Part 2 of 2 Parts: "How Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Changed the Way We See the Universe, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net, review of Walter Isaacsonís Einstein, His Life and Universe, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007, and related sources, given 21 Apr. '08, Uplands Retirement Village. Pleasant Hill, TN.
Frank: Building on two certaintiesó1-physics laws are the same everywhere; 2-nothing travels faster than lightóAlbert's insight was that all objects move, all events occur, relative to an observerís place and rate of movement.
Betty: On his daily streetcar ride home from work, looking back, Albert saw Bern, Switzerland's famous Clock Tower receding. If his streetcar heading away from the Clock Tower could approach the speed of light, he reasoned, its clock hands would appear to stop while his own pocket watch would tick normally.
F: On earth where the fastest moving thing is a tiny fraction the speed of light's 186,000 miles per second, Newtonís laws hold firm. Time and space do seem separate and fixed. But on a fast moving spaceship, approaching the speed of light, a clock aboard it slows down.
B: The faster the spaceship, the more its clock slows down, called Time Dilation. Time Dilation has been proved, most recently in 1971 with two identically set atomic clocks, one stationary on the ground, the other jet-flown around the world, when compared, showed the jet flown clock had slowed down.
F: To humans inside a speeding spaceship all seems normal. But as the spaceship passes a stationary outside observer, the front-part of the spaceship looks shortened to the observer, its end-part looks lengthened, called Space Dilation.
B: If Albert's findings seem absurd, remember: our forebears long believed incorrectly in a flat earth; incorrectly that earth was the center of the universe.
F: Albert's genius was to think differently, outside common thought, "outside the box." Everything in his strangely mixed up life led to these 1905 intuitive grand discoveries. Chance favored his prepared mind. Why?
B: Albert worked out mathematical proof that Time and Space are not fixed, not separate, but are interwoven as spacetime. To our 3 dimensions of length, width, and height he added a fourth dimension of spacetime. 41
F: Albertís short fourth 1905 paper, an afterthought to his third Special Theory of Relativity paper, held that matter and energy are similar and can be converted one into the other.
B: Marie Curie (1867-1934) had discovered this in l902 when uranium from pitch-blend, which is matter, gave off electronic radiation, which is energy. Albert reduced this matter-to-energy conversion to a formula, E=mc2.
F: E for Energy equals mass (which is, matter), multiplied by c (c for celeritus, Latin for speed of light), squared. 186,000 miles per second, squared, is so huge a number that if atoms on a pinhead could be split apart, those atoms would explode like an atom bomb.42
B: Biographer Walter Isaacson wrote: Q ìEinsteinís 1905 burst of creativity was astonishing. He had devised a revolutionary quantum theory of light, helped prove the existence of atoms, explained Brownian motion, upended the concept of space and time, and produced what would become scienceís best known equation.ì43 EQ
F: Albertís Special Theory of Relativity covered only bodies moving parallel in straight lines at constant speeds. It would take him 10 years to find a General Theory of Relativity, backed by math, that explained how and why bodies move at varying speeds in curved motion around other bodies. When proven, his General Theory of Relativity would make him world famous.43+
B: Waiting to be recognized, still needing Patent Office income, he wrote other scholarly papers and also completed his Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Zurich, summer 1905.
F: His application to be a University of Bern lecturer required submitting another original physics paper, which allowed him to lecture, unpaid except for student fees, during 1908-1909. He had to lecture early, 7 to 8 a.m., before Patent Office hours, and so had few students.44
B: First to inquire about Relativity by letter was world renowned University of Berlin physicist Max Planck (P-l-a-n-c-k, 1858-1947). Planck soon added Relativity to his lectures. Planck's assistant, Max von Lau (1879-1960), sent to Bern to consult Albert, was surprised to find him working as a lowly Patent Office clerk. 44+ Noticed at last, Albert received job offers and soon climbed the academic ladder.
F: Appointed associate professor of physics at the University of Zurich, 1909-10, Albert resigned from the Patent Office July 6, 1909 where his best thinking had been done for 7 years. He moved with Mileva, and 5-year old Hans Einstein to Zurich, Oct. 15, 1909, where their second son Eduard was born, July 28, 1910. 43
B: He next became full professor at German Speaking Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague, 1911-12. From here he attended a science conference in Brussels, Belgium, October 1911, where, at 32, the youngest physicist present, he met for the first time the greatest living physicists of the time, including Marie Curie. 44-48
F: Albert next became physics professor at Zurich Polytechnic, 1912-14, his alma mater, then a full Ph.D.-granting institution. It was a fortunate move. His friend Marcel Grossmann, then head of the Polytechnic's math department, taught Albert tensor calculus for curved space he would need to prove his 1915 General Theory of Relativity.
B: Albertís last European position was at the prestigious University of Berlin, 1914-33, 19 years, through World War I, Germany's defeat and economic collapse, and Hitlerís rise to power, 47+ which forced Albert to move to the U.S. in 1933.
F: As a busy housewife raising two boys, the younger one, Eduard, a schizophrenic, Mileva's science interest waned. She resented Albertís several extra-marital affairs, was bitter that he took the prestigious Berlin position partly to be near his divorced cousin Elsa Einstein (1876-1936), with whom he had an affair.
B: Marital friction deepened. Albert wrote out conditions under which he would live with Mileva: Q "You make sure . . . that I receive my three meals regularly in my room." EQ Q "You are neither to expect intimacy nor to reproach me in any way." 48 EQ They separated. Mileva and the two boys left Berlin July 1914 for Zurich, Switzerland. WW I began the next month, Aug. 1, 1914.
F: To get Mileva to agree to a divorce, Albert promised her and the boys the money from the Nobel Prize in Physics award he expected, having been nominated annually since 1910. The divorce was finalized Feb. 14, l919, with Albert admitting adultery.
B: Elsa and Albert were cousins. She had been married, then divorced, 48+ and lived with her two daughters Lisa and Margot in Berlin where Albert visited her in 1912, before taking the Berlin job.
F: Separation and divorce from Mileva, overwork, careless of regularity, Albert, seriously ill during 1917-19, was restored by Elsa. They married June 2, 1919. Elsa gave him regularity, protection, freedom to think and write.49
B: Albert's first insight into his 1915 General Theory of Relativity came in a thought-experiment in 1907 while still at the Patent Office: if a workman fell from a roof, until he hit the ground, he and everything on him would be weightless in free fall. So too would be people in a falling elevator atop a tall building whose holding cable had snapped. His insight, which surprised even him, was that moving heavenly bodies, like people and objects in free fall, carry spacetime with them.
F: His insights, simply stated, were: 1-The larger a moving heavenly body is, the more curved timespace it carries with it. 2-Newtonís gravity is really curved spacetime. 3-When starlight reaches a large mass like the sun that starlight will be slightly bent by the curved spacetime around the sun's enormous mass. 4-If he could figure the precise arc of light-bent around an eclipsed sun, then a photograph during an eclipse of the sun would prove his General Theory of Relativity.
B: Helped by tensor calculus for curved space (taught him by math friend Marcel Grossmann at Zurich Polytechnic, 1912-14) Albert published his General Relativity paper, March 20, 1915, with a revision published in 1916. 49+
F: In 1917 with WW I raging, Britainís Royal Astronomer Frank Watson Dyson (1868-1939) planned for Cambridge University astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944) to head a British team to photograph an eclipse predicted two years hence, on May 29, 1919. 49++
B: A photo team went to Principe, a Portuguese island off West Africa; another photo team went to Sobral, northern Brazil, the two best viewing sites. Photos confirmed Einstein's degree of light deflection. Einstein's General Relativity Theory was proven true by these photographs.
F: This news brought a gathering of England's greatest scientists to the Great Room, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, Nov. 6, 1919. After reports by Dyson and Eddington, Royal Society Pres. J. J. Thomson said: Q "IfÖEinstein's reasoning holds Öthen [this] isÖone of the highest achievements of human thought."50 EQ. (ref:
B: London Times, Nov. 7, 1919, headline: Q îRevolution in Science. New Theory of the Universe. Newtonís Ideas Overthrown.î EQ Similar headlines, with Einsteinís photo, emblazoned world newspapers, making Einstein an instant hero.50+
F: This hero worship was the publicís sigh of relief that long, bloody, devastating WW I was over. God, morality, good will, peace on earthówhich many thought had died in the trenches--were restored.
B: With peace came news that Einstein, an anti-war German-born Swiss citizen, had discovered something new about the universe. His discovery was confirmed by an English pacifist Quaker scientist. Peaceful international scientific cooperation temporarily replaced WW I hatred.
F: Amazed at the adulation, Albert called the newspaper accounts Q "amusing feats of imagination" EQ The war-weary public, needing someone to idolize and lionize, embraced a stunned, wiry-haired, sad-eyed, unkempt, floppy dressed, absent-minded Einstein. What Relativity meant did not matter. His opinion was asked about everything under the sun. His disarming, witty replies, widely reported, brought smiles. His wife Elsa Einstein loved the attention.
B: The Nobel Prize in Physics committee, embarrassed for by-passing Einstein since 1910, awarded Albert its 1921 prize, not for controversial Relativity, but for his practical 1905 photo-electric effect paper. The prize money, $32,000, went as promised to ex-wife Mileva Maric and their two sons. 52
F: Albert never understood the adulation but used it as a platform for his pacifist views. He criticized fellow scientists who worked for Germany's war effort in poison gas and other weapons.
B: He stated publicly that if even 2% percent of military draftees refused to serve, all war machines would grind to a halt. His Jewishness plus his opposition to the early Nazi movement made him a marked man in Germany.
F: With Hitler's rise Einstein's books were burned as Q ìJewish science.î EQ A price was put on his head dead or alive. His Berlin bank funds were blocked. His country home at Carputh near Berlin was ransacked. He fled to the U.S., worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., 22 years, from 1933 to his death.
B: Hitler's atrocities modified Einsteinís pacifism in the U.S. Refugee European physicists told him that Nazi scientists were close to splitting the uranium atom to make a devastating bomb. His Aug. 2, 1939, letter to Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt warning of the catastrophic danger, along with pressure from British intelligence, led to the Manhattan Project.
F: When he learned of the atom bombs dropped on Japan to end WWII, he sadly regretted having been involved.53 Still searching to know the mind of God he died of a burst aneurysm in Princeton Hospital, N.J., April 18, 1955, age 76, still scribbling formulas on paper.
B: Why Einstein? What spurred his mammoth efforts in 1905 and later to write and publish papers that explained the mysteries of the universe, almost alone, without university connections, or collegial help, or library access.
F: The spur was not his hurts, his troubled life; not the gymnasium teacher who said he would never amount to much; nor Zurich Polytechnic professors who put him down; or prejudice which kept him, a college graduate, jobless; nor his parents' rejection of Mileva, or his illegitimate child; nor failed father's death, in debt, leaving his mother and sister in dire straits.
B:Curiosity was his spur: confidence, stick-to-it-ness. With security of marriage, income from the Patent Office job, a baby sonócame insights into his overriding question: how does the universe work? From Galileo he learned that an observer must have a frame of reference by which to judge how objects moves, how events occur. All objects and planets move, every event occurs, relative to an observer's frame of reference.
F: From Isaac Newton's law of gravity he learned that stars and planets exert a gravitational "pull" on each other, the larger the stars or planets the greater the gravitational pull.
B: Michael Faraday's (1791-1867) electromagnetism on which his father and uncle's electric business was based, led him to James Clerk Maxwell.
F: Maxwell mathematical proof that light at 186,000 miles per second is the visible form of Faraday's electromagnetism, sparked his probing thought experiments.
B: A workman falling off a roof and a falling elevator full of people, all weightless in free fall, like heavenly planets, carry spacetime with them. Newton's gravity must surely be spacetime which moving bodies in the universe carry with them.
F: On that falling elevator--if light entered a hole in the side of a falling elevator, the millisecond it took the light to reach the other side of the elevator, it would hit the other side of the elevator at a slightly higher level because of the downward moving elevator. From this he reasoned: light is bent when it hits the spacetime of a moving mass.
B: Last thoughts: Einstein founded modern cosmology. His E=mc2 equation led scientists to search for the origin of the universe and the beginning of spacetime in a mammoth Big Bang 13.7 billion year ago, filling our expanding universe, with energy bursting constantly from our sun.
F: Einsteinís E=mc2 works its way up from deep layers inside our earth through volcanoes on land and ocean floors; pushes up chemicals below to fertilize our soil, gives us grass, flowers, trees, bread, meat, vegetables, life; fills our clouds with carbon dioxide that creates a protective greenhouse above a habitable life-giving earth.
B: Einstein's E=mc2 uncovered for us Nature's greatest secrets, including nuclear energy for industry, home lights, nuclear power that lights 80% of France, including its Eiffel Tower.
F: Einstein's E=mc2 surrounds us everyday. Smoke detectors draw energy from tiny bits of americium.53 Emergency exit signs in shopping malls, movie houses, theaters, auditoriums function from encapsulated radioactive tritium.54 Hospitals' powerful imaging devices known as PET scans (Ref.Positron Emission Tomography) depend on radioactive oxygen isotopes. Einsteinís theories gave us these and so much more. (ref. his inventions)
B: Einsteinís genius, wrote author Walter Isaacson, was his imagination guided by faith in the harmony of nature's handiwork; his non-conformist personality, his rebel instinct. His passions, detachments, and creativity intertwined his science and his politics. These were all as related as the unity in Nature he sought.
F: Young Einstein, rebel against the status quo, gave us a new view of the universe. The older Einstein resisted Quantum Physics, which he helped found, because its followers denied certainty in nature, believed probabilities are all we can rely on.
B: Nature's God, Einstein was convinced, Q" does not play dice."EQ He was a reverential rebel, guided by a secular faith; a serenely amused loner, comfortable in not conforming, independent in his thinking, driven by imagination. He broke from conventional wisdom. He helped usher in our modern age.
F: We enjoyed reviewing this book. Thank you for being here. We hope next year to review a book about Einsteinís love life and another on the history of E=mc2. Please take a copy of our paper whose footnotes includes more than we could say in an hour. Jan. Question time.
END of Manuscript. Part 3 of 3 with Footnotes in progress (2-3-08). Contact bfparker@frontiernet.net
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