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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (41150)	8/31/2002 2:01:54 PM
From: epsteinbd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I am not a physicist, because I am not smart enough to understand the intricate dances of molecules. But I do know some about the scientific method (Thank you Galileo, Claude Bernard and co) to know when this Einstein dice quote is misused, so when I come across it, I react, possibly a bit acidly. Finally, after reading the articles you brought forward, I do not remember Einstein objecting to cosmological expansion...

To: Win Smith who wrote (41150)	9/1/2002 1:10:48 AM
From: D. Long	Respond to of 281500

And everybody makes mistakes. Einstein argued against the existence of black holes, which are now beyond dispute, and disliked the element of chance that underlies quantum theory, saying "God does not play dice with the universe." He also cooked up an unnecessary "cosmological constant" because his theories seemed to require a universe that was expanding or contracting -- a notion that seemed too weird. When observations by U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble proved that the universe was expanding, he called the constant "the greatest blunder of his life." whyfiles.org; Oddly enough, Einstein's blunder may have had some validity. The science of dark matter and dark energy may resurrect the Cosmological Constant. Physics is fun. :) space.com ----------------------------------------------------------- The concept of dark energy, which shoves galaxies away from each other at an ever-increasing speed, was first proposed, and then discarded, by Albert Einstein early in the last century. His law of general relativity concluded the universe must collapse under the relentless pull of gravity. However, like many scientists of his time, he assumed the universe to be static and unchanging. To make his equations fit those observations, Einstein added something he called the "cosmological constant" whose gravity is repulsive, though he had no idea if it was real. Shortly afterwards, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. He assumed that the universe must be slowing down under gravity and might even come to a halt, leading Einstein later to say that his cosmological constant was the biggest blunder of his career. Now it appears Einstein was on the right track after all. The source of the repulsive gravity may be something akin to Einstein's cosmological constant, referred to as the energy of the "quantum vacuum," a subatomic netherworld pervading space that provides a source of energy, or it may be something entirely new and unexpected. "While we don't know what dark energy is, we are certain that understanding it will provide crucial clues in the quest to unify the forces and particles in the universe, and that the route to this understanding involves telescopes, not accelerators," said astrophysicist Michael Turner of the University of Chicago.