It may be the father of relativity and physicist who explored and explained gravity and light, but even the great Albert Einstein sometimes lacked confidence in his own theories.
These doubts led him to make great mistakes.
The cosmological constant
While working in his theory of general relativity, Einstein’s calculations suggested that gravity would cause the universe to contract or expand, contrary to the vision accepted at that time that the universe was static.
A decade later, scientists began to collect new evidence that the universe was not static at all. In fact, it was expanding.
Physicist George Gamow later wrote in his book My world Line: An Informal Autobiography [“Mi línea del mundo: una autobiografía informal”] that Einstein commented, in retrospect, that “the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest mistake he made in his life.”
But there is another turn.
Scientists now have evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating due to a mysterious “dark energy.”
Some believe that Einstein’s cosmological constant, initially introduced to counteract gravity in its equations, could explain this energy And, therefore, it would not have been such a serious mistake.
Gravitational lens
Einstein’s general relativity theory also predicted another phenomenon: that The gravitational field of a massive object, such as a star, would curve the light from a distant object located behind, acting as a giant increase lens.
Einstein thought that the effect, known as gravitational lens, would be too small to be seen. He didn’t even intend to publish his calculations, until a Czech engineer named RW Mandl convinced him.
Referring to your own 1936 article in the magazine ScienceEinstein wrote to the editor: “Let me also thank you for their cooperation with the little publication that Mr. Mandl forces me. He has little value, but makes the poor man happy.”
The value of this small publication has turned out to be very significant for astronomy.
It allows the NASA American space agency and the Hubble telescope of the European Space Agency to capture details of very distant galaxies, Magnified by huge clusters of galaxies closest to Earth.
Quantum overlap
Einstein’s work, including his 1905 article, in which he describes light as waves and particles, contributed to laying the foundations for an emerging branch of physics.
Quantum mechanics describes the strange and counterintuitive world of tiny subatomic particles.
For example, a quantum object exists in “overlap”, that is, in multiple states until it is observed and measured, at which time a value is assigned.
This was famous illustrated by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in his paradox, according to which a cat inside a box can be considered simultaneously alive and dead until someone opens the lid to check it.
Einstein refused to accept this uncertainty. In 1926, he wrote to physicist Max Born: “[Dios] does not play the dice. ”
In an article in 1935, written with scientists Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he said that if two overlapping objects separated after being linked in some way, A person who observed the first object and assigned a value would instantly set a value for the second object, without the latter being observed ever.
Although this mental experiment intended to refute the quantum superposition, it actually laid the bases, decades later, for the development of a key idea of the quantum mechanics that we now call EARKING.
This states that two objects can join as one, even if they are very separate.
Thus, it seems that Einstein was brilliant in his theories and facilitated genius, even in those aspects in which he was sometimes wrong.
Related news :