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--------------------- 2556 - EINSTEIN‘S - legacy 100 years later?
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- Einstein sought truth in equations and then trusted that studies of the heavens and the cosmos would back him up. In doing this successfully he brought a new culture of math to science.
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- In 1905 Einstein looked at James Clerk Maxwell’s equations for electricity and magnetism. And, there it was in the electromagnetic waves for light, these equations said that the speed of light was a constant in a vacuum.
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- Einstein believed Maxwell’s equations. He then concluded that time and space must stretch and compress so that no matter how you are moving light’s behavior does not change. That revelation alone allowed Einstein to develop his Theory of Relativity.
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- Mathematics got a new culture. Many science discoveries have followed with math giving the answer then later experience and observation proving it to be true. Math deduced the General Theory of Relativity where gravity told spacetime how to bend and spacetime told gravity where to move. Math said there were Black Holes, Singularities, and Neutron Stars.
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- Math had a new place but Einstein still realized that experience and observation were the sole criterion of the physical utility of mathematics.
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- Einstein died in 1955 when I was a freshman in high school.
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- Arthur Eddington tried to prove Einstein’s equations by observing a solar eclipse and measuring the amount light that was bent by the Sun’s gravity. Einstein lacked vision for some of his theories. Arthur defended him by saying,” Not only is he Universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”
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- It was other scientists that provided the vision of what strange things his equations meant. Other scientists took his equations and postulated the existence of Black Holes. They took his equations to the extreme and postulated the idea of a Singularity where time is frozen and space becomes infinite.
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- Einstein thought the Universe had to be static. His equations did not give him a static Universe so he added a fudge factor called the “Cosmological Constant” that was an anti-gravity component that made the Universe static. However, later when he was convinced the Universe was expanding he could see that his equations created a condition that was unstable. The Universe had to be either contracting or expanding, it could not be static.
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- Einstein was one of the first scientists to insist that light was particles. The science community was convinced that light was waves in an “either“.
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- Einstein won the Noble Prize in 1921 for explaining the photoelectric effect using light particles called photons. This is the same principle used in solar cells today.
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- Einstein never liked the randomness , or the probabilities, in Quantum Mechanics. He said, “ God does not play dice”. In addition, Quantum Mechanics allowed for instantaneous interactions over distance which was a violation of the laws of Special relativity. He never did accept these faster-than-light theories.
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- Einstein spent his last 30 years in Princeton University searching for an alternative theory to Quantum Mechanics. However, he never got beyond his college mathematics. He never learned the existence of the Weak and Strong nuclear forces. He lacked the ingredients to develop the next theory.
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- Thousands of scientists have tried to develop a single theory that would bring The Theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics together. Both theories work well on Cosmic and Atomic scales but not vice versa. A great scientist is someone who does not believe his own ideas. He is ready to change his mind. What we do not know is always much more than what we do know.
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- Today, 100 years later, after Einstein’s equations first appeared, we are about to create a breakthrough,
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A supertechifragilisticexpialedocious breakthrough.
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- The Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator that is 8.6 kilometers in diameter, 27 kilometers in circumference. The protons running around this track are hurtling at 99.99975% the speed of light. The energy of the proton is boosted 16 times by this high velocity, kinetic energy.
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- The protons and anti-protons travel in opposite directions around the circle. They are brought together to smash into each other at 4 locations around the loop. 4 detectors are there to watch the action:
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-------------- Compact Muon Solenoid
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-------------- LHCb looks for bottom flavored quarks
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------------- ATLAS is a toroidal magnet that detects muons.
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------------- ALICE detects a collision with lead ions that produce a quark-gluon plasma.
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- Chemistry and solid state electronics work at the single electron- volt range. Nuclear reactions work in the million electron-volt range. Current particle accelerators work in the billion electron-volt range. The new Hadron Collider accelerator works in the trillions of electron-volts.
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- The higher the energy the shorter the wavelengths, the shorter the distances. Trillions of electron-volts will be the most powerful microscope in the world. Physics will finally begin to see into the nanometers.
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- The holy Grail of discovery is the Higgs Boson, which is believed to be the fundamental particle that embodies mass for all of matter. Or, maybe, another discover could be the fundamental particles that make up Dark Matter.
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- To get the two beams of protons to travel the circle and smash into each other they must be precisely aligned. The accelerator is in the Swiss Alps, but it must compensate for the tides. The software must track the phases of the Moon. Right!.
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- At high tides in Europe, Geneva, Switzerland rises 25 centimeters. The 27 kilometer circumference increases by 1 millimeter. The beam energy must change by 0.02% to compensate. The beam accuracy must be maintained to within 0.002% accuracy.
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- Luminous matter is made of protons and neutrons. All we see in visible light is this kind of matter, that we call Hadrons. Protons and neutrons are each made of three quarks.
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- But, the quarks only account of 2% of the mass. The rest of the proton is energy needed to confine the quarks inside the proton according to mass = E / c^2.
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- When the protons are smashed together the four detectors will study the pieces that fly apart. New theories will likely surface to improve those in Quantum Mechanics, The Standard Model for Particle Physics, Relativity and Cosmology.
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- It will be a supertechifragilisticexpialedocious breakthrough in physics
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- December 22, 2019. 2556 929 930
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--------------------- Monday, December 23, 2019 -------------------------
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