Thread: Albert Einstien

We all know that Albert Einstien came up with the theories of general and special relativity, but what other theories was Albert Einstien involved with. Also for example I know he was involved in the Bose–Einstein condensate but in what capacity?

In 1905, Albert Einstein developed the theory of the Photoelectric Effect, for which he won the Nobel Prize in physics, and the theory of Brownian motion. This was also the year that he developed the theory of Special Relativity. The year 2005 was named the "Year of Physics" in honor of the centennial of Einstein's three great successes in 1905.

Many people don't realize that Einstein's General Relativity was the first scientific theory in history that was developed prior to the acquisition of any supporting data. GR sprung from the mind of Einstein. Confirming data were acquired years later.

bbb

Originally Posted by MisterMe

Many people don't realize that Einstein's General Relativity was the first scientific theory in history that was developed prior to the acquisition of any supporting data. GR sprung from the mind of Einstein. Confirming data were acquired years later.

The anomalous precession of Mercury data had been acquired long before he developed the theory of general relativity, and he used it to test his theories.

Bose had sent Einstein a paper about his treatment of particle statistics, and Einstein promoted he and his paper, as well as worked on the subject, and made predictions.

ETA: he also helped invent a refrigerator

Originally Posted by grapes

bbbThe anomalous precession of Mercury data had been acquired long before he developed the theory of general relativity, and he used it to test his theories.

...

The General Theory of relativity is consistent with the measured value of the anomalous precession of Mercury's perihelion. However, that was one data point. It was also not the only theory that accounted for the anomalous precession. The Special Theory combined with Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation accounts for the anomalous precession. Physics did not need General Relativity to solve this problem. The quality of measurements would not be good enough to unambiguously confirm General Relativity for four decades. It was not until 1959 that tests involving the bending of light near massive celestial bodies such as binary pulsars confirmed General Relativity to the exclusion of other theories.

Originally Posted by MisterMe

The Special Theory combined with Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation accounts for the anomalous precession.

I think I'd heard of something like this, but I can't find anything. Do you have a link or something?

Originally Posted by grapes

I think I'd heard of something like this, but I can't find anything. Do you have a link or something?

Read this. However, you must understand what you are reading. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation combined with Special Relativity accounted for the anomalous precession of Mercury. General Relativity is a paradigm shift. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation treats gravity as a force. General Relativity treats gravity as curved spacetime--no force necessary. Without a force to accelerate their motion, objects near massive bodies do not accelerate. Their paths are geodesics in spacetime. [A geodesic is the shortest distance between two points.] However, the results of the two paradigms are the same.

The beauty of General Relativity is that it replaced two theories, Universal Gravitation and Special Relativity, with one--General Relativity. That was the last time that a gravity was successfully combined with anything else. Einstein died while trying to combine gravity with the Standard Model.

Originally Posted by MisterMe

Read this.

I tried a few times to access the link, it's at seniorfitness.com? And it's link itself? I wasn't able to see it.

Einstein himself did not account for the Mercury anomaly before he developed general relativity, right? Nor had anyone else, with special relativity. And Einstein was very aware of the problem.

ETA: finally got the link to work, but the page doesn't say anything about using special relativity and Newton's laws to account for the Mercury anomaly:

At its introduction in 1915, the general theory of relativity did not have a solid empirical foundation. It was known that it correctly accounted for the "anomalous" precession of the perihelion of Mercury and on philosophical grounds it was considered satisfying that it was able to unify Newton's law of universal gravitation with special relativity.

Originally Posted by grapes

I tried a few times to access the link, it's at seniorfitness.com? And it's link itself? I wasn't able to see it.

Einstein himself did not account for the Mercury anomaly before he developed general relativity, right? Nor had anyone else, with special relativity. And Einstein was very aware of the problem.

ETA: finally got the link to work, but the page doesn't say anything about using special relativity and Newton's laws to account for the Mercury anomaly:

Last things first: The thing that you don't see is quoted in your post. In my previous post, I wrote that you had to understand what you were reading.

Now for the rest: General Relativity was not intended to account for the anomalous precession of Mercury's perihelion. It was intended as a consistent formulation of the Equivalence Principle. As far as GR is concerned, the anomalous precession is a single data point. However, astronomers had been aware of it for centuries. The gravitational attraction of other planets accounted for part of it. There was speculation that Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation should be modified to be a power law rather than an inverse-square law. That idea was abandoned because it violated Gauss's law and other accepted physical laws. Hypothetical oblateness of the Mercury and Sun spheroids were major candidates at the time. However, solutions to the relativistic orbit equation accounted for the anomalous precession to within experimental error at the time.

Originally Posted by MisterMe

Last things first: The thing that you don't see is quoted in your post.

I guess so!

However, solutions to the relativistic orbit equation accounted for the anomalous precession to within experimental error at the time.

Your claim was that it was special relativity. I'd like to see a reference.

Originally Posted by grapes

Your claim was that it was special relativity. I'd like to see a reference.

This is a simple solution to the special relativistic form of the orbit equation. However, you may find various references to the special relativistic orbit equation. Recent publications such as this one report that the special relativistic orbit equation gives the same qualitative precession of the perihelion of Mercury as does General Relativity. However, they report that Special Relativity underestimates the General Relativistic result by a factor of 6.