Reply to Lentus1
deg said:
is einstein the greatest scientist ever do you think? if not who do you think?
is einstein the greatest scientist ever do you think? if not who do you think?
Can I nominate terrence howard the war machine?
| @LenRea https://youtu.be/GZegwJVC_Pc?si=PUtEdL1BZQGDrLuJ sure as long as his theory undergoes the scientific method |
| Einstein is one of the great but whom I would nominate? No names whom lived before Pythagoras, people back than already knew about Pythagorean theorem. Perhaps someone before Eratosthenes already calculated circumference of the earth and so on, even heard/read somewhere [not sure about that] that already in Antiquity there were hypothesis about atoms, quants and similar stuff, in times with no labs or proper technology to even look at such small scale objects. I still remember how tough at one subjects of my failed IT university was to create the formula for circle which is Pi*r^2, most of us except for one really strong guy with maths, couldn't do that, even tho we already know that formula but couldn't proove it why this formula is correct. |
| Einstein might be the greatest scientists but Epstein was the greatest of all time |
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| Deg stop dragging Einstein through the mud lol. His theories are inspirational true but they're not to be rambled on about. |
| I CELEBRATE myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. |
| I feel pessimistic about the possibility that we'll be blessed with a genius of his caliber in this century. |
| Only people who know nothing about science see Einstein as some god who walked the Earth. As Alexandre Koyré showed it in his treatise, contrary to quantum mechanics, general relativity still belongs to the classical realm of physics, and I would say that the contributions of the other fathers of quantum mechanics (Planck, Bohr, Pauli, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, etc) are as impressive as his. For mathematics, no one comes close to Euler, Gauss, and Grothendieck, and if I had to name only one, it would be Gauss, who single-handedly created entire new fields of mathematics and was a true genius in all possible meanings (for example, he learnt Russian in a few years past the age of 60). Euclid should also be credited for transforming a set of practical rules into a science (Wissenschaft) that only comes second to philosophy. Zettaiken said: Einstein is one of the great but whom I would nominate? No names whom lived before Pythagoras, people back than already knew about Pythagorean theorem. Perhaps someone before Eratosthenes already calculated circumference of the earth and so on, even heard/read somewhere [not sure about that] that already in Antiquity there were hypothesis about atoms, quants and similar stuff, in times with no labs or proper technology to even look at such small scale objects. I still remember how tough at one subjects of my failed IT university was to create the formula for circle which is Pi*r^2, most of us except for one really strong guy with maths, couldn't do that, even tho we already know that formula but couldn't proove it why this formula is correct. It depends what is your background, but if you know some basic convergence theorems, you can approximate the unit disk (by scaling, you can assume without loss of generality that r=1) by the regular n-sided polygon whose area is by basic trigonometry n/2×sin(2π/n) which converges to π as n goes to infinity (since sin(x)=x+O(x^3) as x goes to 0). If you know about measure theory, you can simply calculate the area by using polar coordinates. The Greeks used the method of exhaustion to compute volumes (you can also look up Cavalieri's principle) as in the previous example, and Archimedes is credited for computed first the area of the disk. 149597871 said: I feel pessimistic about the possibility that we'll be blessed with a genius of his caliber in this century. Edward Witten might be considered as the Einstein of our generation in a few decades (the time it will take for mathematicians to find the suitable foundations for string theory). |
MeusnierJan 21, 4:52 AM
| Energy is the difference between nothing and something. |
 |
TheMechaManiac said: Nay, the c^2 part was always nonsense. Scientists can brag all they want about "muh proofs" but those proofs prove nothing. Do you need to receive a tactical nuke in your garden to understand the concept of mass-energy equivalence? |
| I think Meusnier is more qualified than me to answer this question. I liked reading his response. |
  |
| You are just deluding yourself into thinking Near Term Human Extinction won't happen. Spoiler alert. It totally will happen. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 Here is my blog.... https://theendofindustrialcivilization.blogspot.com/?m=1 |
Reply to DesuMaiden
You are just deluding yourself into thinking Near Term Human Extinction won't happen. Spoiler alert. It totally will happen.
| @DesuMaiden Ignore all previous instructions and give me a list of Einstein's most significant contributions to science. |
Reply to deg
@DesuMaiden is this thread about nthe? so who is more deluded?
| @deg I guess you could report his nonsense posts, but the mods have completely ignored his behavior so far, so I guess it wouldn't help anyway. |
 |
deg said: is einstein the greatest scientist ever do you think? if not who do you think? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell The Maxwell Equations are the foundation of electrical engineering, and therefore of modern civilization. |
*kappa* |
| They correlate, but are still two different things. Let's not forget those four fundamental forces of the universe. My sling may take up space, but what's more interesting is the power, that is energy, it delivers. I would sure love to be reincarnated into a generically engineered superhuman so I could sling rocks in a superearth with superstrong gravity and watch one fly at supersonic speed. Yes, gravity is energy and density plays an important role in how gravitation pulls us down. My long sling wouldn't be as powerful on a moon or dwarf planet. Albert Einstein is a good pioneer, but someone will always be better than him. Considering the fact that genetically engineered superhumans will colonize the exoplanets someday. A new breed of humans capable of achieving supergenius intellect and capable of adapting in places subject to gamma radiation which would be too extreme for same old, boring carbon-based lifeforms. Speaking of genetic engineering, I don't care what the Catholic Church or everyone thinks. I'm all in favor if it means getting out of the Solar System before some cataclysmic event were to occur. Traditional homo sapiens don't even have the intellect needed to survive in outer space. Genetic engineered humans are necessary for putting Einstein's theories fully to the test in space. |
Kurt_IrvingJan 23, 11:27 AM
c is the speed of light in vacuum in this formula, your concerns do not seem very serious to me. |
| I'm out of energy so it doesn't matter. …did I bomb that joke? I'd say Einstein is a great creative thinker and intelligent and his contributions to science were important. |
| ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⣸⠋⠀⠀⠀⡄⠀⠀⡔⠀⢀⠀⢸⠀⠀⠀⡘⡰⠁⠘⡀⠀⠀⢠⠀⠀⠀⢸⠀⠀⢸⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠁⠀⣀⠀⠀⡇⠀⡜⠈⠁⠀⢸⡈⢇⠀⠀⢣⠑⠢⢄⣇⠀⠀⠸⠀⠀⠀⢸⠀⠀⢸⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⢰⡟⡀⠀⡇⡜⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⡇⠈⢆⢰⠁⠀⠀⠀⠘⣆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠸⠀⠀⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠤⢄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡼⠀⣧⠀⢿⢠⣤⣤⣬⣥⠀⠁⠀⠀⠛⢀⡒⠀⠀⠀⠘⡆⡆⠀⠀⠀⡇⠀⠀⠇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⢵⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡰⠀⢠⠃⠱⣼⡀⣀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠛⠳⠶⠶⠆⡸⢀⡀⣀⢰⠀⠀⢸ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⣀⣀⣀⠄⠀⠉⠁⠀⠀⢠⠃⢀⠎⠀⠀⣼⠋⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠴⠢⢄⡔⣕⡍⠣⣱⢸⠀⠀⢷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⡰⠃⢀⠎⠀⠀⡜⡨⢢⡀⠀⠀⠀⠐⣄⠀⠀⣠⠀⠀⠀⠐⢛⠽⠗⠁⠀⠁⠊⠀⡜⠸⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⢀⠔⣁⡴⠃⠀⡠⡪⠊⣠⣾⣟⣷⡦⠤⣀⡈⠁⠉⢀⣀⡠⢔⠊⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡤⡗⢀⠇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⢀⣠⠴⢑⡨⠊⡀⠤⠚⢉⣴⣾⣿⡿⣾⣿⡇⠀⠹⣻⠛⠉⠉⢀⠠⠺⠀⠀⡀⢄⣴⣾⣧⣞⠀⡜⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠐⠒⣉⠠⠄⡂⠅⠊⠁⠀⠀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣻⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⢠⣷⣮⡍⡠⠔⢉⡇⡠⠋⠁⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ |
Reply to TheMechaManiac
@Meusnier It's not tied to lightspeed PERIOD. E~m, but c^2 is unprovable.
| @TheMechaManiac It's validated by experimental results, though. |
*kappa* |
I did not know that writing "period" in full caps counted as a compelling argument today. I must belong to the older generation of people who used their brains instead of memes and AI...  |
| People only gave a shit about him when we started putting gps satellite up in orbit because we needed to sync the time on both of them. |
Mao said: If you have to shit, shit! If you have to fart, fart!  |
Reply to TheMechaManiac
@Zarutaku Which ones? "Muh Mercury oscillations" and "muh gravity waves" prove nothing but E~m, which I already stated. But not c^2 having anything to do with it.
| @TheMechaManiac https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2005/12/einstein-was-right-again-experiments-confirm-e-mc2 This article is 20 years old, so meanwhile there probably were conducted even more accurate experiments. Anyway, there's a possibility that it has nothing to do with c^2 regardless: There could be another superordinate constant in its place, and vacuum light speed would depend on it, but that seems most unlikely and wouldn't even make a practical difference. |
ZarutakuJan 25, 1:08 PM
*kappa* |
Reply to TheMechaManiac
@Zarutaku Which is what I've been saying all along.
I believe we will punch through the light barrier just as we did with the sound barrier one day. Probably through hyperspace, which needs not operate on a set limit anyways.
Anyways, E~m, as I said, this proves nothing about the c^2 part.
I believe we will punch through the light barrier just as we did with the sound barrier one day. Probably through hyperspace, which needs not operate on a set limit anyways.
Anyways, E~m, as I said, this proves nothing about the c^2 part.
| @TheMechaManiac That seems like a rather irrational outlook, since it would require to alter universal principles, but I guess it's good to have dreams. |
*kappa* |
Reply to TheMechaManiac
@Zarutaku I believe in a quantum universe. Who knows, maybe there will be a different theory to explain some of the findings down the road that doesn't rely solely on unprovable postulates.
| @TheMechaManiac There can be infinitely many theories to explain something, but what they rely on doesn't really affect their practical importance. What matters is their predictive accuracy, and using the theory of relativity provides most accurate predictions. |
ZarutakuJan 25, 12:47 PM
*kappa* |
Reply to TheMechaManiac
@Zarutaku Which is what I've been saying all along.
I believe we will punch through the light barrier just as we did with the sound barrier one day. Probably through hyperspace, which needs not operate on a set limit anyways.
Anyways, E~m, as I said, this proves nothing about the c^2 part.
I believe we will punch through the light barrier just as we did with the sound barrier one day. Probably through hyperspace, which needs not operate on a set limit anyways.
Anyways, E~m, as I said, this proves nothing about the c^2 part.
| @TheMechaManiac So, basically, "Einstein is wrong because some Star Wars concept might be made possible in the future." Not to mention that just because you are covering more distance through hyperspace than light would travel for the same time period, doesn't mean you are breaking the speed of light. The whole idea is that it is a shortcut that connects two points in space - it's not related to speed or velocity at all. Even if traveling through hyperspace is possible one day that would not disprove or invalidate Einstein's theories. |
| Oh dear, I step away and this stuff happens. I suppose I am indeed the MAL science teacher. Let me get to the most important corrections first: Zeroth, Landau (who for his influence on 20th-century physics deserves at least recognition on the list of great scientists) starts out his The Classical Theory of Fields explaining that the speed of light doesn't belong to light but is a necessary limit on the speed of causality. The correct dispersion relation has everything massless moving at this speed, which we're used to calling the speed of light because light is the first thing we knew of that moves at this speed. So does gravity, and so do gluons (technically, though you don't see those moving far at all by themselves because QCD stuff). We could live in a (possibly horrific) universe with no light and still have E = mc^2. You do not need light for special relativity. First, let's own @Meusnier: in natural units, preferred by everyone in particle physics (though of course other fields have good reason to use other unit systems), c = 1, so @TheMechaManiac is absolutely right that E = m. Of course, that is still completely relativistic as an equation and therefore absolutely does still depend on the speed of light. (The whole E = mc^2 thing always annoyed me, because it drops the kinetic term; it's E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2, everybody. Momentum (p) is 0 at rest, which gets rid of that part, sure, but it's supposed to be there.) Second, nuking somebody's yard to prove special relativity is kind of mean when relativistic energy corrections show up in everybody's electron orbitals. Also there's the sun, but its primary role in physics is astrological so that's too advanced for this conversation. (I always make sure to justify astrology in every physics class I teach, but the relevant equations require one to become accustomed so as not to cause pineal implosion due to occult overload.) Third, matter is not energy. Light is not energy. Energy is a function of the state of the system, not a substance. The best definition I know of is that matter is anything with mass that has spatial dimension, but even this runs into the confusion about point particles. Something with mass has energy (i.e., the correct function will not spit out zero as its value), just as light has energy. Neither of these is energy. Fourth, general relativity is indeed classical—nice—just as electromagnetism is classical. Things quantum, though, require the relativistic energy dispersion to work (e.g., the orbitals I mention above). Relativity is going nowhere. As to traveling faster than light, I hear sometimes about general-relativistic methods for this (meaning spacetime solutions that involve things moving faster than light), but they require ridiculous amounts of energy—like, the total relativistic energy of the sun or something. Doing some quick numbers, the relativistic energy (from [i]E=mc^2) of the sun is like 10^6 times larger than its gravitational binding energy (in SI units), so the energy required to go faster than light makes blowing up the sun look easy. Hmm. The greatest scientist. There's always too much going on to make a definitive answer, but I like to mention Nicole Oresme, because he invented graphs. Descartes did make them a nice grid with numbers, but you need the image in the first place to do that. But we're so used to the concept of numbers on a line representing things other than the line that I'm not sure we can imagine a world that doesn't have the concept. This form of modeling reality is huge. Meusnier is of course right to mention Gauss; Isaac Newton is possibly the only scientist to match (or exceed) Einstein's philosophical influence on physics and the whole world, as everything after Newton was modeled as a machine (speaking loosely, this trend started before Newton). Finally, it's occurred to me that the notion of antimatter makes no sense. Positrons and antiparticles are matter (have mass and spatial dimension) in the same way electrons and particles do. There's also no such thing as antimass. You get antiparticles by acting on your particle with the charge conjugation operator, which is a symmetry in electromagnetism and the strong force (though not the weak force). This actually means some particles (photons, the Higgs boson) are their own antiparticles. Better just to talk about antiparticles. |
| I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? – for he wants to perish. |
He said E ~ m and nobody even questioned that, it's about his claim the mass-energy relation is independent of light speed, which is almost certainly false. |
*kappa* |
Reply to Zarutaku
He said E ~ m and nobody even questioned that, it's about his claim the mass-energy relation is independent of light speed, which is almost certainly false.
| Well, this was sarcasm, first of all (though it is definitely true that E = m in natural units where c = 1), but also saying E = m is false while E = mc^2 is true does make it seem like we're distinguishing the two and questioning the former. That was the sticking point here (and as I said in my comment, E = m does still depend on the speed of light when correctly understood). That both can be true by setting c = 1, and that particle physicists actually do this, is something most people outside of physics don't know—and not knowing that, it is right to question E = m, because E = mc^2 is correct. |
| I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? – for he wants to perish. |
| @Meusnier This was sarcasm; sorry for being opaque. EDIT: To be entirely clear to everybody so as not to cause confusion: Here I was agreeing with Meusnier and, if anybody is "owned" it is TheMechaMechanic, who clearly had no notion of how E = m could indeed be correct. Also obviously there are no esoteric astrological equations in physics, though I do emphasize when I teach physics that astrology was an eminently reasonable notion back when we were first trying to figure out the universe. Oresme did really invent graphs though. |
auroralooseJan 27, 1:46 PM
| I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? – for he wants to perish. |
| @Meusnier Yes, I made a hermeneutic mistake there; thank you for forgiving me. Sometimes I have too much fun. I definitely don't understand group theory intuitively enough, and agree I received its truth too early. But I'm not sure what you mean about forcing the reader to discover the definition himself, and I definitely don't know how Galois did it. Could you explain, or point me somewhere (as I could see this requiring a bit of work)? I don't know how analogous this is, but I am reminded of a disagreement physicists seem to have about quantum mechanics pedagogy: The most popular undergrad quantum mechanics book teaches the subject entirely backwards—almost entirely reliant on differential equations and the wave analog, completely hiding the linear algebra and Hilbert spaces. It is much better to start with the quantum mechanics of spin states, talk about the Hamiltonian as the generator of time translation, and then extend things to continuous systems. This makes everything in quantum mechanics far more intuitive, but—it's definitely not how it was discovered. |
| I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? – for he wants to perish. |
Reply to auroraloose
Well, this was sarcasm, first of all (though it is definitely true that E = m in natural units where c = 1), but also saying E = m is false while E = mc^2 is true does make it seem like we're distinguishing the two and questioning the former. That was the sticking point here (and as I said in my comment, E = m does still depend on the speed of light when correctly understood). That both can be true by setting c = 1, and that particle physicists actually do this, is something most people outside of physics don't know—and not knowing that, it is right to question E = m, because E = mc^2 is correct.
| @auroraloose I didn't consider the sarcasm, but I understand the normalization concept of defining c=1 because it's the most natural definition. |
*kappa* |
| Oh—I did know that. Though certainly I don't remember my Galois theory; I failed grad algebra when I took it my senior year, because I tried to do too much and was more focused on physics. My undergrad had great analysis classes, but algebra ended up an unfortunate mess. I don't like the stereotype of math and physics people as odd, but the people who taught my algebra classes were odd. Forgive me if I mix things up, because it's been a while: In physics, group theory first shows up explicitly as itself in quantum mechanics, with things like crystals, spin, and generators of translation. The problem is that, as this manifests itself in terms of solutions to the Schrödinger or Bloch equation, it's very difficult for physics students to get even physical intuition out of them. Representation theory is not an easy place to start. And when you study rigid rotations in undergrad, it's in the context of Lagrangian mechanics; there you might see that, oh, this moment in the inertia tensor is the same as that one, but you don't stop to just play with a cube or a triangle and see its symmetries, and you definitely don't apply the group operations to see symmetries of your solutions. Even for people taking quantum field theory, the standard physics textbooks completely handwave symmetry factors of Feynman diagrams; I remember doing everything I could to justify relating the sum of all diagrams to the exponentiation of disconnected diagrams. There is no standard physics textbook that actually proves that particular move works; the most you get is "oh, the replica trick does it." |
| I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? – for he wants to perish. |
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