Einstein and the Devil's Advocate

Einstein and the Devil’s Advocate Roger J Anderton [email protected] Contrary to popular belief – Einstein’s Relativity was never accepted by the scientific community; the experts could not agree on it. Sadly this has become a taboo subject letting many people develop the delusion that it was accepted. This article will be in three parts: 1. The Non-acceptance of Einstein’s Relativity 2. Devil’s Advocate 3. Einstein’s math 1. The Non-acceptance of Einstein’s Relativity If we go by the Mainstream – Einstein being a genius should have got about 4 to 5 Nobel prizes in Physics. This is because in his miraculous year of 1905 – he wrote four papers- Brownian motion paper proving the existence of atoms Photoelectric effect – basis of photons and Quantum mechanics Special Relativity and E= mc 2 paper That makes 4 and for General Relativity that would have made 5 Nobels. But in reality he only got one Nobel Prize. Mainstream looks upon this as Einstein getting cheated out of 4 or more Nobel prizes. But that’s all just propaganda by people who are fans of Einstein. Behind the propaganda is what really happened- There was a struggle for Einstein to even get one Nobel Prize. People were opposing Einstein from getting any Nobel Prize whatsoever. There was a great deal of opposition against Einstein; and all that get swept under the carpet nowadays. The opposition to Einstein in its day got swamped by the media campaign to publicise Einstein as a genius, and eventually just caved into that pressure. Hence we are just left with the media campaign of Einstein promoted as genius without much in the way of sceptical counter view to that. Let’s go over the sudden celebrity status of Einstein as he was thrust into superstardom by the media. Virginia Hughes reports it as follows: By the next year, "Einstein-mania" was in full bloom. During his first trip to the United States he gave many public lectures on relativity, and received the prestigious Barnard Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. After one particularly crowded lecture at Princeton, legend has it that Einstein said wryly to the chairman, "I never realized that so many Americans were interested in tensor analysis." [1] Hughes continues: As his quirky personality and untamed tresses gained more popularity with the general public, his momentous theory gained more credibility in the scientific community. In 1921, swarms of both theoreticians and experimentalists again nominated Einstein for his work on relativity. Reporters kept asking him, to his great annoyance, if this would be the year that he received a Nobel Prize. [1] So, the points to consider: 1. The media had Einstein portrayed as genius, so the next question was when was Einstein going to get his Nobel Prize and be recognised as a genius. 2. There was opposition to Einstein getting a Nobel Prize 3. Hence his “annoyance.” 4. There were people who did not want to give him a Nobel prize! Hughes continues: But 1921 was not the year, thanks to one stubborn senior member of the prize committee, ophthalmologist Allvar Gullstrand. "Einstein must never receive a Nobel Prize, even if the whole world demands it," said Gullstrand, according to a Swedish mathematician's diary dug up by Friedman. Gullstrand's arguments, however biased, convinced the rest of the committee. In 1921, the Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded no physics prize. Hughes blames one man as setting the Noble prize committee against Einstein. But it was really the whole 4 man committee that was opposed to Einstein. One of the committee died and the new man who came in opened the door for Einstein. So, we take up this from Elzinga. Elzinga says: “Chance had intervened with the unexpected death of the committee chairman.” [2] Elzinga calls the new man a “hero” because the new man was a supporter of Einstein obviously like Elzinga Elzinga continues: The hero was a new committee member (C W Oseen) who saw the others were set against relativity, so argued for the 'law' being fundamental and underpinning Bohr's atom model. He successfully argued for a package using the deferred 1921 prize - one to Einstein and the second to Niels Bohr. But such was the animus against relativity theory that at the Swedish Academy's plenary meeting, the astonishing reservation was added to Einstein's certificate: "independent of the value that (after eventual confirmation) may be credited to the relativity and gravitation theory". This reflects the refusal throughout the decade to award a prize for relativity…… [2] Back to Hughes: Oseen lobbied the committee to recognize the photoelectric effect not as a "theory," but as a fundamental "law" of nature–not because he cared about recognizing Einstein, but because he had another theoretical physicist in mind for that second available prize: Niels Bohr. Bohr had proposed a new quantum theory of the atom that Oseen felt was "the most beautiful of all the beautiful" ideas in recent theoretical physics. In his report to the committee, Oseen exaggerated the close bond between Einstein's proven law of nature and Bohr's new atom. [1] According to Friedman: “Thus in one brilliant stroke overcoming the objections against both Einstein and Bohr." [1] So, there were objections to Bohr and quantum theory not just against Einstein. Hughes: On November 10, 1922, they gave the 1922 prize to Bohr and the delayed 1921 prize to Einstein, "especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." Einstein, en route to Japan (and perhaps huffy after the committee's long delay) did not attend the official ceremony. [1] Information still from Hughes - According to Friedman, Einstein didn't care much about the medal, anyway, though he did care about the money. As the German mark decreased in value after the war, Einstein needed a hard foreign currency for alimony payments to his ex-wife. [1] There was an obligatory speech for the Nobel Prize, and I will pick up this from Bert Schreiber. Bert Schreiber: “Einstein was in Berlin in the spring of 1923 and a time and place for the delivery of the obligatory Nobel speech was agreed upon. This was given as a Nobel lecture at Goeteborg, Sweden, during the meeting of the Scandinavian Society of Natural Science on July 10, 1923.” [3] “During this particular speech titled: Fundamental Ideas and Problems on the Theory of Relativity, he never mentioned that his prize was on the photoelectric effect and the other physical theories or anything even remotely connected to his diploma. All he expounded on was on Relativity (parts of that third paper). The scientists and newspapers complained.” [3] Apparently Einstein had been asked to give a lecture on relativity by the Nobel committee. So, Einstein acted like the prize was for his relativity. That’s how it was bypassed the protests at Einstein’s relativity, and Nobel Prize was now effectively endorsing Einstein’s relativity despite the Nobel committee (as we noted earlier) not wanting to give Einstein a Nobel Prize for relativity. It was bypassing Alfred Nobel’s wishes, who had wanted the lectures for his prizes based on what the Nobel Prize was being awarded for! Further-- With Einstein’s prize as paving the way for Bohr getting a Nobel Prize, it was meaning that the Special Relativity Philosophy being adopted Einstein rejected the direction that Quantum mechanics went with Bohr, but his 1921 Nobel Prize paved the way for it. Einstein’s point of view on Quantum theory based on his comments has been collected to form the article by him “A skeptic of quantum theory explains his misgivings “[4] To the question “Why were you so upset about quantum theory when much of it was based on your own work?” The type of reply he would give is: Yes, I may have started it but I always regarded these ideas as temporary. I never thought that others would take them so much more seriously than I did. Make a big note of this—modern physics from this revolution circa 1920s came from Einstein and he did not take it seriously; effectively it’s all built on a joke. The Philosophy underpinning Quantum mechanics was inspired by Einstein’s philosophy that formed Special relativity according to Heisenberg. (See: the book “Uncertainty: the life story of Werner Heisenberg”) [5] Heisenberg told Einstein this and Einstein still dismissed it as nonsense. One of the troubles with Einstein is that Einstein just kept changing his mind. He would think one thing one moment and something else later. So although the philosophy on which he formed SR was used to form QM. Einstein had by then changed to another philosophy. The philosophy that’s bad was-- Albert Einstein "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." [6] This means keep the theory no matter what experiments give It was deemed a Jewish way of thinking about things And was not natural to non-Jewish minds This has been noted by many- e.g. Sommerfield – who was friend of Einstein: “Arnold Sommerfeld, who strangely enough would become a friend, discerned an insalubrious Jewish cast to Einstein’s theorizing. To his esteemed colleague Hendrik Lorentz he wrote in 1907, “As remarkable as Einstein’s papers are, it still seems to me that something almost unhealthy lies in this unconstruable and impossible to visualize dogma. An Englishman would hardly have given us this theory. It might be here too, as in the case of Cohn, the abstract conceptual character of the Semite expresses itself.” [7] The trouble with this leads onto being accused of anti-Semitism if opposed to it, also its unfair stereotyping of Jews.

Load more