Einstein's Concept Research Articles

Stimulus intensity modulates perceived tactile distance.

Several features of tactile stimuli modulate the perceived distance between touches. In particular, distances are perceived as farther apart when the time interval between them is longer, than when it is shorter. Such effects have been interpreted as a form of 'psychological relativity', analogous to Einstein's conception of a four-dimensional space-time. We investigated whether similar effects occur for stimulus features other than time, specifically stimulus intensity. We hypothesised that perceived distance would be increased when the two stimuli differed in intensity, since they would then be farther apart in a multi-dimensional feature space. Participants made verbal estimates of the perceived distance between two touches on their left hand. Intensity was manipulated such that both stimuli could be intense, both could be light, or one could be intense and the other light. We found no evidence for change in perceived tactile distance when stimuli intensity mis-matched. In contrast, there were clear effects of average stimulus intensity on perceived distance. Intense stimuli were judged as farther apart than light stimuli, and mixed stimuli were intermediate. These results are consistent with theories of general magnitude representation, which argue that multiple dimensions of magnitude are dependent on a shared underlying representation of domain-general magnitude.

The theory of electrochemical noise in equilibrium state within the Einstein concept

• Autocorrelation analysis of electrochemical noise Brownian coordinate. • Fluctuation-dissipation relations for autocorrelations of Brownian coordinate. • Fluctuation-dissipation relations for structure function of Brownian coordinate. • Autocorrelations of Brownian coordinate of Voigt circuit noise. The theory of electrochemical noise is considered within the Einstein concept. Discrete fluctuation–dissipation relations for the Brownian coordinate of electrochemical potential noise are determined. It is shown that, in the equilibrium state, there is a linear relationship between the discrete autocorrelation function of the Brownian coordinate of electrochemical potential noise and the second order difference of macroscopic linear response of the electrochemical Brownian coordinate to the external action in the form of a single step of constant electric current. Using the discrete fluctuation–dissipation relations, the discrete autocorrelation function of the Brownian coordinate of equilibrium potential noise is calculated for the Voight electrochemical circuit, which contains the electric double layer capacitance and the electrochemical discharge resistance. In the direct experiment, it is shown that the intrinsic noise of the measuring instrument (based on the AD7176 evaluation board) does not hamper the measurement of the structure function of the Brownian coordinate of corrosion noise. The electrochemical noise diagnostics based on the Einstein concept is a promising supplement to the electrochemical noise diagnostics based on the Nyquist concept.

A proposal for an electrical connection between the gravitational field and light

Based on well-established equations, we provide evidence of an electrical connection between the gravitational field and light. Each is modeled using the inductance‐capacitance ( <mml:math display="inline"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>L</mml:mi> <mml:mi>C</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) circuit as the building block. A proposed direct photon force (not a pressure and not by means of a force carrier), the relationship between the speed of light and gravity, the frequency and wavelength of gravitational waves, gravitational redshift, the trajectory of planets around the sun, and equations of plane electromagnetic waves may all be expressed with the assistance of an ideal (no resistance) <mml:math display="inline"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>L</mml:mi> <mml:mi>C</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> circuit model of light. Each begins with the Planck‐Einstein relationship. Each suggests that gravity and electromagnetism interact directly through fluctuating electrical and magnetic fields from both sources. With this perspective Einstein's concept of the warping of spacetime may not be needed to explain gravitation.

Quantification of spatial lag effect on sediment transport around a hydraulic structure using Eulerian–Lagrangian model

The spatial lag effect on sediment transport around a hydraulic structure is quantified through numerical simulation using a Eulerian–Lagrangian model. The Eulerian–Lagrangian model uses a deterministic approach of bed load motion and stochastic approach of Einstein's concept, which allows for a reasonable quantification of both non-equilibrium and equilibrium bed load transport rates. Numerical simulations are conducted for local scour around a spur dyke and a weir-type structure. As pointed out in previous experimental studies on the one-dimensional problem, Eulerian–Lagrangian simulation reveals an unsaturated bed load in a scour hole around a hydraulic structure. Furthermore, an oversaturated bed load is also found in the deposition region, particularly behind the structure. The validity of the linear adaptation equation is discussed using numerical results, revealing the possibility that the linear adaptation equation does not appropriately represent the existence of the strong spatial lag effect. The present study finds there are two modes in the response of the adaptation length to the unsaturated bed load, which depend on the clear-water scour condition or the live-bed scour condition. Findings of this study will contribute to multi-dimensional sediment transport simulations that consider the spatial lag effect.

Visualization during Crystallization in Minkowski Spacetime

It was achieved a visual representation of information about the crystallization process in the multidimensional space, which creates prerequisites for the development of software systems to solve a wide class of problems. With the geometric interpretation Minkowski space-time, quasi-Lorentz and Einstein's concept concerning the concept of giving time physical sense, simulated the process of formation of crystals in the four-dimensional space. The 4D model space combines the physical three-dimensional space of the factors affecting the formation of crystals, and time. Visualization of the crystallization process in spacetime plays an important role, as having great cognitive and probative value, and contributes to a better understanding of crystallization processes, creates conditions to control the properties of materials in the process of crystallization.

Questions and answers with Steven Gimbel

<xhtml:span xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> A philosopher of science sets out to discover what role, if any, religion or culture played in Albert Einstein's conception of his relativity theory. </xhtml:span>

Questions and answers with Steven Gimbel

<xhtml:span xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> A philosopher of science sets out to discover what role, if any, religion or culture played in Albert Einstein's conception of his relativity theory. </xhtml:span>

Can a Bose Gas Be Saturated?

We scrutinize the concept of saturation of the thermal component in a partially condensed trapped Bose gas. Using a 39K gas with tunable interactions, we demonstrate strong deviation from Einstein's textbook concept of a saturated vapor. However, the saturation picture can be recovered by extrapolation to the strictly noninteracting limit. We provide evidence for the universality of our observations through additional measurements with a different atomic species, 87Rb.

Einstein's "true" discontinuity.With an application to Zeno

The question whether quantum discontinuity can or cannot provide an answer to Zeno's Paradoxes is reopened. It is observed that what is usually understood by the term "discontinuity", namely, Einstein's conception of the photon as described by himself and all others, is unsuitable to the task because, essentially,it reduces to the trivial 'discontinuity' of objects scattered in space. By contrast, quantization of energy levels, which are not in space but can only alternate in time, provide the right sort of discontinuity required. Discrete quantized orbits, corresponding to eigen-frequencies, are irreducible, and nothing is allowed to stand in-between them in satisfaction of the quantum postulate, furnishing the requisite, and so far missing, immediate nextness of a point to a certain other. In this way, Zeno's Runner need not postpone his first step indefinitely, always waiting upon an infinity of preceding steps, before it can be taken. There is now a point that is next to a point and so a step on that point, which is the first step. It follows that, if one kind of discontinuity, Einstein's, is incapable of offerring an answer to Zeno, while another kind can, the two are discrepant. One of them, the former, is not a kind of discontinuity properly so called at all, though evidently the consequence of one.

Fluvial erosion/transport equation of landscape evolution models revisited

We present a mesoscale erosion/deposition model, which differs from previous landscape evolution models equations by taking explicitly into account a mass balance equation for the streamflow. The geological and hydrological complexity is lumped into two basic fluxes (erosion and deposition) and two averaged parameters (unit width discharge q and stream slope s). The model couples the dynamics of streamflow and topography through a sediment transport length function ξ(q), which is the average travel distance of a particle in the flow before being trapped on topography. This property reflects a time lag between erosion and deposition, which allows the streamflow not to be instantaneously at capacity. The so‐called ξ‐q model may reduce either to transport‐limited or to detachment‐limited erosion modes depending on ξ. But it also may not. We show in particular how it does or does not for steady state topographies, long‐term evolution, and high‐frequency base level perturbations. Apart from the unit width discharge and the settling velocity, the ξ(q) function depends on a dimensionless number encompassing the way sediment is transported within the streamflow. Using models of concentration profile through the water column, we show the dependency of this dimensionless coefficient on the Rouse number. We discuss how consistent the ξ‐q model framework is with bed load scaling expressions and Einstein's conception of sediment motion.

100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's papers with regard to field theory

Purpose – This paper aims to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's works, published in 1905.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a brief appraisal of Einstein's work.Findings – The paper reminds the reader of the 1905 discoveries, such as photoelectric phenomena, special theory of relativity and Brown's motions.Originality/value – The paper deals with the problem of how Einstein's concept contradicts or follows the Faraday concept of electromagnetic fields.

Dynamical and wave chaos in the Bose–Einstein condensate

Within the past five years Albert Einstein's concept of a dilute atomic Bose Condensate has been realized in many experimental laboratories. Temperatures in the nano-Kelvin regime have been achieved using magnetic and optical trapping of laser and evaporatively cooled atoms. At such temperatures the relative de Broglie wavelengths of the gaseous trapped atoms can become long compared to their mean spacing, and through a process of bosonic amplification a “quantum phase transition” takes place involving 103 to 1011 atoms, most of which end up in identical single particle quantum states, whose length scales are determined by the external trap. Rb, Na, Li and atomic H have been trapped at variable densities of the order of 1013/cm3, and in traps of varying geometries. Of these all but Li have an effective repulsive atomic pair interaction, but utilization of molecular Feshbach resonances allows the interactions of other species to be tuned over wide ranges of strengths, including control of the sign of the effective atomic pair interactions. Fully quantum and macroscopic systems at such low densities are a theorist's dream: simple Hartree type mean field theory provides a startlingly accurate description of density profiles, low energy excitation frequencies, and such a description, commonly called the Non-linear Schrödinger Equation (NLSE) or the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) Equation, will be explored here. The NLSE appropriate for attractive atomic interactions is known to lead to chaotically unstable dynamics, and eventual implosion of the condensate should the local number density exceed a critical value. In this work we illustrate this type of chaotic collapse for attractive condensates, and then explore the types of chaotic dynamics of solitons and vortices, which are the signatures of dynamical non-linearity in the repulsive case. Finally the implications of the symmetry-breaking associated with phase rigidity are explored in model simulations of repulsive condensates: condensates with repulsive atomic interactions break into phase domains when subject to weak shocks and, perhaps surprisingly, break into chaotic “laser-speckle” type patterns as the shock level increases. The fully quantum mechanical NLSE thus displays a full range of chaotic types of motion: from particle-like chaotic collisions of solitons and vortices to fully developed time dependent wave chaos.

Einstein, Cassirer, and General Covariance — Then and Now

The ArgumentRecent archival research has brought about a new understanding of the import of Einstein's puzzling remarks (1916) attributing a physical meaning to general covariance. Debates over the scope and meaning of general covariance still persist, even within physics. But already in 1921 Cassirer identified the significance of general covariance as a novel stage in the development of the criterion of objectivity within physics; an account of this development, and its implications, is the primary task undertaken in his monograph of “epistemological considerations” on the theory of relativity. Cassirer's assessment is correct: general covariance, understood as an injunction against dynamical theories with background elements, is a “limiting heuristic principle” guiding Einstein's fundamental conception of a “complete field theory”; as such, it underlies a “separation principle” built into the conceptual framework of the EPR criticism of quantum mechanics. In conclusion, a further parallel is noted: mutual recognition that the principle of general covariance is but a form of “anthropomorphism.”

Pluralism in Education and Education in Pluralism

The physicist and historian and philosopher of science Stanley L. Jaki first notes that the word “pluralism” has become a euphemism or Trojan horse for relativism. Valid, sound pluralism ought to entail an education in the plurality of subject matters and a respect and understanding for their separate, irreducible integrities and also their rational relatedness to one another. A non-relativist epistemology of universal validity and scope underlies and relates all the great bodies of knowledge and learning—the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, religion and theology, and philosophy itself. Unfortunately the term “pluralism” as now commonly used has confused or obscured this fundamental understanding, the invaluable legacy of rational thought since Plato. The misunderstanding of Einstein's conception of relativity is particularly damaging but typical of the misuse of modern scientific ideas by thinkers in other fields; Einstein's idea of relativity is unfortunately named, as it has nothing to do with epistemological or moral relativism, for neither of which it provides any warrant. All the subsets of rationality—the plurality of subject matters—comprise the universal set of rationality itself, a fact that Plato well understood and that needs to be understood today—perhaps now more than ever. Education need to safeguard and develop the invaluable common-sense human intuitions of the true and good as universal realities.

Einstein's Conception of the Relation Between Mathematics and the World. (Based on the Search for the Geometry of Real Space)

Einstein's Conception of the Relation Between Mathematics and the World. (Based on the Search for the Geometry of Real Space)

EPR Elements of Physical Reality in Quantum Mechanics

The concept of elements of physical reality (e.p.r.) in quantum mechanics as defined by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) is discussed in the context of the EPR–Bohm and the EPR–Bell experiments on a pair of spin 1/2 particles in the singlet state. It is argued that EPR's definition of e.p.r. is appropriate to the EPR–Bell experiment rather than to the EPR–Bohm experiment, and that Bohr's interpretation of e.p.r. is also consistent with such a viewpoint. It is shown that the observed correlation between the spins of the two particles in the EPR–Bell experiment is just a manifestation of the correlation that exists between the wave functions of the particles in the singlet state and a consequence of the fact that a Stern–Gerlach magnet does not change the state of a particle but only transforms its wave function into a representation defined by the axis of the magnet. As such, the correlation is suggested to be an affirmation of Einstein's concept of locality, and not an evidence for nonlocality.

Struggling with Causality: Einstein's Case

The ArgumentEinstein's concept of causality as analyzed in this paper is a thick concept comprised of: (a) regularity; (b) locality; (c) symmetry considerations leading to conservation laws; (d) mutuality of causal interaction. The main theses are: 1. Since (b)–(d) are not elements of Hume's concept of causality, Einstein's concept, the concept embedded in the theory of relativity, is manifestly non–Humean. 2. On a Humean conception, Newtonian mechanics is a paradigmatically causal theory. Einstein, however, regarded this theory as causally deficient, for it fails to comply with both (b) and (d). Special relativity was (partly) motivated by the wish to correct the first of these failures; general relativity the second. 3. Ironically, general relativity, based on the thick concept of causality, opens the way for a conventionalist understanding of that concept. 4. With regard to human freedom, Einstein professed to be a Spinozist. However, he suggested a version of soft determinism, not found in Spinoza.

Einstein's Interpretations of the Quantum Theory

The ArgumentThis paper argues that Einstein subscribed to three distinct kinds of interpretations of the quantum theory: subjective, instrumental, and hidden variables interpretations. We explore the context and ihe content of Einstein's thinking over these interpretations, emphasizing Einstein's conception of his role not only as a critic of the new quantum theory but also as a guide pointing the way to better physics.

Einstein-Ehrenfest's radiation theory and Compton-Debye's kinematics

Einstein and Ehrenfest's radiation theory is modified in order to take into account the effects of the random zero-point fields, characteristic of classical stochastic electrodynamics, in a system of classical molecules interacting with thermal radiation. This is done by replacing the Einstein concept of “random spontaneous emission” by the concept of stimulated emission by the random zero-point fields. As a result, Compton and Debye's kinematic relations are obtained within the realm of a completely classical theory, that is, without having to consider the wave-particle duality for the molecules or the radiation.

The rejection of the ricci tensor in Einstein's first tensorial theory of gravitation

Albert Einstein came very close to the final form of the equations describing the gravitational field during his collaboration with Marcel Grossmann a fecund period which began in August 1912 and lasted nine months. Nevertheless, the theory published in their joint paper1 showed an "ugly dark spot," as Einstein wrote to Lorentz2 : contrary to initial expectations, the field equations were not generally covariant. Einstein struggled hard to iron out what he considered a major flaw, and eventually succeeded in November 1915, when he presented the final version of his general theory of relativity in a number of communications to the Prussian Academy of Science. Accepted reconstructions of the genesis of the Entwurf paper generally take in the following steps: Einstein & Grossmann initially made the right choice, taking the Ricci tensor into account as the gravitational field tensor, but rejected it later in the paper due to the difficulties encountered in recovering the Newtonian limit in the case of a weak and static gravitational field, making do with equations which were covariant with respect to linear transformations of coordinates. Moreover, in a paragraph entitled "Remarks," added at the end of the Mathematical part (the paper has a "Physical part" and a "Mathematical part," written by Einstein and Grossmann, respectively), Einstein gave what he believed was a proof that all generally covariant equations for the gravitational field were physically unacceptable. Interpretation of the way Einstein accounted for his failure to obtain the correct Newtonian limit and for the limited covariance of the equations is still a moot point among historians of physics. Some believe that Einstein's difficulties were of an essentially mathematical nature, while others stress their physical nature, viewed in terms of Einstein's conception of static gravitational fields as it stood in 1912.