The Patent Clerk's Legacy [Einstein]

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ^ | September 2004 | Gary Stix

[PatrickHenry]

Some Monday morning light reading.

[PatrickHenry]

Science list Ping! This is an elite subset of the Evolution list.
See the list's description in my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail me to be added or dropped.

[theDentist]

Einstein proposed E=mcsquared. Bwahahahahahaaaa! These eathlings kill me.

[js1138]

bump

[RightWhale]

Centenial coming up. Can we break the barrier to FTL flight?

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Cacique]

bump and ping.

[Logophile]

As everybody knows, Einstein's E = mc2 formula was a key to the atomic bomb--and all the history that sprang from it.

Nonsense. Einstein's formula had little to do with creating the atom bomb, and is not necessary to understanding how it works.

[Little Pig]

[hang 'em]

Despite decades of effort, Einstein was never able to find a theoretical framework for uniting relativity and electromagnetism.

WTF?? This is not right.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

Sometime after college I found a book of his General Theory in the library. I sat down and read it in a sitting. I had had two years of linear equations in college and I could follow the tensor equations pretty well. I didn't get all the reasons behind the proof steps, but I was reading it for its descriptive value.

I was amazed not at its complexity, but its simplicity. Once you understand the general idea of space curving, the descriptive verbiage and math is pretty straight forward.

The hard part was coming up with an idea no one else has ever had.

[js1138]

another bump

[stylin_geek]

At some point, I'm going to take my neglected math studies up again. Some of the stuff out there is so mind boggling, I think it is worth the effort to try and understand it better.

[PatrickHenry]

WTF?? This is not right. [Despite decades of effort, Einstein was never able to find a theoretical framework for uniting relativity and electromagnetism.]

Relativity is about gravity. Gravity hasn't yet been successfully unified with the other forces (at least to my knowledge). It's kinda off by itself.

[hang 'em]

I assumed he was referring to special relativity (since he didn't qualify relativity), not general relativity, which indeed is about gravity.

[grey_whiskers]

What? No tag line!!??

Now THAT should be classically forbidden.

[hang 'em]

How's this? (I wish I could claim it as my own but another freeper came up with it I've been itching to use it.)

[PatrickHenry]

Lethargic thread placemarker.

[DBeers]

-relativity limits magnitude -that is all it limits...

[RightWingAtheist]

And of course, special relativity was the logical outcome of Maxwell' theory of electromagnetism. I had a similar "WTF?" moment reading that passage.