By constructing a model of space and time, Einstein paved the way to understanding how stars light up and shine, and discovered underlying reasons operation of electric motors and electric current generators and, in fact, laid the foundation for the entire modern physics. In his book “Why E=mc2?” Scientists Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw do not question Einstein's theory, but teach not to trust what we call common sense. We are publishing chapters about space and time, or rather, about why we need to abandon existing ideas about them.
What do the words “space” and “time” mean to you? Perhaps you think of space as the darkness between the stars that you see when you look up at the cold sky winter night? Or like the void between the Earth and the Moon, in which it rushes spaceship with the stars and stripes, piloted by a guy named Buzz (Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 lunar module pilot)? Time can be thought of as the ticking of your clock or the autumn leaves turning from green to red and yellow as the Sun moves lower in the sky for the five billionth time. We all have an intuitive sense of space and time; They - an integral part of our existence. We move through space on the surface of a blue planet as time ticks down.
Row scientific discoveries made in last years XIX century in seemingly unrelated fields, prompted physicists to reconsider simple and intuitive pictures of space and time. At the beginning of the 20th century, Hermann Minkowski, a colleague and teacher of Albert Einstein, wrote his famous obituary of the ancient sphere with the orbits in which the planets traveled: “Henceforth, space in itself and time in itself have become nothing more than shadows, and there is only a kind of a mixture of these two concepts." What did Minkowski mean by mixing space and time? To understand the essence of this almost mystical statement, it is necessary to understand Einstein's theory of special relativity, which introduced the world to the most famous of all equations, E = mc2, and forever placed at the center of our understanding of the structure of the Universe the quantity symbolized by the symbol c - the speed of light.
Einstein's special theory of relativity is actually a description of space and time. Central location it is occupied by the concept of special speed, which cannot be surpassed by any acceleration, no matter how strong it may be. This speed is the speed of light in a vacuum, which is 299,792,458 meters per second. Traveling at such a speed, a beam of light leaving the Earth will fly past the Sun in eight minutes, cross our Milky Way Galaxy in 100 thousand years, and in two million years reach the nearest neighboring galaxy - the Andromeda Nebula. This night largest telescopes Earths will peer into the blackness of interstellar space and catch ancient rays of light from distant, long-dead stars at the edge of the observable Universe. These rays began their journey more than 10 billion years ago, several billion years before the Earth emerged from a collapsing cloud interstellar dust. The speed of light is high, but far from infinite. Compared to the vast distances between stars and galaxies, it can seem dismally low - so much so that we are able to accelerate very small objects to speeds that are a fraction of a percent faster than the speed of light, using technology such as the 27-kilometer Large Hadron Collider at European center nuclear research in Geneva.
If we could exceed the speed of light, we could build a time machine that could take us to any point in history.
The existence of a special, ultimate cosmic velocity is a rather strange concept. As we will learn later in this book, the connection between this speed and the speed of light is a kind of substitution of concepts. Limit escape velocity plays much more important role in Einstein's Universe, and there is a good reason why a beam of light travels at that particular speed. However, we will return to this later. For now, suffice it to say that when objects reach this special speed, strange things begin to happen. How can you prevent an object from exceeding this speed? It's as if there is a universal law of physics that prevents your car from going over 90 kilometers per hour, regardless of engine power. But unlike the speed limit of a car, this law is not enforced by some unearthly police force. Its violation becomes absolutely impossible thanks to the very construction of the fabric of space and time, and this is exceptional luck, since in otherwise we would have to deal with very unpleasant consequences. Later we will see that if it were possible to exceed the speed of light, then we could build a time machine that would take us to any point in history. For example, we could travel back to before we were born and accidentally or intentionally interfere with a meeting between our parents.
This is a good plot for science fiction literature, but not for creating the Universe. And indeed, Einstein found out that the Universe is structured differently. Space and time are so subtly intertwined that such paradoxes are unacceptable. However, everything has its price, and in this case this price is our rejection of deeply ingrained ideas about space and time. In Einstein's Universe, moving clocks run slower, moving objects shrink in size, and we can travel billions of years into the future. This is the Universe where human life can stretch almost indefinitely. We could watch the sun fade, oceans evaporate, sink solar system into eternal night, the birth of stars from clouds of interstellar dust, the formation of planets and, possibly, the origin of life in new, not yet formed worlds. Einstein's universe allows us to travel into the distant future, while at the same time keeping the doors to the past tightly closed.
By the end of this book we will see how Einstein was forced to arrive at such a fantastic picture of the Universe and how its correctness was repeatedly proven during large quantity scientific experiments and technological application. For example, a satellite navigation system in a car is designed to take into account the fact that the time in satellite orbit and in earth's surface moves with at different speeds. Einstein's picture is radical: space and time are not at all what they seem to us.
Imagine reading a book while flying on an airplane. At 12:00 you looked at your watch and decided to take a break and walk around the cabin to talk to a friend sitting ten rows ahead. At 12:15 you returned to your seat, sat down and picked up the book again. Common sense dictates that you returned to the same place: that is, you walked the same ten rows back, and when you returned, your book was in the same place where you left it. Now let's think a little about the concept of "same place." Since it is intuitively clear what we mean when we talk about a place, all this can be perceived as excessive pedantry. We can invite a friend for a glass of beer at a bar, and the bar won't move anywhere by the time we get there. It will be in the same place where we left it, quite possibly the night before. There are a lot of things in this introductory chapter that you'll probably find a little too pedantic, but keep reading anyway. Careful consideration of these seemingly obvious concepts will lead us in the footsteps of Aristotle, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton and Einstein.
If you go to bed in the evening and sleep for eight hours, by the time you wake up you will have moved more than 800 thousand kilometers
So how do we define exactly what we mean by “same place”? We already know how to do this on the surface of the Earth. Earth covered with imaginary lines of parallels and meridians, so that any place on its surface can be described by two numbers representing coordinates. For example, the British city of Manchester is located at coordinates 53 degrees 30 minutes northern latitude and 2 degrees 15 minutes west longitude. These two numbers tell us exactly where Manchester is, assuming the position of the equator and prime meridian. Consequently, the position of any point both on the Earth's surface and beyond can be fixed using an imaginary three-dimensional grid extending upward from the Earth's surface. In fact, such a grid can go down through the center of the Earth and come out on the other side. With its help, you can describe the position of any point - on the surface of the Earth, underground or in the air. In reality, we do not need to stop at our planet. The grid can be extended to the Moon, Jupiter, Neptune, beyond Milky Way, right up to the very edge of the observable Universe. Such a large, perhaps infinitely large grid allows one to calculate the location of any object in the universe, which, to paraphrase Woody Allen, can be very useful for someone who cannot remember where they put something. Therefore, this grid defines the area where everything that exists is located, a kind of giant box containing all the objects of the Universe. We might even be tempted to call this gigantic region space.
But let’s return to the question of what “same place” means, and for example with an airplane. We can assume that at 12:00 and 12:15 you were at the same point in space. Now let’s imagine what the sequence of events looks like from the perspective of a person watching the plane from the surface of the Earth. If a plane flies overhead at a speed of, say, about a thousand kilometers per hour, then in the period from 12:00 to 12:15 you have moved, from his point of view, 250 kilometers. In other words, at 12:00 and 12:15 you were in different points space. So who is right? Who moved and who stayed in the same place?
If you can't answer this seemingly simple question, then you're in good company. Aristotle, one of greatest thinkers Ancient Greece, would be absolutely wrong, since he would clearly state that it is a passenger on the plane who is moving. Aristotle believed that the Earth is motionless and located at the center of the Universe, and the Sun, Moon, planets and stars revolve around the Earth, being fixed on 55 concentric transparent spheres nested inside each other like nesting dolls. Thus, Aristotle shared our intuitive idea of space as a certain region in which the Earth and the celestial spheres are located. For modern man picture of the Universe consisting of the Earth and rotating celestial spheres, looks completely ridiculous. But think for yourself what conclusion you could have come to if no one had told you that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the stars are nothing more than very distant suns, among which there are stars thousands of times brighter than the nearest star, even though they are located billions of kilometers from Earth? Of course, we would not have the feeling that the Earth is drifting in unimaginable ways. vast universe. Our modern worldview was shaped by the price great effort and often contradicts common sense. If the picture of the world that we have created over thousands of years of experimentation and reflection was obvious, then the great minds of the past (such as Aristotle) would have solved this riddle themselves. It is worth remembering this when any of the concepts described in the book seem too difficult for you. The greatest minds of the past would agree with you.
Einstein's desk a few hours after his death
To find the flaw in Aristotle's answer, let's accept his picture of the world for a moment and see where it leads. According to Aristotle, we must fill space with the lines of an imaginary grid connected to the Earth, and use it to determine who is where and who is moving and who is not. If you imagine space as a box filled with objects, with the Earth fixed in the center, then it will be obvious that it is you, the airplane passenger, who changes your location in the box, while the person watching your flight stands motionless on the surface of the Earth, hanging motionless in space. In other words, there is absolute motion, and therefore absolute space. An object is in absolute motion if it changes its location in space over time, which is calculated using an imaginary grid referenced to the center of the Earth.
Of course, the problem with this picture is that the Earth does not rest motionless in the center of the Universe, but is a rotating ball moving in orbit around the Sun. In fact, the Earth moves relative to the Sun at a speed of about 107 thousand kilometers per hour. If you go to bed in the evening and sleep for eight hours, by the time you wake up you will have moved more than 800 thousand kilometers. You can even say that in about 365 days your bedroom will again be at the same point in space, as the Earth will complete full turn around the Sun. Therefore, you can decide to change Aristotle's picture only slightly, leaving the very spirit of his teaching intact. Why not just move the center grid in the sun? Alas, this one is enough simple thought is also incorrect, since the Sun also moves in orbit around the center of the Milky Way. The Milky Way is our local island in the Universe, consisting of more than 200 billion stars. Just imagine how big our Galaxy is and how long it takes to go around it. The Sun, with Earth in tow, moves through the Milky Way at a speed of about 782 thousand kilometers per hour at a distance of about 250 quadrillion kilometers from the center of the Galaxy. At this speed, it will take about 226 million years to complete a full revolution. In this case, maybe one more step will be enough to preserve Aristotle’s picture of the world? Let's place the beginning of the grid in the center of the Milky Way and see what was in your bedroom when the place in which it is located was at this point in space in last time. And last time at this place, a dinosaur early in the morning devoured the leaves of prehistoric trees. But this picture is also wrong. In reality, galaxies “scatter”, moving away from each other, and the further a galaxy is from us, the faster it moves away. Our movement among the myriad of galaxies that form the Universe is extremely difficult to imagine.
Science welcomes uncertainty and recognizes that it is the key to new discoveries
So there is a clear problem with Aristotle's worldview because it does not precisely define what it means to "stand still." In other words, it is impossible to calculate where to place the center of an imaginary coordinate grid, and therefore, to decide what is in motion and what is standing still. Aristotle himself did not have to confront this problem because his picture of a stationary Earth surrounded by rotating spheres went unchallenged for almost two thousand years. This probably should have been done, but, as we have already said, such things are not always obvious even to greatest minds. Claudius Ptolemy, whom we know as simply Ptolemy, worked in the 2nd century in the great Library of Alexandria and carefully studied the night sky. The scientist was concerned about the seemingly unusual motion of the five then known planets, or “wandering stars” (the name from which the word “planet” came). Many months of observations from Earth showed that the planets do not move along a smooth path against the background of stars, but follow strange loops. This unusual movement, designated by the term "retrograde", was known many millennia before Ptolemy. The ancient Egyptians described Mars as a planet that was "moving backwards." Ptolemy agreed with Aristotle that the planets revolved around a stationary Earth, but to explain retrograde motion, he had to attach the planets to eccentric rotating wheels, which in turn were attached to rotating spheres. Such a very complex, but far from elegant model made it possible to explain the movement of planets across the sky. True explanation retrograde movement had to wait until mid-16th century century, when Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a more elegant (and more accurate) version, which was that the Earth does not rest at the center of the Universe, but revolves around the Sun along with the rest of the planets. Copernicus' work had serious opponents, so it was banned Catholic Church, and the ban was lifted only in 1835. Accurate measurements Tycho Brahe and the work of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton not only completely confirmed the correctness of Copernicus, but also led to the creation of a theory of planetary motion in the form of Newton's laws of motion and gravity. These laws were best description the movements of “wandering stars” and all objects in general (from rotating galaxies to artillery shells) under the influence of gravity. This picture of the world was not questioned until 1915, when it was formulated general theory Einstein's relativity.
The constantly changing concept of the position of the Earth, the planets and their movement across the sky should serve as a lesson to those who are absolutely convinced of some knowledge. There are many theories about the world around us that at first glance seem to be a self-evident truth, and one of them is about our immobility. Future observations may surprise and puzzle us, and in many cases they do. Although we should not react painfully to the fact that nature often comes into conflict with the intuitions of a tribe of observant descendants of primates, representing a carbon-based life form on a small rocky planet orbiting an unremarkable, middle-aged star on the outskirts of the Milky Way. The theories of space and time that we discuss in this book may in fact be (and most likely will be) nothing more than special cases of an as yet unformulated deeper theory. Science welcomes uncertainty and recognizes that it is the key to new discoveries.
- Translation
Einstein's most famous equation is calculated more beautifully than one might expect.
From special theory relativity implies that mass and energy are various manifestations of the same thing is a concept unfamiliar to the average mind.
- Albert Einstein
Some scientific concepts They are so world-changing and so profound that almost everyone knows about them, even if they don’t fully understand them. Why not work on this together? Every week you submit your questions and suggestions, and this week I chose a question from Mark Liuw who asks:
Einstein derived the equation E = mc 2. But the units of energy, mass, time, length were already known before Einstein. So how does it turn out so beautifully? Why isn't there some kind of constant for length or time? Why is it not E = amc 2, where a is some kind of constant?
If our Universe were not structured the way it is now, then everything could be different. Let's see what I mean.
On the one hand, we have objects with mass: from galaxies, stars and planets to the smallest molecules, atoms and fundamental particles. Although they are tiny, each of the components of what we know as matter has a fundamental property of mass, which means that even if its motion is eliminated, even if it is slowed to a stop, it will still influence all the others. objects of the Universe. 
Specifically, he provides gravitational attraction to everything else in the Universe, no matter how far away the distant object is. It attracts everything to itself, is attracted to everything else, and also has an energy inherent in its very existence.
The last statement is counterintuitive, since energy, at least in physics, is spoken of as the ability to do something - the ability to do work. What can you do if you are just sitting still?
Before we answer, let's look at the other side of the coin - things without mass.
On the other hand, there are things that do not have mass - for example, light. These particles have a certain energy, and this is easy to understand by observing their interaction with other things - when absorbed, light transfers its energy to them. Light with sufficient energy can heat up matter, add kinetic energy (and speed), and kick electrons to the top. energy levels or even ionize, depending on the energy.
Moreover, the amount of energy contained in a massless particle is determined only by its frequency and wavelength, the product of which always equals the speed of the particle: the speed of light. This means that longer waves have lower frequencies and less energy, while shorter waves have higher frequencies and energy. A massive particle can be slowed down, and attempts to take energy away from a massless one will only lead to a lengthening of its wave, and not to a change in speed.
Keeping the above in mind, let's think about how mass-energy can be equivalent to work? Yes, you can take a matter particle and an antimatter particle (an electron and a positron), collide them and get massless particles (two photons). But why are the energies of two photons equal to the masses of the electron and positron multiplied by the square of the speed of light? Why is there no other factor, why does the equation exactly equate E and mc 2?
Interestingly, if you believe the SRT, the equation simply must look like E=mc 2, without any deviations. Let's talk about the reasons for this. To begin, imagine that you have a box in space. It is motionless, and has mirrors on both sides, and inside there is a photon flying towards one of the mirrors.
Initially the box doesn't move, but since photons have energy (and momentum), when the photon hits the mirror on one side of the box and bounces off, the box will start moving in the direction the photon was originally moving. When the photon reaches the other side, it will reflect off the mirror on the other side, changing the momentum of the box back to zero. And it will continue to be reflected in this way, while the box will move in one direction half the time and remain motionless the other half.
On average, the box will move and, therefore, since it has mass, will have a certain kinetic energy, thanks to the energy of the photon. But it is also important to remember about momentum, the amount of movement of an object. The momentum of photons is related to their energy and wavelength very simply: the shorter the wave and the higher the energy, the higher the momentum.
Let's think about what this means, and to do this, let's conduct another experiment. Imagine what happens when initially only the photon itself moves. It will have a certain amount of energy and momentum. Both properties must be preserved, so in starting moment the energy of a photon is determined by its wavelength, and the box has only rest energy - whatever that is - and the photon has all the momentum of the system, while the box has zero momentum.
The photon then collides with the box and is temporarily absorbed. Momentum and energy must be conserved - these are the basic laws of conservation of the Universe. If a photon is absorbed, then there is only one way to conserve momentum - the box must move at a certain speed in the same direction in which the photon was moving.
It's okay for now. Only now can we ask ourselves what the energy of the box is. It turns out that if we go from our usual formula about kinetic energy, K E = ½mv 2 , we presumably know the mass of the box, and, based on the concept of momentum, its speed. But if we compare the energy of the box with the energy of the photon that it had before the collision, we see that the box does not have enough energy.
Problem? No, it's quite easy to solve. The energy of the box/photon system is equal to the rest mass of the box plus the kinetic energy of the box plus the energy of the photon. When a box absorbs a photon, most of its energy goes into an increase in the mass of the box. When the box absorbs a photon, its mass changes (increases) compared to what it was before the collision.
When the box emits a photon again in a different direction, it gains even more momentum and speed (which is offset by the negative momentum of the photon in reverse direction), even more kinetic energy (and the photon has energy), but in return loses part of its rest mass. If you count everything (there are three different ways to do this, and here is also a description), one can find that the only mass transformation that allows one to conserve energy and momentum will be E = mc 2.
If you add any constant, the equation will no longer balance and you will lose or gain energy every time you emit or absorb a photon. When we discovered antimatter in the 1930s, we saw first-hand evidence that we could turn energy into mass and back again, and the results exactly matched E = mc 2 , but it was thought experiments that allowed us to derive this formula decades before observation. Only by associating the photon with an effective mass equivalent to m = E/c 2 can we ensure conservation of energy and momentum. And although we say E = mc 2, Einstein was the first to write the formula differently, assigning energetically equivalent mass to massless particles.
So, thanks for the great question, Mark, and I hope this one thought experiment will help you understand why we need not only the equivalence of mass and energy, but also why there is only one in this equation possible meaning for a “constant”, which will help preserve energy and momentum - and this is what our Universe requires. The only equation which works is E = mc 2 .
/ Physical meaning of the formula E = mc 2
Physical meaning of the formula E = mc 2
There is hardly an adult who does not know this formula. Sometimes it is even called the most famous formula in the world. She became known to mankind after Einstein created his theory of relativity. According to Einstein, his formula shows not just the connection between matter and energy, but the equivalence of matter and energy. In other words, according to this formula, energy can turn into matter, and matter can turn into energy.
But I also know another formula (and not only me, but all specialists in thermal processes): Q = mr, where Q is the amount of heat, m is mass, r is heat phase transition. Any phase transitions (evaporation and condensation, melting and crystallization, ablation and dry sublimation) are described by this formula. When heat is supplied in quantity Q (or removed) to a new phase state an amount of substance m is transferred that is directly proportional to the amount of heat Q and inversely proportional to the heat of phase transition r. And heat is a type of energy. But no one has ever drawn the conclusion from this fact that heat itself, that is, energy, is converted into matter. Why did such a perturbation occur with the formula E = mc 2?
When I managed to get the energy formula physical vacuum, that’s when I managed to answer this question. It turned out that in the very general view the energy of the physical vacuum is described by this well-known formula E = mc 2. And its physical meaning exactly coincides with the physical meaning of the formula Q = mr: when we supply energy in the amount of E to the vacuum (or ether, as it was called before), the vacuum generates an amount of matter m that is directly proportional to the supplied energy E and inversely proportional phase transition energy with 2. In other words, no transfer of energy into substance or matter is observed.
And the reason for Einstein's mistake regarding physical meaning his formula consists in his denial of the real existence of the ether-physical vacuum. If we believe that the ether does not exist, then we will get that matter is born in the truest sense of the word from the void. But everyone understands that it is impossible to get something out of nothing. Therefore, we have to look for another source of the substance. Due to the fact that this process the birth of matter is described by the formula E = mc 2, physicists become so accustomed to dealing with energy that they begin to perceive it as something that really exists, and not a characteristic, which it simply is. And from here there is only one step left to declare the transformation of energy itself into matter.
Skeptics may object to me that my reasoning is refuted by the results of experiments. They say that accelerator experiments show that the mass of elementary particles increases with increasing speed, that is, with increasing energy supplied to the particle to increase its speed. And from this fact it is concluded that in these experiments energy is converted into mass. But when I looked up information about exactly how these and other similar experiments were carried out, I discovered an interesting thing: it turns out that in the entire history of scientific research, not a single experiment measured mass directly, but always measured energy costs, and then transferred the energy to the mass according to the formula E = mc 2 and talked about increasing the mass. However, we can offer another explanation for the increased energy consumption in accelerator experiments: the energy supplied to the particle is converted not into the mass of the particle, but into overcoming the resistance of the ether-physical vacuum surrounding us. When any object (and elementary particle too) moves quickly, he uneven movement deforms the ether-vacuum, and it responds by creating resistance forces, which require energy to overcome. And the greater the speed of the object, the greater the deformation of the ether-vacuum, the greater the resistance forces, the more energy will be needed to overcome them.
In order to find out which concept is correct (traditional in the form of an increase in mass with increasing speed or an alternative in the form of overcoming the resistance forces of the ether-vacuum), it is necessary to set up an experiment in which the mass of a moving particle would be measured directly without measuring energy costs. But I haven’t yet figured out what this experiment should be. Maybe someone else will come up with an idea?
I. A. ProkhorovIf you take an ordinary AA battery from a TV remote control and turn it into energy, then exactly the same energy can be obtained from 250 billion of the same batteries if you use them the old fashioned way. The efficiency is not very good.
And that means that mass and energy are one and the same thing. That is, mass is special case energy. The energy contained in the mass of anything can be calculated using this simple formula.
The speed of light is a lot. That's 299,792,458 meters per second, or, if you prefer, 1,079,252,848.8 kilometers per hour. Because of this large size It turns out that if you turn an entire tea bag into energy, it will be enough to boil 350 billion teapots.
I have a couple grams of substance, where can I get my energy?
You can convert the entire mass of an object into energy only if you find the same amount of antimatter somewhere. But getting it at home is problematic, this option is no longer available.
Thermonuclear fusion
There are a lot of natural thermonuclear reactors, you can observe them, simply. The sun and other stars are giant thermonuclear reactors.
Another way to bite off at least some mass from matter and turn it into energy is to produce thermonuclear fusion. We take two hydrogen nuclei, collide them, and get one helium nucleus. The trick is that the mass of two hydrogen nuclei is slightly greater than the mass of one helium nucleus. This mass turns into energy.
But here, too, everything is not so simple: scientists have not yet learned to support the reaction of the controlled nuclear fusion, industrial fusion reactor appears only in the most optimistic plans for the middle of this century.
Nuclear decay
Closer to reality is the reaction of nuclear decay. It is widely used in . This is when two large kernels atoms split into two small ones. With such a reaction, the mass of fragments turns out to be less than the mass of the nucleus, and the missing mass goes into energy.
A nuclear explosion is also nuclear decay, but uncontrolled, an excellent illustration of this formula.
Combustion
You can see the transformation of mass into energy right in your hands. Light a match and there it is. Some chemical reactions, such as combustion, release energy from mass loss. But it is very small compared to the nuclear decay reaction, and instead of nuclear explosion You just have a match burning in your hands.
Moreover, when you have eaten, food is difficult chemical reactions thanks to the miniscule loss of mass, it releases energy, which you then use to play table tennis, or on the sofa in front of the TV to pick up the remote control and change the channel.
So when you eat a sandwich, some of its mass will be converted into energy using the formula E=mc 2 .
Anyone who knows physics at least to some extent has probably heard of "Theories of Relativity" Albert Einstein and the famous formula E=MC2. This formula began to be disseminated in science at the very beginning of the twentieth century, and its fame was inextricably linked with Einstein’s theory.
At that time, whoever criticized the new rising star for the extravagant “assumptions” made in his revolutionary theory, believing that Mr. Einstein’s fantasies, divorced from reality, have nothing to do with science.
Here is just one example of how world-famous scientists criticized God knows how a troublemaker appeared in science. “Is there, however, a necessity that forces us to unconditionally agree with these assumptions, with which a healthy mind cannot, at least, immediately reconcile? To this we can answer emphatically: no! All conclusions from Einstein's theory that are consistent with reality can be obtained and are often obtained much more in a simple way with the help of theories that do not contain absolutely anything incomprehensible - nothing in any way similar to the requirements made by Einstein’s theory.” These words belong to Russian academician Klimenty Timiryazev, author fundamental work"The Life of a Plant" (1878).
However, all this criticism, and the criticism was certainly fair, did not matter to Einstein, because he had many patrons, after all, he was a Jewish scientist! On the contrary, he was provided with such PR in the media that no Hollywood pop diva had ever had! Einstein even received a Nobel Prize! True, he did not receive it at all for “The Theory of Relativity,” which literally caused a storm of indignation in scientific world, and for theoretical basis open A.G. Stoletov" external photoelectric effect".
Historical reference:"Albert Einstein was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physicsrepeatedly, however, members of the Nobel Committee for a long time they did not dare to award a prize to the author of such a revolutionary theory as the theory of relativity. In the end, a diplomatic solution was found: the 1921 prize was awarded to Einstein for the theory of the photoelectric effect, that is, for the most indisputable and experimentally tested work; however, the text of the decision contained a neutral addition: “and for other work in the field of theoretical physics.” On November 10, 1922, the Secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Christopher Aurvillius, wrote to Einstein: “As I already informed you by telegram, Royal Academy Sciences at its meeting yesterday decided to award you a prize in physics for the past year (1921), thereby recognizing your work on theoretical physics, in particular the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, without taking into account your work on the theory of relativity and the theory of gravity, which will be evaluated after their confirmation in the future.” Naturally, Einstein dedicated his traditional Nobel speech to the theory of relativity..." .
In other words, the Russian scientist Alexander Grigorievich Stoletov, while studying the effect of ultraviolet radiation on electricity, discovered the phenomenon external photoelectric effect in practice, and Albert Einstein was able to explain the essence of this phenomenon in theory. For this he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
A comment:
Teslafreshpower: Einstein received the Nobel Prize not even for the discovery of the photoelectric effect itself, but for its special case... “Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for... the discovery of the Second Law of the Photoeffect, which was a special case of the First Law of the Photoeffect. But, it is curious that the Russian physicist Stoletov Alexander Grigorievich (1830-1896) who discovered the photoelectric effect itself, no Nobel Prize, and no other, did not receive his discovery for this, while A. Einstein was given it for “studying” a particular case of this law of physics. It turns out to be complete nonsense from any point of view. The only explanation This may be due to the fact that someone really wanted to make A. Einstein Nobel laureate and looked for any reason to do this. The “genius” had to puff a little with the discovery of the Russian physicist A.G. Stoletov, “studying” the photoelectric effect and then... a new Nobel laureate was “born”.
Incredible, but true: TO has 8 conditional assumptions or POSTULATES (conditional agreements), and in GR there are 20 of these conventions! Although physics is an exact science."
Regarding the formulaE=MC2, then the following story is circulating on the Internet.
"On July 20, 1905, Albert Einstein and his wife Mileva Maric decided to celebrate the discovery they had just made. This was the first time in the life of the great physicist when he got drunk, like a simple shoemaker: “... The drunken men lay under the table. Your poor friend and his wife", —he later wrote to his friend Konrad Habicht (GEO magazine, September 2005).And on July 1, 1946, a portrait of Einstein appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the image atomic mushroom and formulas E=MC2 and an almost accusatory headline: "World Destroyer - Einstein: All Matter Is Made of Speed and Fire". .
The fact that this formula is not worth "pound of wool", you can find out today from short article Bogdana Shynkaryk
To prevent readers from having to search for this article on the Internet, it will be given below in full.
"Today's article is in some ways a continuation of my other two articles on the topic of magnetic fraud in theoretical physics: "Magnetic Fraud" And "The Bicentennial Fraud in Theoretical Physics" .
New article concerns a phenomenon that neither the scientists who stood at the origins of the study of magnetism and electricity - Hans Christian Oersted and Andre Marie Ampere, nor their followers - noticed. It simply never occurred to anyone that the magnetization of bodies is accompanied by the compaction of subtle matter in them! For, indeed, how can one guess that a steel bar after its magnetization has several large mass than it was before magnetization.
If the first researchers of electromagnetism had guessed about the existence of this phenomenon and investigated it, then today physics would describe the structure of matter in a completely different way. First of all in the description physical phenomena decisive role the matter of the so-called “physical vacuum” would play (the literal translation of this completely absurd phrase is “natural emptiness”).
During long centuries While the science of nature—physics—was developing, the prevailing opinion among scientists was that “nature abhors a vacuum.” In the light of this view, airless space seemed to most scientists to be nothing other than the finest matter in which light and heat spread. This thinnest medium has been called ether since the times of Ancient Greece. A indivisible particles, forming the ether, at the suggestion of the ancient Greek scientist Democritus, were called atoms.
The recently discovered phenomenon - an increase in the mass of magnetized bodies - is in a sense a clear proof that the initial direction of the development of science and philosophical thought was correct, but Albert and Ko, by excluding the luminiferous ether from the picture of the Universe, led science along the wrong path.
The process of magnetization (or magnetization) of bodies is not only accompanied by the formation of an induced (secondary) magnetic field around metals, but is also associated with the densification of the ether in the magnetized region (inside and outside magnetized bodies).
If a magnetized body easily manifests itself as a magnet when interacting with other magnets or, for example, with iron filings, then the compaction within their etheric matter manifests itself in the form of an increase in their mass.
The above is also true for electromagnets: the mass of a wire coil increases when a constant current begins to flow through it. electricity, at the same time the mass of the iron core of the electromagnet increases.
Using modest home resources, the author conducted an experiment in which he wanted to find out whether it was possible, under primitive home conditions, to detect a change in body weight that occurs when it is magnetized. In the experiment, household cup scales with a set of weights from 1 g to 20 g and from 10 mg to 500 mg were used.
The source of the strong magnetic field was Neodymium magnet, having the shape of a tablet (diameter - 18 mm, thickness - 5 mm). The magnetization objects were a steel ball with a diameter of 18.8 mm and a set of three steel flat washers glued together. The washers had an outer diameter of 21 mm, an inner diameter of 11 mm, and a thickness of 6 mm each.
The course of the experiment was as follows.
At the beginning, the magnet, rings and ball were weighed separately - they weighed respectively: 9.38 g; 11.15 g; 27.75 g. Adding these numbers on a calculator, I got a total weight of 48.28 grams.
Discovered weight gain three specified items, two of which underwent the process of magnetization, could, of course, be justified by the existence measurement errors.
However, during the experiment it was discovered curious phenomenon, which does not allow one to doubt the fact weight changes bodies, in the process of their magnetization or demagnetization! And which cannot be attributed to the influence of the earth’s magnetic field on the weighed bodies!
About what it was curious phenomenon, my next story.
Get into it!
After I created a structure consisting of a magnet, metal washers and a ball, and then placed it on a scale, I balanced the scale system with weights of different weights. Next, I began to observe whether the total weight of the structure would change during the process of magnetizing the washers and ball. After about 15 - 20 minutes something interesting began to happen!
The bowl with the structure began to slowly fall down. Her weight began to increase! To balance the cup scales, I began adding matches, both whole and broken into pieces, to the cup with the weights.
I did this until the process of imbalance of the scales stopped. Then I weighed the matches that I added to the bowl of weights during the experiment - their weight was 0.38 grams! In this way, it was established that the weight of the structure during magnetization (hence also its mass) increased by these 0.38 grams. That is, during magnetization, exactly this amount of subtle matter, which forms the basis of the vortex magnetic field, penetrated additionally into atomic substance ring and ball, the combined weight of which before magnetization was: 11.15 g + 27.75 g = 38.90 grams.
A simple mathematical calculation shows that the increase in mass of the rings and ball during magnetization in this experiment was about 1% (0.38*100%/38.9).
Draw your conclusions, gentlemen!
I personally made two conclusions for myself:
1. The famous formula of the “Theory of Relativity” is not worth a pound of wool.
2. The magnetic field is material, it is nothing more than the vortex movement of that luminous ether, in the ocean of which we all reside! The densification of this ether in magnetized bodies causes an increase in their mass and weight.