Questions tagged [einstein]
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was one of the most important physicists of all time. His work touched many major areas of physics, although he is mostly known as the creator of the theory of relativity and the photoelectric effect. Use this tag for questions about Einstein's scientific life and his works.
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Did Einstein really explain Relativity using the hot stove/pretty girl analogy and if so why?
I am pretty sure that Albert Einstein explained special relativity by saying in effect, sitting on a hot stove for a minute can seem like an hour; sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it might seem ...
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Do gravitational waves hold the record of longest delay between prediction and confirmation under the same theory?
This question is similar to What was the longest delay between prediction and confirmation of a theory? but I want to frame it in a different way. I am looking for long delays between prediction and ...
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Was there any discourse between Dirac and Einstein that was recorded in print or noted?
I read in Wiki they were together at the Solvay Conderence. There is also a note from 1926 letter to Paul Ehrenfest, Albert Einstein wrote of a Dirac paper, "I am toiling over Dirac. This ...
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Why didn't Einstein propose any metric solution to his equations?
I've read about general relativity (GR) recently and something stroke me: Einstein came up with his equations in 1915, linking the metric of spacetime to the distribution of energy (more exactly, to ...
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The case of Felix Exner and Brownian motion
I'm reading some articles about the history of Brownian Motion, for example, that of Maiocchi (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4026755) or Genthon (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.05399.pdf), and they all ...
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On Einstein's argument at the beginning of his PhD thesis
In Investigations on the theory of Brownian movement, he says that osmosis holds for solute particles but not for Brownian ones, since they are too big to pass through a permeable membrane.
So what? ...
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Historical origins of the idea that information cannot travel faster than light
Is there a good book or other reference that discusses the historical origins of the principle that not even information can travel faster than the speed of light? In my understanding the main reason ...
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Why did Einstein's teacher say that Einstein's presence alone undermined his authority?
Based on the excellent answer from @njuffa in the post Is it true that Albert Einstein was kicked out of high school due to his "peacefulness"? there is a quote from what the "home-room ...
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Is it true that Albert Einstein was kicked out of high school due to his "peacefulness"?
In an interview I recently saw with Joseph Agassi he said that:
...The teachers that kicked him out asked that it be written in his [Einstein's] report card that they have no complaint against him. ...
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Did Einstein attribute a physical meaning to the affine connection in his unification models?
As seen in Einstein's 1920 address from the University of Leiden, for example, he did consider it meaningful to distinguish between the presence and absence of the aether, and certainly he seemed to ...
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Before Einstein did people realize about a falling man not feeling weight?
I understand that Einstein was able to draw remarkable conclusions and was set on the path of General relativity when he realized that a falling observer not feeling his own weight.
But is it believed ...
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Einstein's "answers have changed"
I remember first seeing this anecdote a few years ago in a newspaper article, now I am seeing more frequently in motivational content over the internet, every time with very few additional details. ...
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Did Einstein believe the laws of physics would be replaced by mathematical identities?
I'm sure this wasn't his intention at the outset, but here's my understanding of the history of GR so you can see where I'm coming from:
The Einstein-Grossmann "Entwurf" version of the ...
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What did Einstein say about the Dirac equation?
The wiki article on Dirac quotes Einstein as saying of Dirac
I have trouble with Dirac. This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful.
and
I don't understand Dirac at all.
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Interviews / Conversations with Einstein
I'm searching interviews and/or conversations (in English) with Einstein as text. Is there something available? In particular physics (e.g. theory of relativity) would be interesting but also other (e....
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Motivation to reformulate General Relativity in terms of connections?
My understanding that is Einstein and Schrodinger both were in correspondence (see here) and looking to reformulate General Relativity in terms of connections (which lead to this debacle). Now, from ...
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Hilbert's criticism on the first version of Einstein's field equations
Crossposted at Physics Stack Exchange
I have read once that Hilbert had some reservations regarding the first form of the field equations
$$ R_{\mu\nu} = k T_{\mu\nu} $$
because it was not possible ...
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Is Edmund Whittaker claim that Hilbert proved General Relativity days before Einstein valid?
Are the claims of Sir Edmund Whittaker regarding David Hilbert's derivation of the general relativity theory predated that of Einstein by five days?
This Wikipedia article that I found contains the ...
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How did they know that the space could expand?
The theory of general relativity was formulated around 1915 which could be summed up in words of John Wheeler, "Space-time tells matter how to move; matter tells space-time how to curve".
At ...
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Einstein's overdetermination theory
In 1923 [1], Einstein proposed an idea for a classical theory that would explain some features of quantum mechanics, via the overdetermination of the EoM, so that only certain configurations would be ...
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Einstein's Objection to Drude Model
In Walter Isaacson's Biography of Einstein, it is stated that the young Einstein was developing his own ideas in Statistical Physics and Thermodynamics and he had found some error in Drude's model for ...
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What was Einstein's first publication of the final form of general relativity?
What was Einstein's first published exposition of his final form of general relativity, be it a scientific article or a book?
I've been googling the answer for hours now, with no luck, really. The ...
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What was the poetic duel Einstein had with Lilly Rona about?
Felix Ehrenhaft was married to Lilly Rona. Einstein and Ehrenhaft regularly met and discussed about magnetic poles or fractional charges. Einstein didn't agree and used his authority to keep Ehrenhaft ...
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Where there scientists before Einstein who viewed space(time) as being elastic?
Einstein was the first who saw spacetime as a mallable substance to be malled with mass. As far as I know there were no people who suggested such a view of spacetime before him. But I could be wrong.
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Is there any literature or articles which expand more on Einstein's thoughts about Dostoyevsky's novels?
It is a well known fact that he admired Dostoyevsky even more than scientists. I'm looking for things like, Einstein's opinions about his religious discourse? What did he think of his bold statements ...
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How did Mach's view on spacetime differ from Einstein's?
We can read in Wikipedia:
Mach's principle, in cosmology, hypothesis that the inertial forces experienced by a body in nonuniform motion are determined by the quantity and distribution of matter in ...
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Was Einstein motivated by Riemannian geometry, or did he merely use it?
Einstein made intensive use of non-Eucliden geometry already developed by mathematicians. The difference being that the real manifolds (well, one of them) as imagined by the mathematicians were ...
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Why did the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics got the upperhand?
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is nowadays the interpretation that prevails over other interpretations (or theories). Basically, it states that all processes in Nature are ...
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Is there any evidence that Einstein knew of Cliffords speculation on the nature of gravity and electromagnetism?
Around 1870, William Clifford published a short note in The Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society describing all forces as an aspect of the curvature of space.
This is the basis of ...
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Did Einstein know about Laplace's query into whether gravity is instantaneous?
Here it states,
In 1776, Laplace published a memoir in which he first explored the possible influences of a purported luminiferous ether or of a law of gravitation that did not act instantaneously. ...
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What is the difference between Einstein's and Boltzmann's definitions of probability?
In the Einstein's 1905 paper on light quanta, he wrote the following about Boltzmann's notion of probability:
The word probability is used in a sense that does not confirm to its definition as it ...
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Why did no one else, except Einstein, work on developing General Relativity between 1905-1915?
Einstein dedicated his time between 1905-1915 to develop general relativity (GR). It seems strange to me that no other physicists attempted to tackle this problem in this ten-year period. After all, ...
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When were white holes theorised?
It seems to me that once black holes were theorised then the obvious singularity at its centre - though only ratified after Hawking and Penrose's singularity theorems - one would have to ask where the ...
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Does "Einstein's Light clock" really belong to Einstein?
Although I cannot find the related Q/A, I remember that someone here notified me that the so-called Einstein's light clock was first introduced by Max von Laue or someone but Einstein. Does anybody ...
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Einstein's handwritten manuscript on General Relativity
The book "The Road to Relativity" by Gutfreund and Renn annotates Einstein's original handwritten manuscript from 1916 - "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity." I can ...
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How did the "Wheel of Theodorus" become known as the "Wheel of Einstein"?
I've desperately searched the Internet, to no avail, to find a citation of how the "Wheel of Theodorus" became known as the "Wheel of Einstein" as claimed by Wikipedia and Wolfram.
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Einstein: 'SR is a theory of invariants, not relativity' -- source?
It is occasionally remarked that Einstein was unhappy that SR became referred to as a ‘theory of relativity’, when in his eyes it was, much more importantly, a theory of invariants (Invariantentheorie)...
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Einstein visited former teacher/professor who thought he wanted to borrow money: who might that have been?
I am not sure in what bio I read this but it was not a new bio -- not Isaacson, for example. The anecdote was simply that he wanted to see an old professor/teacher (as many of us I think might do if ...
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Did Einstein oppose evolution? [closed]
According to the laws of nature progression is always downward. One of these laws is the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that isolated systems cannot increase in complexity. For example, a ...
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What is the source of Einstein's quote "spooky action at a distance"? [duplicate]
Einstein's attribution of 'spooky action at a distance' to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is obviously in wide use as a quote. However, I've been googling the issue for a while and ...
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Understanding Bohr's response to a 1930 Einstein thought experiment that challenged the uncertainty principle
Structure of this post
I want to better understand how Bohr responded to Einstein's 1930 attempt to demonstrate that quantum mechanics was inherently contradictory under the Copenhagen interpretation....
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Were there doubts that Voigt's time dilation was correct rather than Einstein's?
According to Wikipedia's Voigt transformation:
Lorentz did not adopt this transformation, as he found in 1904 that
only the Lorentz contraction corresponds to the principle of
relativity. Since ...
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Did Einstein or the scientific community know about quantum tunneling during the EPR debates?
It is my understanding that Einstein produced the EPR paper to necessarily elucidate the existence of physical properties that could not exist prior to measurement. That was his assumption which was ...
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First paper introducing the concept of four-vectors
I'm trying to find the first paper in which the concept of four-vectors was introduced. I read "Principle of Relativity" by H. Minkowski but he only presents the notion of metric and invariant space-...
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What is the original source for Einstein's description of entanglement as "Spooky Action at a Distance"?
Try as I may, I cannot find the original source where Einstein described entanglement as "Spooky Action at the Distance." The work "spooky" is not in the 1935 EPR paper, which was written in English ...
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Einstein praising Sophus Lie
p. 153 of
Raúl M. Falcón Ganfornina and Juan Núñez Valdés, “Mathematical Foundations of Santilli Isotopies,” trans. Alan Aversa, Algebras, Groups, and Geometries 32 (2015): 135–308.
quotes (but does ...
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What was the relationship between Einstein and Minkowski?
I read many Einstein's Biographies, but Minkowski was never mentioned, though his discovery of the union of space and time created the basis for GR.
Minkowski was Einstein's teacher of mathematics ...
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Where did Einstein propose interpreting the square of amplitude as probability density (Born's rule)?
In Max Born's Nobel lecture, he alludes to Einstein's proposed interpretation of EM wave amplitude (squared) as being the probability density of detecting a photon:
Again an idea of Einstein’s gave ...
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Source for this story about Einstein learning algebra from his uncle
I have occasionally run into the following story (or a variation of it) about Albert Einstein:
Young Albert did not like algebra, and his uncle is supposed to have aroused his curiosity by telling ...
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Is it true Einstein doubted relativity near the end of his life?
Heard he wrote a bunch of rambling thoughts near the end of his life and doubted his own theory of relativity...it was in Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
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