesting position.
If you wish to see what a nation can degrade into given an insane enough government, look at North Korea. Doesn't mean the people are somehow unintelligent" or "uncivilized" simply that the government is too oppressive. Remember, for a long time most of Europe was composed of peasants (ie: mindless slaves).
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Re:Other than (Score:3, Informative)
I don't suppose you authored the policy on Cuba, huh?
If you took the time to do a proper blocade,
1. The Japanese Atomic bomb program, which was more advanced than the German Atomic bomb program, might have resulted in usable Japanese atomic weapon. Japan had bases on the Asian mainland free from the steady bombing that Germany was subjected to, which maked enrichment feasible.
2. China and Russia were waiting in the wings to invade, and get revenge on Japan for all the pain it had caused those countries. The US wanted to deal with postwar Japan. Things would have been worse for the Japanese if the Chinese and Russians had invaded instead of the Japanese surrenduring to the US.
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Re:Other than (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Other than (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Post fact reasonement ? (Score:2)
Re:Other than (Score:2)
So the reason the US was justified in dropping the bombs was because we're big and powerful and you just don't mess with big and powerful countries? You say their government sealed the fate of their children, but that is a total logical fallacy (as, sadly, is often employed by writers on Slashdot). US wouldn't have dropped bombs if Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor. Therefore, Japan's decision to attack Pearl Harbor caused the US to drop the bombs.
The problem with the argument is that Japan didn't know we'd decide to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in response to Pearl Harbor. Although the US wouldn't have dropped the bombs without Pearl Harbor, the US could have done a lot of other things as a military response.
I too was taught that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in order to save the 1 million American lives that would have been lost in an invasion (since learning that, the figures have been dropped by historians to well under 300,000 American lives, making the argument much less compelling even if one buys into the amoral numbers game). Unfortunately, there's a difference between a soldier's life and a civilian's life, and there's a difficulty in measuring either's value. A soldier is an instrument of his or her country, and his or her purpose is to die in battle with enemy forces. One might say that all soldiers ascend the plane of morality, since they are given the right to kill others without remorse, and likewise to be killed by unregretful forces.
But innocent lives are innocent lives. Yes, there were SOME soldiers (or even people helping the Japanese government's attacks on the US) in Nagasaki, in arms plants and elsewhere. But there were also enormous numbers of completely innocent people, who were wiped out in an instant. This mass killing is more than just that: it's murder, on the largest instantaneous scale we've ever seen. And, to put it lightly, it is highly immoral and intolerable.
-President Truman claimed that Hiroshima was attacked because it was a "military center." But over 120,000 people died outright in the bombing, and 95% of them were civilians.
-The second bomb was prefaced by leaflets which were dropped upon Nagasaki, informing the people that Hiroshima had been destroyed, and that they were next if they didn't tell their leaders to surrender. Since their leaders didn't surrender promptly, they had no choice but to face death. Another 100,000 lives, of which 95% (perhaps more) were innocent civilians.
-We are taught in high schools that this was the "hardest decision a president ever had to make." I disagree. I think it was the easiest decision any immoral person could make, if he were placed in that same situation. It's easy to wipe out a thousands upon thousands of innocent families in order to break the enemy into surrender. It's much more difficult to conduct a war in a manner that still makes it possible for us to be "the good guy" and keep intact our general moral framework with its respect for human life. In exchange for committing a greatly immoral act, Truman was not placed in jail or made into a great villain by the Western World; instead, Truman was attributed with having "ended the war," and received such accolades for this feat that he was even at one point awarded an honorary degree at Oxford University for his peacemaking.
If Japan would have won the war, would they hesitate bombing New York? I don't know, but clearly from the way you pose the question, you find it a highly disgusting and immoral act for a government to bomb a great city like New York (which is full of innocent life, great history, and hardly any military bases) to respond in a military battle with the US. So why should we, the US, have done the same? As beautifully put by Elizabeth Anscombe ("Mr. Truman's Degree"), whose brilliant simplicity casts much light on the reality of
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Re:Other than (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
In a certain way, that still doesn't change the argument that it was the Japanese Emperor that is responsible for the deaths of its people. He might have made them work in the factories (such as the Mitsubishi) but as far as the country being attacked is concerned these individuals are the ones building bombs and torpedos that kill its soldiers.If you remove the builders of the bombs, you save your own soldier's lives. The correct thing would have been not to invade China, not to attack US, to stay nice and quiet in the island and mind its own business.
Re:Other than (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, you bombed oil plants in Iraq during the Gulf War. How WTC is different?
Re:Other than (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO, scientists and labourers may be immoral or even valid targets for war prisons, but are not in any means enemy combattants until they hold a weapon and aim it at their enemies.
What defines a civilian? They're the people with no means to defend themselves and probably no real interest in being active members of the war.
Are the singers who go to the front and sing for the soldiers combattants? They raise moral and troop effectiveness more than some of those in your list would.
Re:Other than (Score:3, Informative)
Keep in mind that the US was not then the superpower that it is now. IIRC, at the start of the war Japan's military was larger than the US's. They probably didn't think they had so much to lose.
Re:Other than (Score:3, Insightful)
"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.
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Do you really think that everyone was forced at the gunpoint to work in the factories? I highly doubt it. Some were but most probably were not.
You kill (your own) civilians by starting a war with another country. Then also you commit attrocities in other territories that you already occupied and you are set. You can just sit and wait, some will come and kill your civilians.
That is what Japan did. It could have responded in other ways to the embargo and it could have just stayed on its island in peace and not commit horrible attrocities in China, but they chose not to. By choosing to attack a country much more powerfull than they are they condemned themselves (civilians and military).
Re:Other than (Score:2)
Re:Other than (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Other than (Score:2)
no.
Re:Nuclear vs. conventional death (Score:2)
The US Peacekeeper missile has 10 warheads with 300 kilotons each. Trident II could have 8 warheads with 300 kilotons.
The Russian Topol-M has like 1 warhead with 550 kilotons. Their old R36-M Satan missile can carry a single 25 megaton warhead, but I don't know how many of those they have left.
Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Informative)
Under absolutely no condition (Score:2)
I wouldn't go around telling the Department of Homeland Security, either - the idea of someone publishing a guide on how to supercollapse matter would scare them witless.
Re:Under absolutely no condition (Score:2)
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Amazing (Score:2)
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
And as such, an image of what Einstien actually wrote is the ONLY way to present it in a way that hasn't been available before.
Re:Amazing (Score:2)
Looks like a job for academic slave labor - i.e., grad students.
--
Evan
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Informative)
Was to be expected, this is one of the oldest surviving Universities in the world (8th. Feb. 1575), all these centuries they have done fine with just a quil and inkwell.
Handwriting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Handwriting (Score:2)
Re:Handwriting (Score:2)
Now, understaning it, that's different. I don't have a don't have a degree that would help. (I did calc in a German school, and won awards for various Stupid Math Tricks while there. But I'm over 30 now, and I don't pretend I'm going to do anything interesting.)
I'm going to be reading this for a while. Some of it is hard to translate, some is hard to transliterate, and some of just hard. Fucking cool stuff.
Re:Handwriting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Handwriting (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting theory, but no. The web page explains that it was taught at school between 1915 and 1941, while Einstein probably learnt writing between 1885 and 1890. Moreover the letters in Einstein's manuscript don't look anywhere close to those in the Sütterlin script. The only thing that can be said is that Einstein didn't make clear arcade curves (the ones in n, m) which makes it hard to read if you don't know German.
Mix of both (Score:3, Informative)
For example, his small type 'z' and the capital 'E' look like Sütterlin.
I think it was quite common to use a mix of both at that time;
I looked into an inherited "Poesiealbum"(*) from that time and it contained very different writing styles:
Completely Sütterlin, completly Latin and very often mixtures of both - some very similar to Einstein's (using Sütterlin 'z' and 'E').
(*autograph book with little poems/remembrances by your friends and relatives)
Re:Handwriting (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Handwriting (Score:2)
The table he wrote on was slanted.
Table? (Score:2)
Re:Handwriting (Score:2, Funny)
Obvious! (Score:2)
His n, u, r and m all look very similar. I do like the way the entire page has a slant to the right though. Maybe some student of Freud could read something into that?
Ah yes, I see now! Without doubt, this shows he subconsciously desired his mother! Desires developed during the Phallic Phase, yadda yadda. :-)
Sorry. Einstein.
zRe:Handwriting (Score:3, Informative)
Case in point: Here in Switzerland (bastion of psycho-analysts and -therapists that it is), applying for a job sometimes requires the applicant to submit a hand-written test. Not quite sure but must've been in the early 90's when the head of the Swiss Psychologist's Association went on to say in an interview that the whole handwriting analysis is a hoax and is mainly used by dumb-ass PHBs to appear smarter than they are.
Please stop furthering this meme. It's a hoax. Kthxbye!
It's in German... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's in German... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's in German... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's in German... (Score:2)
Page 2 of the manuscript reports the last scientific discovery of Einstein's career: the prediction of the new state of matter now called the Bose-Einstein condensate. (The 2001 Nobel prize went to its experimental observation in a cold dilute gas.)
Actually the referred-to part in the manuscript is the second paragraph on the second page, which I'd translate as follows:
I claim that in this case a number of molecules growing with the overall density goes into the first quantum state (state without kinetic energy), while the other molecules ditribute according to the parameter value lambda=1. The claim is therefore that something similar occurs as with isothermal compression of steam across the saturation volume. There appears a separation: One part "condenses", the rest remains a "saturated ideal gas" (A=0, lambda=1)
The text after it explains why this happens (i.e. it contains the calculations leading to that conclusion).
High Resolution??? (Score:5, Funny)
Coral Cache Link (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl.nyud.net:8090/his tory/Einstein_archive/ [nyud.net]
Re:Coral Cache Link (Score:2)
Yes, well, they're Germans.
(I kid! I kid!)
Translation of an important footnote (Score:5, Funny)
Und so investieren die Schüler nicht selten mehrere Monate, um einem Problem auf die Spur zu kommen. Von der Literaturrecherche bis zur Slashdotten durchlaufen sie in kleinen Gruppen alle Phasen einer Forschungsarbeit
which can be translated as:
I have elucidated the necessary relationships that describe the General and the Special Theories of Relativity. Now I must add to those the third and last: the Slashdot Theory of Relativity, namely that a URL posted to Slashdot will result in the associated server being relatively quickly removed from our frame of reference.
Re:Translation of an important footnote (Score:5, Funny)
I have found out a breakthrough on how to unify theories of Gravity and Electromagnetism. Unfortunately, the formulas are too large to write in the footnote here.
High resolution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I possibly missing the links to some even-higher-resolution versions?
Re:High resolution? (Score:5, Funny)
To the submitter, it's actually huge.
It's all about your frame of reference.
Handwriting... (Score:2)
One more manuscript to a pool of many scans (Score:2, Interesting)
For the curious, I think it's been 2 or 3 years since Albert's manuscripts were put in:
http://alberteinstein.info/ [alberteinstein.info]
I remember the announcement from Reuters at the time.
absolute zero, or below zero? (dept nitpicking) (Score:4, Informative)
The paper predicted that at temperatures near absolute zero - around 460 degrees below zero -
So absolute zero is 460 degrees below zero, but I have been tought that it was 273 degrees below zero.
So if Toby Sterling is reading: The absolute zero is:
- zero Kelvin
- minus 273.15 degrees Celcius
- minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit
Feel free to properly describe it next time!
It's all relative (Score:2)
How dare they!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Aren't they violating copyright by posting images of his work?
Or is this another one of those wacky European loopholes?
Re:How dare they!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Superman, where are you? (Score:2, Funny)
Title? (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? No, it's not. It's titled "Quantentheorie des einatomigen idealen Gases", and considering that it's written in German, that shouldn't be much of a surprise, either. What you gave above is the translation of the title, not the title itself.
Sheesh. Slashdot editors. :)
Re:amazing (Score:3, Funny)
Except (Score:2)
everything's relative, I guess.
Except the speed of light, I believe.
zRe:amazing (Score:2)
Re:Article in full (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Article in full (Score:5, Informative)
Original Einstein Manuscript Discovered
By TOBY STERLING
Associated Press Writer
The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1926 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics, scholars said Saturday.
The handwritten manuscript titled "Quantum theory of the diatomic ideal gas" was dated December 1925. Considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs, it was published in the proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in January 1926.
High-resolution photographs of the 160-page, German-language manuscript and an account of its discovery were posted on the institute's Web site.
"It was quite amazing" when a student working on his master's thesis uncovered the delicate manuscript written in Einstein's distinctive scrawl, said professor Carlos Beenakker. "You can even see Einstein's thumbprints in some places, and it's full of notes in the margins and underlining from his editor."
"We're going to keep it as a reminder of his work here, which is quite a pleasurable memory for us," Beenakker said.
The German-born physicist, who was Jewish and part Gypsy, taught in Berlin between 1910 and 1933, fleeing to the United States after Adolf Hitler came to power.
Einstein, whose name is now synonymous with science, was a frequent guest lecturer at Laden in the 1920s due to his friendship with physicist Paul Oppenheimer, among whose papers the manuscript was found.
The paper predicted that at temperatures near absolute zero - around 560 degrees below zero - particles in a gas can reach a state of such low energy that they clump together in one larger pair, a "di-atom."
The idea was developed in collaboration with Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Boshe and the then-theoretical state of matter was dubbed a Bose-Einstein condensation.
In 1985, University of Colorado at Boulder scientists Eric Cornell and Carlos Wiemann created such a condensation using a gas of the element rubidium and were awarded the Nobel peace prize for physics in 2000, together with Wolfgang Amadeus Ketterle of the Californian Institute of Technology.
Beenakker said the student who found the manuscript, Rowdy Boeyink, was painfully reviewing documents in the archive for a thesis on Oppenheimer when he came across the Einstein paper and immediately recognized its importance.
He said Boeyink had found other interesting documents during his search, including a letter from Dutch physicist Niels Bohr, and was all but certain to receive top marks on his thesis.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Plagiarism (Score:2)
Further, the article lost all credibility when I got to this quote:
The author obviously has no clue about the underlying science he is talking about.
Re:Plagiarism (Score:3, Informative)
It is true, however, that a lot of the ideas we commonly attribute to Einstein were thought of by others. Poincare and Lorentz, for example, did think a lot about the synchronization of moving clocks and come up with ideas later used in relativity (e.g. Lorentz transforms). Einstein did not attribute all of these sources in his paper, and I believe there was some debate over to what extent he was aware of that work (or of the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment which cast doubt on the idea of the ether). Einstein might even be in some trouble today if he published a paper without references to such things.
Einstein's original contribution was to some extent his way of looking at these problems. Earlier thinkers had noticed practical problems of clock synchronization, but by and large they believed that these were just experimental issues (due to the wind of the ether, for example) that you needed to correct for to obtain the true, absolute time. It was Einstein who declared that different people's clocks actually run differently, and that there is no absolute time (or ether)! His radical idea was that space and time were not absolutes that every observer could agree upon, not that clock synchronization was hard.
I recommend Galison's book "Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps" for a discussion of the lead-up to these sorts of ideas.