Albert Einstein was allergic to authoritarians.
His dislike of dogma, playful nature, and ability to constructively concentrate allowed him to visualize unconventional ways the universe might operate. Some of these were true. He was able to go to deeper understandings. It can be ours as well.
Einstein looked behind the apparent reality of the day-to-day glimpse to the counterintuitive mechanisms that prop up what he believes to be true. Albert Einstein turned the universe of absolutes inside out.
Is thetheory of happiness as successful as general relativity?
Einstein was open-minded and saw what others missed. The 1905 paper was called his theory of special relativity because it solved a conflict between the invariable laws of physics and the finite speed of light. It did so with eerie consequences, as the clocks in motion seem to slow down compared to the clocks at rest. Physical items in motion seem to move in a certain direction. It works for all objects in motion, as long as they don't speed up or slow down.
Einstein had a dream. He wanted relativity to hold true when entities accelerated. He realized that a person standing a windowless box could not know if it was parked in a gravity field or in space. The effects would be the same. Was they really different? Einstein came up with the idea of gravity as nothing more than the space around an object.
How to predict the degree of change? The simple geometry that supported the universe would not be up to the task. Einstein wouldn't do it by himself. He was going to work with the mathematician, and he wanted them to use the curved space geometry of the likes of Riemann and others. It took three years for the pair to generalize relativity. Einstein was not a lone wolf.
Light should bend around a dimple in spacetime created by a massive body. Einstein revised the degree to which starlight must curve around the sun in 1915. This was revealed by the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919. The confirmation made global headlines. Einstein's name went beyond science. He would soon become a celebrity, which allowed him to speak his mind outside of science.
Einstein was able to change physics because of his innately contrarian inclinations. They allowed him to see beyond tribalism into a realm of human tolerance. He would use his fame to promote peaceful diversity for the rest of his life.
Einstein's infectious positivity can help navigate these confusing and contentious times. A deep truth we can feel can lift us up.
The words are Einstein's, graciously licensed by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
I want to give you a break from the doom. A moment of perspective widening. There is a pause for self-care through some of Einstein's deep wisdom.
Einstein intended his theories to explain only the facts of physics and mechanics, as they relate to one another. He warned philosophers not to make moral judgements about human relations in a moral context. He didn't want us justifying our behavior due to local circumstances.
Einstein wanted the comfort of absolutes. There must be order to the workings of all things. A causality. He wanted to reveal it through science. He felt that it must exist, even if it couldn't be observed.
This faith set the tone for Einstein's public statements. The charismatic force of his unconventional and uncompromising personality cut across cultures and languages. Einstein was anti-conformity and nonconformist. A proud person. The prototype of the absent-minded professor. A wild-haired person.
Scientists are told to stay in their lane as they venture into the media jungle. They are often accused of faking their data or bending their conclusions in order to get funding. Those who launch into the social network are at risk of reputation damage.
Einstein did not face those things. His missives were amplified by hyperbolic headlines, which were the equivalent of clickbait in the early 20th century. Einstein was amused by press exaggerations, but he was aware of the need for sensationalism.
Einstein was not afraid to throw away months or even years of physics work if it failed to fit all the data. Albert took a similar approach to the social sphere that he did to his celebrity. If new information came to light, he was never afraid to change his mind.
Einstein was persuaded by discussions with Sigmund Freud of the detrimental impulses of what we, today, might call toxic masculinity. He advocated for a worldwide government to control all aspects of life.
Einstein changed his stance with the rise of Nazism. He was afraid of the nationalist, ethno-nativist ideology in Germany. He refused to speak on behalf of the cause because he was against the idea of a supranational peace-keeping body.
He was not politically perfect. Einstein passed up opportunities to condemn Stalin, giving those who would paint him as pro-Soviet a reason to do so.
Albert was a big fan of America. He heard a lot of free speech when he moved to 1933. His non-conformist personality was suited by the protection of unrestricted expression under the U.S. Constitution. The citizens were tolerant of differing opinions. I wonder if he would be disappointed in us.
Einstein believed in a root simplicity that allowed him to be a happier, more settled man. He was not able to accept the discoveries made by younger physicists. The strong and weak nuclear forces tried to collapse his death. The four-force model is still in use today.
When it came to quantum mechanics, Einstein seemed to be intractable. He had sparked the quantum revolution that he would spend the rest of his working life trying to quell: His 1906 paper had lit a beacon pointing at the fundamental quantum of light as a particle, what we now call a photon.
By the early 1920's the younger physicists coalesced around the idea that we can never know the exact position of a particle. The implication is that certainty can never exist.
Einstein was able to stomach a universe of gambler's chance. He believed in the power of field theories and his faith was similar to religious fervor. Matter would never become particles. It felt counterintuitive, but then so had Einstein's theory of relativity.
Einstein seemed to regard the messy probability-calculus of quantum mechanics as magical mysticism and superstition, while clinging to his own blind conviction in elegant simplicity as fundamental truth.
We don't know who is right. We might feel small if it was all just a simulation, but at least Einstein's approach leaves us with a comfortable confidence.
In September 1905, Einstein quietly published his revelation that an enormous amount of potential energy is contained in tiny amounts of matter. Einstein used his fame to warn President Franklin Roosevelt of the rising threat of bombs.
Einstein was spared direct participation in nuclear weapons research by the FBI because of their incorrect suspicion that he harbored pro-communist leanings. Einstein had little interest in bomb building. He created a gaseous diffusion scheme to filter the radioactive material.
Einstein was one of the first to realize that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
It is up to us to decide whether to use Einstein's energetic atoms for destruction or environmental salvation. If we can trust one another to manage nuclear power sources, we might be able to reduce the catastrophe that is the hydrocarbon economy: autocrats arise on fortunes floated by oil, gas and coal. Island and low-lying nations are feeling the effects of climate change.
Nuclear-thermal, nuclear-electric and fusion rockets could give us the entire solar system, which is special to us who frequent these Space.com pages. The current missions to planets, moons, asteroids and comets depend on the degree to which the spacetime around objects of various mass is warped.
Einstein succeeded because he could not be present. He could quietly disappear from conversation and drift into passive contemplation. His desire for apartness allowed him to work without distraction.
Einstein is a realist-dreamer. His desire for a world-inclusive peace-keeping organization with more military power than any one nation has proven to be unrealistic. Einstein never gave up his vision.
The media zone is flooded with misinformation, propaganda and marketing spin. The signal to noise ratio of social media is worse than most phenomena in the natural world. Good-natured skepticism of the sort Einstein personified can inoculate us against this epidemic of fakery.
In honor of Albert, we could refrain from branding those with whom we disagree as villainous traitors without incontrovertible evidence. Think about it. Try a thought-experiment in which your challenger is not inherently evil. The human domain has tiny dimensions. Wonder at nature's ability to comprehensibility. The power of the processes can be seen. Turn the destructive tone of our shared universe inside out.
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