[Marxism] Einstein and the Revolution of Physics

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(Einstein visited Cuba briefly in about 1930-1931 and spent a
very active day and a half visiting the Cuban capital. There 
is a small pamphlet about that visit published here and I'm
hopeful we can get it transcribed and posted out to the lists.)
===============================================================

Einstein and the Revolution of Physics
Lisandro Otero*

<http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={5072899B-E9C6-4F5D-8CDF-C2D989B150
69}&language=EN>

Havana, (Prensa Latina) A student of the University of Leiden, in
Holland, has just discovered an unpublished Albert Einstein´s
manuscript while carriying out a research for his doctoral theses.
Written in German it is a sixteen-page analysis on the state of
matter.

That discovery, together with the commemoration of the launching of
the first atomic bomb against Hiroshima, has brought again to current
journalistics the figure of one of the brightest scientists in human
history, who developed his famous Theory of the Relativity in the
first fifteen years of the 20th Century. With it he opened a new way
to conceive space, time, light and gravitation. He revolutionized
Newton´s old theories and the whole scientific and philosophical
thought of his time. He was a pacifist, a liberal who used the
influence of his voice in favour of the great social causes. His main
discovery was to make public that a particle of matter can become a
huge amount of energy.

It is curious, when researching his biography, to notice that he was
an awful student who got lousy marks in his subjects and he was not
able to graduate, quitting school with incomplete courses. His mother
made him study violin and he became a very mature performer. His
father owned an electric engineering company, and his two uncles,
Cesar and Jacob, were mathematicians who stimulated him a lot in his
interest for science.

When his family moved to Switzerland he took studies more seriously
and he graduated in the Polytechnic Academy of Zurich in 1900. Soon
after he adopted the Swiss citizenship and he began to work as
professor of mathematics. His first work, which made possible his
doctorate, dealt with the dimensions of the molecule.

His original physics theses made him win his initial reputation. By
that time he discovered that light is made up of individual particles
named by him quantas (currently known as photons). He began to
develop his Theory of the Relativity where he sustained that light
speed is constant, but time and movement are relative, according to
the observer. He stated that distance and time are not absolute, they
are not stable. Time and space interact between themselves. If a
spaceship could travel at the speed of light, pointed out Einstein as
example, seen from the earth it would need fifty thousand years to
get to the edge of our galaxy, however, its astronauts would
experience only two weeks of that time.

The light moves at a constant speed of 186 thousand miles per second
and movement is the essential condition of its existence. If an
observer, in a railroad platform, had a meter and a clock and used
them on a moving train, another observer would have two similar
instruments, the registrations of the platform would be longer and
more prolonged than those of the moving train. Another example given
by him to explain his theories, was that if a passenger on board of a
train traveling at the speed of light, would try to see him (or her)
reflected in a mirror he (or she) would not see his (or her) returned
image because the speed of light in his (or her) trip toward the
mirror, was similar to the train´s speed.

In his calculations he was able to establish the equivalence between
mass and energy, according to which the energy kept within the matter
is similar to the product of the mass multiplied by two times the
light speed to the square. That was his famous formula E=mc2. Another
of his great discoveries was the one of light bending, proved when
the Royal Society of London, carried out an expedition to Island of
Prince in the Gulf of Guinea, and photographed a solar eclipse which
demonstrated his predictions.

He had educational responsibilities in the universities of Prague and
Zurich, he got married, he had two children, he moved to Berlin where
he worked in the Prussian Academy of Sciences. The war of 1914
surprised him on vacations in Switzerland and nevermore he returned
to Berlin. He was a convinced pacifist. In 1921 the Nobel Prize on
Physics was conferred to him. In 1933, when Adolph Hitler took the
power, he gave up his German citizenship and he left his homeland.
The Nazi plundered his house and confiscated his properties. He took
refuge, first in the University of Oxford and later in the one of
Princeton. In the face of the growing aggressiveness of Germany he
abandoned his pacifism and urged the European nations to arm in order
to face the ever-growing Teutonic beast.

Informed about the German experiments with the atomic fragmentation
he wrote a famous letter to President Roosevelt warning him about the
potentiality of that rehearsal, which brought about the Manhattan
Project and the creation of the atomic bomb, in which he did not
participate, but after Hiroshima he joined the scientists who claimed
for banning the nuclear weapon.

He believed that the world in which we live is a very precise
engineering work. He believed that God was revealed within the
harmony of nature. He stated that he did not know exactly how would
it be the Third World War but indeed he knew that the Fourth would be
fought with sticks and clubs, again. The world was not the same one
after his discoveries. No other personality like him contributed to
change life in our time.

(Published in www.cubarte.cu on September 15, 2005)

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