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It never, ever ceases to amaze me how right Einstein was without the ability to test his hypotheses. At the time it was all groundbreaking theoretical work yet

It never, ever ceases to amaze me how right Einstein was without the ability to test his hypotheses. At the time it was all groundbreaking theoretical work yet it mostly holds up to empirical studies.

auxbuss 9y ago
Einstein was the first to truly grasp James Clerk Maxwell's work. If Maxwell hadn't died in 1879 at only 48, then I like to imagine he would have produced Special Relativity – most of it is there in his famous equations. Einstein also had the benefit of knowing the null result of the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887), and Hertz's experimental confirmation of electromagnetic waves moving at the speed of light (1889) predicted by Maxwell. Einstein, of course, explicitly recognised Maxwell and kept a picture of him on his office wall. While Einstein's theoretical work is fabulous, it was Maxwell who first broke away from the mechanical model; something that even his illustrious contemporaries struggled to understand. If you appreciate Einstein, yet know little of Maxwell, then The Man Who Changed Everything[0] is a great introduction. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29442.The_Man_Who_Changed_Everything https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29442.The_Man_Who_Change...
- LargeWu 9y ago
  Thanks for that, I wasn't aware of Maxwell, I'll have to do some reading.
candiodari 9y ago
In a way, that's pretty disappointing. Einstein's general theory of relativity is a theory that essentially only describes gravity. The standard model describes everything but gravity. And there is zero common ground between them. The standard model says, in a way, that gravity cannot exist (because gravitons are impossible, nothing in the standard model could carry the gravity force), and the special theory of relativity says nothing about anything other than gravity and spacetime. Or we should say, it describes spacetime, but not what's in it. And yet there are ridiculously obvious empirical links between both of them. There's many, such as the famous e=mc2 equation, or the speed of light that can be measured in both theories using vastly different theoretical underpinnings, yielding the same value. And yet, theory says they have nothing to do with eachother. The speed of light could very well be very different, it would not be a problem, so why does it match ? But my favorite is that inertia only exists in the standard model. Gravitic attraction only exists in relativity. But they are determined by the same property. We know that to a factor of about 1e-50 there is no difference between inertial mass and gravitic mass ... and yet all our theories say that there is no link whatsoever between them, that that's just another amazing coincidence. And half of the physics of the 20th century can be described as "ah ! problem with relativity. Oh wait no. But ! Problem found ! Nope. Found it ! No. Here there might be a flaw in relativity and that would explain all these ... nope, no flaw". In many ways, if we had found a huge problem with general relativity, we could have been much further in our understanding of the universe than we are now.

auxbuss 9y ago

Einstein was the first to truly grasp James Clerk Maxwell's work. If Maxwell hadn't died in 1879 at only 48, then I like to imagine he would have produced Special Relativity – most of it is there in his famous equations. Einstein also had the benefit of knowing the null result of the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887), and Hertz's experimental confirmation of electromagnetic waves moving at the speed of light (1889) predicted by Maxwell. Einstein, of course, explicitly recognised Maxwell and kept a picture of him on his office wall. While Einstein's theoretical work is fabulous, it was Maxwell who first broke away from the mechanical model; something that even his illustrious contemporaries struggled to understand. If you appreciate Einstein, yet know little of Maxwell, then The Man Who Changed Everything[0] is a great introduction. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29442.The_Man_Who_Changed_Everything https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29442.The_Man_Who_Change...

LargeWu 9y ago
Thanks for that, I wasn't aware of Maxwell, I'll have to do some reading.

candiodari 9y ago

In a way, that's pretty disappointing. Einstein's general theory of relativity is a theory that essentially only describes gravity. The standard model describes everything but gravity. And there is zero common ground between them. The standard model says, in a way, that gravity cannot exist (because gravitons are impossible, nothing in the standard model could carry the gravity force), and the special theory of relativity says nothing about anything other than gravity and spacetime. Or we should say, it describes spacetime, but not what's in it. And yet there are ridiculously obvious empirical links between both of them. There's many, such as the famous e=mc2 equation, or the speed of light that can be measured in both theories using vastly different theoretical underpinnings, yielding the same value. And yet, theory says they have nothing to do with eachother. The speed of light could very well be very different, it would not be a problem, so why does it match ? But my favorite is that inertia only exists in the standard model. Gravitic attraction only exists in relativity. But they are determined by the same property. We know that to a factor of about 1e-50 there is no difference between inertial mass and gravitic mass ... and yet all our theories say that there is no link whatsoever between them, that that's just another amazing coincidence. And half of the physics of the 20th century can be described as "ah ! problem with relativity. Oh wait no. But ! Problem found ! Nope. Found it ! No. Here there might be a flaw in relativity and that would explain all these ... nope, no flaw". In many ways, if we had found a huge problem with general relativity, we could have been much further in our understanding of the universe than we are now.