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."
which he at first found "abominable", (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Hoist by his own petard :p
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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]
On the Fred Jerome book (Score:2)
I doubt if Einstein would have called himself anti-zionist because the meaning of zionism was a bit wider in those days. It's just that his strain of zionism has very little relation to Israel as we know it because he was not a nationalist and certainly not in favor of an ethnocracy.
But I think you could say he was a cultural zionist.
Re: On the Fred Jerome book (Score:2)
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Maybe you should read Jerome's book then.
http://www.amazon.com/Einstein... [amazon.com]
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Maybe you should read another book, any of many:
"I am against nationalism but in favor of Zionism. The reason has become clear to me today. When a man has both arms and he is always saying I have a right arm, then he is a chauvinist. However, when the right arm is missing, then he must do something to make up for the missing limb. Therefore, I am, as a human being, an opponent of nationalism. But as a Jew I am from today a supporter of the Jewish Zionist efforts."
http://books.google.com/books?... [google.com]
http://www [eltwhed.com]
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one of many indeed. I'm sure that quote from around 1920 has been repeated endlessly. Einstein's support for Israel is the default assumption. That's what everyone takes as a given. And it's heavily biased. The Jerome book has other quotes as well, and gives a better picture of how his positions and opinions evolved over time.
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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]
Yet he was offered the Presidency of Israel in 1952, and though he turned them down, he posed it as a matter of his own abilities and interests, rather than an "abhorrence of the violent creation of the Israeli nation" or "active anti-Zionism". He may have abhorred the violence, as many Jews and non-Jews are without pinning the entire abhorrence onto Israel, but apparently not enough to make a public statement; perhaps the phrase you are looking for is "was saddened by the violent creation of the Israeli na
Re: which he at first found "abominable", (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on dice. The universal constants are not randomly changing at least, so the outcome is based on certain rules.
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ugh. universal constants dependent on beta. what could go wrong?
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The universal constants are not randomly changing
or they all change uniformly, giving the impression, in our referential, that nothing changes.
He knew it had flaws (Score:1)
In cosmology, the Steady State theory is a now-obsolete theory and model alternative to the Big Bang theory of the universe's origin (the standard cosmological model).
Einstein probably knew it had flaws. The "steady state" model was later proposed ( 1960's) by Fred Hoyle, Jayant Narlikar and others .
Re:which he at first found "abominable", (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Higgs field would have put a smile on his face. It amazes me that his first wife never got any recognition. It is impossible to do what Einstein did alone. Wondering if Max Plank saw that.
She got the proceeds from his nobel prize as part of a divorce settlement. However, there is little evidence that she was instrumental in any real discoveries. Here is an overview: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.3551... [arxiv.org]
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I think you might want to read the citation from the Nobel Committee. It wasn't just for the photoelectric effect.
True, but this is what the Nobel web site says:
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobe... [nobelprize.org]
Re:which he at first found "abominable", (Score:5, Insightful)
"Stop trying to tell God what to do." -Bohr
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
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Explaining the Photoelectric effect using the particulate nature of light.
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But "God does not throw dice", indeed. God (the universe) follows certain rules that allows us to assign probabilities to all possible outcomes of an event before it happens. But the outcome that actually happens is caused by God (the universe), which is infinitely complex. As we cannot account for all factors that influence the outcome at each given event, we resort to statistics.
Well, this assumes that "beneath" the observed phenomenon that follow probabilistic behavior there is an underlying deterministic nature. But is that a safe assumption? What if the universe really is probabilistic in nature?
However, even though Einstein is right, you can also prove him wrong: If God is the universe and we are part of the universe, we are part of God. As we can create and throw dice, it logically follows that God [i]does[/i] throw dice, in fact, as we are part of it. It's an obvious fact that comes from him being omnipotent.
Well, as a religious person, I believe we have an honest-to-goodness free will that gives us agency apart from either deterministic or probabilistic nature. Ironically, it's because of this belief that it's incorrect to assign responsibility for the actions of free agents to God. In
Re: which he at first found "abominable", (Score:3)
Every experiment contains randomness, regardless of quantum theory. Engineers call it noise. Statisticians call it unexplained variance. That's why statistics is the language of science. You can still repeat experiments, including quantum experiments, by collecting a large enough sample size and computing the relavent statistics.
Einstein's opposition was against the interpretati (Score:3)
He was firmly opposed to the non-deterministic interpretation of QM, in the sense that he believed a really fundamental theory should be deterministic. He didn't doubt the predictive power of the theory. I think it's worthwile to make that distinction.
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How big is it? (Score:5, Funny)
Even a 1 to a million scale model of the universe would be pretty big...
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Costs me a calculator each time I try it (Score:2)
:)
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How much is infinity divided by infinity?
You know, that makes me wonder... once quantum computers are more common, will programmers have to deal with "divide by infinity error" messages?
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We do it now. What is NaN/NaN? NaN.
Re: How big is it? (Score:2, Funny)
Batman!
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We do it now. What is NaN/NaN? NaN.
Here's a helpful pronunciation guide [youtube.com].
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How much is infinity divided by infinity?
42, of course.
No, that's wrong. Any electronics tech knows the answer is 47.
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It got stored compressed and is freely available as 42.zip.
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Every damn cycle, those stupid Vogons are late.
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A Vogon is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.
Re:How big is it? (Score:5, Funny)
I believe you're confusing Vogons with wizards. Too much pipeweed, Gandalf?
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hahahah i know this is a troll...
God would use tar of course.
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Given the context I doubt it, since tar itself doesn't do compression.
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Perhaps we are sitting in a scale model of the "real" Universe...
Panspermia (Score:5, Interesting)
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... this is another echo of the importance of [Hoyle's] thinking.
Of course a bad idea doesn't cancel out a good one... But Fred Hoyle was also known for his spectacular misunderstanding [wikipedia.org] of evolution.
Turtles all the way down (Score:2)
That's really what Einstein's paper was about.
It made me think.. (Score:2)
could a really smart ant model the entire earth?
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Sure, Atom Ant would have no problem doing it.
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could a really smart ant model the entire earth?
Without extensions, no. With certain extensions, ANT may become turing complete, then yes.
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A Natural Consequence (Score:3)
"a natural consequence of his general theory of relativity"
Is this to say the general theory of relativity produces a Big Bang? As in, because GR is true, BB is? What's the short explanation for that?
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Later on that same wiki page: "Problems with the steady-state theory began to emerge in the late 1960s, when observations apparently supported the idea that the universe was in fact changing: quasars and radio galaxies were found only at large distances (therefore could have existed only in the distant past), not in closer galaxies. Whereas the Big Bang theor
Replying to self (Score:2)
"Theoretical calculations showed that a static universe was im [wikipedia.org] possible under general relativity"
No beginning (Score:4, Interesting)
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However, there is a problem with this solution to the very complex existing in less than infinite time: the monkey should be handing us a large number of copies of the the works of Shakespeare, not just one
That presupposes something about how many copies the monkeys are apt to produce. I could sign on to them handing us zero or infinity copies under an infinite time scenario, whereas any "large number" would be arbitrary. The "infinite copies" outcome is not a problem because the mean time between deliv
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i think it far far FAR more unlikely that even one monkey exists then Shakespeare's complete works do.
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Here.... I've got evidence [youtu.be] for you.
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14 billion years is basically infinity, at least to our puny-yet-rather-clever brains.
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Conformal Cyclic Cosmology doesn't require a beginning either, and it can be experimentally tested by finding specific patterns in the cosmic microwave background. So it's not exactly a pie in the sky argument like String/M/Brane theories are.
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... It is fine for a monkey to hand us the works of Shakespeare now, if there has been infinite time already for him and his friends to bang on typewriters, but if they've only had 14 billion years so far, we might have to suppose they at least read the Cliff Notes. ...
It would not actually be Shakespeare's works. The phenominon is called "Noise Aliasing". Look it up...
Creativity vs. Being a Crank (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Yes. This is an important distinction. "They also laughed at Bozo the Clown." [c2.com]
Hoyle wasn't purely a crank, of course. He was a very good scientist, who had made major contributions to his field, but who just couldn't accept new ideas past a certain point, and thereby became a crank. This phenomenon isn't universal by any means, but it's sadly common.
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Ah, the old joke about the physicist approaching the dean for accelerator funding. "Why can't you be like the mathematicians? We provide them with pencils, paper, and a wastebasket, and they are busy for years! Or the philosophers. They don't even need a wastebasket."
Re:Creativity vs. Being a Crank (Score:4, Insightful)
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.)
Einstein is not god (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Considering scientists, Einstein was a snail among fleas. It took him years to move a few miles. At the same time the fleas had covered thousands of miles without getting more than a few hundred yards of where they started from.
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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.
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.
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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.
That's really easy to say in hindsight, when we have the benefit of being able to calculate the scale of the near universe and measure the velocities of stars. Sounds like you would've intuitively figured out gravitation if you lived before Newton, too.
The solid state model was really, really entrenched in Einstein's time. The Big Bang was mocked by Einstein and many others on the grounds of being too religious, appealing to the idea of a single moment of creation. Prior thinkers seem very naive from our
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Philosophically, thought, it does seem quite silly, and I myself would never have regarded it as more than a mathematical curiosity,
Why? We currently accept a model where the universe spontaneously came into existence at one time with any explanation (at least none that we know of now). The steady state hypothesis postulates a continuous universe with spontaneous creation of stuff at a regular rate to remain a stable state. Exactly why is the latter more "philosophically" more problematic than the former? Both postulate events of creation out of nothingness.
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He has had successes where others could not supply the necessary creativity, so I think you owe him an apology. IANAP but assume you find superdeterminism insane because it would need to account for preselecting the myriad of fluctuations that would affect a RNG, and not due to religious reaction to the loss of destiny in which the
Universe is set in steel.
It seems to this non-physicist that if the Universe is a simulation (another insane idea) it would be possible to choose solely the desiref outcome and tr
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I don't owe him an apology. I am a physicist, and my field of expertise is foundations of quantum mechanics. I did not say that this idea is insane as a knee-jerk reaction. I have read his paper, and I've been to a presentation by the men himself.
I find superdeterminism isane because it is too strong a hyphotesis: it can explain any experimental result. It is, therefore, incompatible with the very idea of doing science. Let me give you an example. Suppose that you want to measure some property of a particle
"physicist" Albert Einstein? (Score:1, Flamebait)
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.
this is a game... (Score:1)
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If you assume reality is a simulation, which is not altogether ridiculous, it makes you wonder about life after death. Your consciousness, your "soul" is just ones and zeros and twos (in my head the simulating computer uses ternary logic), so why can't something happen to it after your simulated meat body dies? Maybe you wake up in the "real world." Maybe nothing happens. Maybe heaven and hell are parts of the program.
Black Holes (Score:1)
Space Makes H (Score:2)
I rather like Einstein's new (old) theory (Score:1)