Let's all read Einsteins actual published paper outlining General Relativity!

[Dari]

Yeah, you're right. Einstein was a hack.

I never said he was a hack. I just don't see how what he did was somehow beyond the pale of what others were doing. If anything, Einstein and the other scientists were assisting each other. Helping each other along the way. Einstein did not somehow put things together in disparate other sciences. That is nonsense.

Believe it or not but there were many other extraordinary scientists in that era, some even surpassing Einstein, IMHO. The fact that Einstein refused to accept quantum mechanics, relegating him to a nonfactor in that field and dying in near obscurity while physics went from strength to strength is a prime example.

 

[Dari]

I can guarantee most above don't really know what they are reading.

IIRC, a lot of that is tensor mathematics.

 

[OverVolt]

Pizza knows what he is looking at.

The math isn't too bad. Though it reminds me of Pchem, which I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

Thanks for the link OP. I had a class where we went over famous articles every week. Good stuff.

 

[OverVolt]

I never said he was a hack. I just don't see how what he did was somehow beyond the pale of what others were doing. If anything, Einstein and the other scientists were assisting each other. Helping each other along the way. Einstein did not somehow put things together in disparate other sciences. That is nonsense.

Believe it or not but there were many other extraordinary scientists in that era, some even surpassing Einstein, IMHO. The fact that Einstein refused to accept quantum mechanics, relegating him to a nonfactor in that field and dying in near obscurity while physics went from strength to strength is a prime example.

Yea pretty much. When Watson and Crick discovered DNA the article was about 1.5 pages and mostly fluff. The race was on to discover the structure as it was already suspected to contain all the information to encode protein.

The prevailing theory was actually a triple-strand of DNA with the deoxyribose backbone facing inward and the bases facing outward all read as one codon together. Made sense if you had no electron microscopes . They were simply the first ones to discover it and hit instant science fame. Other people were maybe days/weeks away from discovering it anyway. The way the discovery was so hyped up is what made it famous. Tons of breakthroughs lead to basically no fanfare.

 

[zbalat]

That is his theory of Special Relativity not General Relativity.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

That is his theory of Special Relativity not General Relativity.

Oops.

 

[Cheesemoo]

e=mc^2

Best Cliffs Ever

 

[moonbogg]

20 seconds of trying to read that hurt bad enough to make me stop.

 

[Ban Bot]

I seriously doubt that. Science does not work that way. Not usually, anyway. If anything, his work was built upon others, as he clearly stated in the beginning of the paper you cited when he referenced Maxwell. In fact, even though I glanced over the paper, I believe it's mainly about light and energy and magnetism, which is not far off from what Maxwell was talking about.

Again, there were countless physicists, mathematicians, and astronomers whose work led up to Einstein's . You can see it in his references. Having little to no references would've either been extraordinary or a lie. But he has a respectable amount there, considering the era...

He didn't say Einstein did all his work in a vacuum and did not acknowledge or credit others. Fritzo's original quote is quite fair:

Speaking of which, people of that era came up with these ideas through thought experiments. No computers, simulations, or networks of communicating scientists to instantly bounce ideas off of. It's amazing when you think about it. One guy brought a bunch seemingly unrelated observations together in his head to form a complex pattern that the universe follows.

Einstein did not have the same broad access to, or instant communication with, fellow scientists that modern ones have the luxury of. Einstein actually worked in the patent office for a period of time when a number of his great papers were published. He wasn't a tenured professor and part of a multi-billion dollar project like those at CERN. One of the geniuses of Einstein was to embrace the acknowledged deficiencies of Newtonian physics and being able to describe an alternative model that explained the anomalies. A lot of people were working on these problems; Einstein solved these any many other issues. He wasn't a one-off success but has a long list of discoveries and co-discoveries. It isn't often you can see one person revolutionized a school of thought so entrenched it was considered a law (Newton and the law of Gravity) and also helped father an entirely new branch of science (quantum mechanics).

All this without computers or the internet. Personally the fact he could devise such simple theories (that escaped others) that not only explained known systems BUT also unexplainable phenomena by the models of his time while at the same time his new models made predictions still being tested and confirmed 100 years later is amazing.

 

[Ruptga]

I made it to the end of the introduction alright. I could probably follow further than that if I were familiar with his vocabulary, but I ain't.

 

[zinfamous]

They hadn't invented spell check? What a bunch of cupertinos.

ftfy