(music)
- More than any name in history,
Einstein is synonymous with genius.
The Nobel Prize winner changed our understanding of nature
more than anyone since Newton, developing his theory
of relativity, pioneering quantum physics,
and proving the existence of molecules.
Of Einstein's many great quotes, my favorite is,
"The difference between genius and stupidity
is that genius has limits."
But did Einstein himself have limits?
Like anyone else, he did make mistakes
and some were pretty big.
Let's review two of the times that Einstein
wasn't exactly an Einstein.
As one of the originators of the Quantum Theory,
Einstein endlessly debated the meaning
of the strange behavior that particles exhibit
at small distances.
The aspect that most disturbed him
was that nothing is completely predictable, only probable.
Einstein felt very strongly that these probabilities
must reflect our ignorance of the situation,
not the fundamental behavior.
Unfortunately, everything that we have ever learned
about physics for over 100 years,
indicates that probability is the fundamental behavior.
Einstein's most famous mistake
was his prediction of the cosmological constant.
In the general theory of relativity,
the Universe could be expanding or contracting,
but not remaining the same size.
This ran afoul of his intuition
that it should be eternally static,
and so he looked for a mathematical loophole.
He discovered that his equations allowed
for a type of antigravity force, allowing disequilibrium.
Soon after this, astronomer Edwin Hubble
simply measured whether the Universe was expanding
and discovered that it was.
This obviated the need for a cosmological constant,
and Einstein referred to its introduction
as his greatest blunder.
But the story doesn't end there.
In 1997, astronomers performed very sensitive measurements
of Super Nova and discovered that the Universe
was not just expanding, but accelerating.
The reason we hadn't detected it before
is because the rate is so small
that it only becomes apparent on vast scales.
This means there actually is a cosmological constant.
It was just so incredibly tiny that we couldn't detect it.
So even Einstein's greatest blunder was correct.
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