1919 Solar Eclipse

used experimentally by Sir Arthur Eddington as proof of the correctness of Einstein's general relativity which correctly predicted the correct value of deflection of starlight by the mass of the sun. The result was considered spectacular news and elevated Einstein and the theory of general relativity's around the world.
If event B is in event A's absolute future, B can never have caused A in any reference frame. We can choose a reference frame in which A and B are at the same spatial point, and separated only by time (i.e. they happened at the same position, but at different times). The reverse is true if B is in A's absolute past: A can never have caused B, but and A and B happened at different times at the same spatial point in a particular reference frame. If event B is in event A's absolute away, no signal could ever travel from A to B (the signal would have to be traveling faster than the speed of light). In this case, we could choose a reference frame in which A and B are temporally simultaneous, but in that reference frame they will be separated by a spatial distance .

Absolute future/past/away

Arthur Eddington

British astrophysicist who was a chief supporter of the Theory of Relativity in Britain. In 1919, he proved empirically a consequence of relativity, the deflection of light by the sun's gravitational field. His results were hailed as conclusive proof of general relativity over the Newtonian model.
the artistic, architectural, and design corollary to the Vienna Circle. Emphasized logical construction using basic colors and shapes. Aufbau designs were built up from simple forms. Wanted to do away entirely with ornamentation, which they viewed as nationalist and decadent. Wanted an international, universally understandable architectural form. Irony bc many designs were not particularly functional or cost efficient.
Method of establishing simultaneity across distance, championed by Poincare. First one sends a telegraphic signal from one point (usually when said geographical point is at noon) and factoring in the time the telegraph (a wave moving at the speed of light) went back and forth one could maintain consistent time between two points. This process was also very important in establishing time zones and longitudes. After much political debate (between French and British mostly) it was decided that the time that other clocks would base off was Greenwich Mean Time measured the the Greenwich observatory in England.

Bauhaus

Clock coordination

Coil and magnet

As far as Maxwell's theory is concerned, the case of a magnet at rest in the ether is very different from that of one that moves. The magnet at rest is surrounded just by a static magnetic field. The moving magnet, however, is surrounded by both a magnetic field and an electric field. Einstein bothered by this asymmetry, believed there should be one explanation for both phenomena, because the magnet could be moving in the reference frame of the coil, but the coil is moving in the reference frame of the magnet. This thought experiment opens his 1905 paper.

Conventionalism

a philosophical attitude, articulated by Henri Poincare, that some fundamental principles are legitimized by agreements rather than grounded in some external reality. For example, Poincare's work in non-Euclidean geometry convinced him that geometrical axioms should be chosen for the results they produce, rather than their coherence with human intuitions about the world.

Deutsche Physik

Nazi-influenced view of what "German physics" is, in contract with "Jewish physics." German physics was supposedly experimental, relying only on experimental results and accurate measurements to produce slow but steady advances in science. "German physics" was closely tied to the natural world and the project of describing it, and did not involve advanced mathematics. This was in contrast with "Jewish physics", which was supposedly very theoretical, requiring much complex calculation, and prone to "false" revolutions in the field. Johannes Stark and Philip Lenard were the physicists who propagated this idea, which was largely directed against Einstein and relativity specifically.

E=mc^2

The mass-energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. Mass and energy are deeply connected and can be converted from one to another. Einstein's insight was used to understand radioactive decay.

Ecole Polytechnique

French engineering university where Poincare taught.

Electrodynamics

a branch of theoretical physics that studies consequences of the electromagnetic forces between electric charges and currents. The field was developed mostly by Maxwell, but Einstein was first to theorize about the relativity of electrodynamics in addition to the relativity of mechanical motion.
Imagine a physicist drops a ball in an elevator. She can determine the gravitational acceleration of the earth by using the equation d = (a)t2. Now imagine the elevator is in free fall. When she drops the ball, it appears to hang suspended in midair. Here, gravitational acceleration and inertial mass appear to "cancel out", an example of how they are in fact the same phenomenon. These phenomena would traditionally be explained by the earth's gravitational pull, which is contrasted with the same situation in a spaceship, wherein these phenomena would be explained by inertial mass.

Elevator thought experiment

Equivalence principle

Inertial mass and gravitational mass are exactly equivalent, meaning that no experiment could distinguish between them. While "inertial mass" (the measure of a body's resistance to changes in its motion when acted upon by an outside force) and "gravitational mass" (the measure of one body's gravitational attraction on another body) appear to be conceptually distinct, they are in fact one and the same.

Ernst Mach

an Austrian physicist. He was a major influence on logical positivism and developed a philosophy of science which recognized only sensations as real, rejecting the atomic model. He was an influence on the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. Though Mach's criticisms of absolute space and time influenced Einstein, Einstein never thought of himself as a pure Machian, though he considered him useful for eschewing metaphysics. In addition, Einstein cited "Mach's principle" (that any phenomena that seemed to be attributable to absolute space and time can be seen as emerging from a large scale distribution of matter in the universe) as one of the three principles underlying general relativity.

Ether

The believed absolute reference frame for all moving objects and for light. Prior to Einstein's 1905 paper, scientists had trouble conceiving of light as a wave without a medium with which to move through. The Michelson-Morley experiments attempted to confirm the existence of the ether by means of the interferometer. When these failed, Poincare and Lorentz suggested that moving through ether contracts objects such that you can't tell that you're moving through the ether. If you consider light as a special example though, and as photons moving in a wave, then that problem is eliminated. In essence, Einstein cleared conceptual space to eliminate ether and established by a new account that light is particular.

Frame of reference

In physics, a frame of reference can either be thought of as a coordinate system and/or an observational reference frame tied to the motion of the observer. Einstein's principle of relativity, proposed that there is no difference between frames of reference (no experiment you could do to prove which frame is in motion), as long as there is no acceleration.

Freidrich Adler

a good friend of Einstein. They were born in the same year, students together and even had the same thesis advisor. However, Adler left physics and went into work as a party organizer. He eventually assassinated Count Karl von Sturgkh, Minister-President of Austria. He was sentenced to death for this crime, but instead was imprisoned for 18 years. Einstein campaigned on his friend's behalf to save his life and acted as a character witness, as well as appeared in a newspaper to support him. While Adler was imprisoned, he continually challenged Einstein's theories. They remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Galilean relativity

relativity of mechanics in different frames of reference of constant velocity. Galileo had described how mechanical experiments would be the same whether the experimenter was at rest or sailing on smooth seas at constant velocity.

Gravitational redshift

the Doppler shift was (and is) a well-known phenomenon in which measured wavelengths exhibit redshift (longer wavelengths) if emitter and receiver are accelerating away from each other and blueshift (shorter wavelengths) if emitter and receiver are accelerating towards each other. The equivalence principle of GR led to the conclusion that there should be a redshift in all measures of wavelength on earth because of the gravitational acceleration of the earth. Confirmed by Robert Pound and Glen Rebka in 1959.

Henri Poincare

a prominent French polymath (mathematician, philosopher of science, physicist, etc.) As part of his role at the Bureau des Longitudes, Poincare worked on the problem of clock synchronization by cabling time to define simultaneity, leading to his development of a philosophy critical of the idea of the absolute time (related to the idea of "conventionalism"). That is, the longitude telegraph did not simply measure simultaneity, but defined it. He proposed a "principle of relativity" preceding Einstein, and his work contributed greatly to the formulation the theory of special relativity. Notably, Poincare never gave up on the idea of the aether as the privileged frame of reference and tried to keep the relativity principle consistent with classical principles of physics.

Hermann Minkowski

a German mathematician who developed a geometry of numbers. He taught Einstein. In addition, he realized that the special theory of relativitity could be understood as four-dimensional space, known as "Minkowski space-time". This reinterpretation of special relativity in geometrical / mathematical terms in 1909 did much to popularize the theory.

Inertial/non-inertial frame

an inertial reference frame is a frame of constant velocity, and a non-inertial frame is an accelerating frame. The predictions of special relativity only hold for inertial reference frames. in classical physics, kinematics is the study of motion and dynamics is the study of forces. The first part of Einstein's 1905 paper was the "kinematical part", which described the relative motion of objects.
Two mirrors, with a light pulse going from bottom to top, and reflecting back and forth. Looking at it from a moving frame, you see a sawtooth, but above it you just see it ping-pong back and forth. From a moving frame, depending on how fast you're moving, the light would appear to be traveling farther (on a longer diagonal), but also traveling faster. Since light cannot travel faster or slower than it always travels, our clocks will disagree--the light has longer to go, but is moving at the same speed, so the reflection from one mirror to the other actually takes longer. Thus, time itself changes based upon what frame of reference you're in, and the fact of motion changes how time passes.

Kinematics/dynamics

Light clock

Light cone

the path of light emanating from a single event would take through spacetime. In general relativity, the future light cone is the boundary of the causal future of a point and the past light cone is the boundary of its past.

Lise Meitner

an Austrian/Swedish physicist . Though she did not directly participate in the "discovery" of fission, her initiative was the beginning of the work. Meitner and her nephew Frisch conceived of the "liquid-drop" model of the atomic nucleus, in which the drop gets sets into oscillation by the bombardment of neutrons, which causes the nucleus to split. She also realized that Einstein's equation (e=MC squared) explained the tremendous amount of energy released by atomic decay, by the conversion of mass into energy.

Logical positivism

A school of philosophy that holds that elementary experiences (positivism) can be combined using logic to make simple shared relations which we can assign truth and falsity. A proposition only has meaning if its truth or falsity can be determined by a procedure. It dismisses the idea that simple reference to content (i.e. "redness") has any meaning and rather accepts that there are ways to establish meaning through relations, which can be shared and formulated in a logical way. In addition, logical positivism is characterized by its commitment to "Unified Science" or the development of a common language with which all scientific propositions can be expressed. This philosophy grew out of the Vienna Circle.

Longitude

a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds. Since the Earth rotates at a steady rate of 360 per day, or 15 per hour (in sidereal time), there is a direct relationship between time and longitude. If the navigator knew the time at a fixed reference point when some event occurred at the ship's location, the difference between the reference time and the apparent local time would give the ship's position relative to the fixed location. Finding apparent local time is relatively easy. The problem, ultimately, was how to determine the time at a distant reference point while on a ship. Poincare's career was partially devoted to establishing simultaneity of measurement at different points to get an accurate read of longitude.

Lorentz contraction

the mathematical explanation by H.A. Lorentz for the null result of the Michelson-Morely experiment. Claimed that the ether contracted as objects / light moved through it just enough not to be detected by precise experimentation.
effort, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, which resulted in the development of the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946 the project was under the command of Major GeneralLeslie R. Groves Jr. of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District orManhattan Engineer District (MED), but "Manhattan" gradually superseded the official codename for the project. The project had its roots in the Einstein-Szilrd letter, which warned that Nazi Germany might develop nuclear weapons. The letter was written by prominent physicists, signed by Albert Einstein, and delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in October 1939. The Manhattan Project, which began as a small research program that year, eventually employed more than 130,000 people at a cost of nearlyUS$2 billion. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites, some secret, including universities across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. The three primary research and production sites of the project were the plutonium-production facility at theHanford Site in eastern Washington state, the uranium enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the weapons research and design laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Two types of atomic bombs were developed during the war. A gun-type fission weapon was made from uranium-235, an isotope of uranium that makes up only 0.7 percent of natural uranium. This isotope proved difficult to separate from the main isotope, uranium-238, since it was chemically identical and almost the same weight. Three methods were employed for isotope separation: electromagnetic, gaseous and thermal. Most of this work was performed at Oak Ridge. This design proved impractical to use with plutonium so an implosion-type nuclear weapon was developed through a concerted design and construction effort at Los Alamos. An implosion bomb was the first nuclear device ever detonated, at the Trinity test on

Manhattan Project

Maxwelll's equations

a set of partial differential equations that, together with the Lorentz force law, form the foundation of classical electrodynamics, classical optics, and electric circuits. These in turn underlie modern electrical and communications technologies. Einstein believed that Maxwell's equations predict the existence of a fixed speed of light, independent of the speed of the observer, and that, despite Maxwell's own belief in an ether, his equations do not necessitate an ether or an absolute rest frame. In the opening paragraph of the paper, he motivated his theory by noting that a description of a conductor moving with respect to a magnet must generate a consistent set of fields irrespective of whether the force is calculated in the rest frame of the magnet or that of the conductor. The essential insight of special relativity was that Maxwell's equations should hold true for all inertial reference frames.

Mechanics

branch of physics concerned with the behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effects of the bodies on their environment. Einstein wrote in 1905 paper that a failure to detect ether suggest "no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute rest...the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good." Einstein takes the crucial step of drawing a connection between relativity of mechanics and relativity of electrodynamics.

Michelson-Morely experiment

-Also called the ether-drift experiment. Let two light beams from the same source simultaneously run a round-trip race along two paths which had effectively the same length in the laboratory but were laid out at 90 degrees, thereby causing the two light beams to be differently affected by their relative motion with respect to the ether. But on bringing the two beams together to compare by their interference pattern these relative effects, Michelson's apparatus (an "interferometer") surprisingly gave what is usually called a negative or null result which indicated more that the ether gets "dragged along" with the earth and so has no measurable motion or drift with respect to the earth. Michelson won the 1907 Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of the interferometer, the most sensitive scientific instrument ever at that time. This was hugely surprising, and Michelson and Morley considered it a failure. Historians and physicists assumed that this null result had a much greater effect on Einstein's thinking than it probably did.

Non-Euclidean geometry

the study of shapes and constructions that differs from Euclidean geometry in its conception of parallel lines. It can be related to Poincare's conventionalism (see above) as well as Einstein's general relativity, which describes space as eliptically curved near regions where energy is present.
a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts (lighter nuclei), often producing free neutrons and photons (in the form of gamma rays), as well. Fission of heavy elements is an exothermic reaction which can release large amounts of energy both as electromagnetic radiation and as kinetic energy of the fragments (heating the bulk material where fission takes place). For fission to produce energy, the total binding energy of the resulting elements has to be higher than that of the starting element. Fission is a form of nuclear transmutation because the resulting fragments are not the same element as the original atom. Nuclear fission produces energy for nuclear power and to drive the explosion of nuclear weapons. Both uses are made possible because certain substances callednuclear fuels undergo fission when struck by free neutrons and in turn generate neutrons when they break apart. This makes possible a self-sustaining chain reaction that releases energy at a controlled rate in a nuclear reactor or at a very rapid uncontrolled rate in a nuclear weapon.

Nuclear fission

Otto Hahn

German chemist and Nobel laureate who worked with Lise Meitner and discovered nuclear fission by bombarding uranium atoms.
Mercury's orbit is not the same ellipse every year, and it changes about 600 arcseconds per century. All but 43 arcseconds of this shift could be explained by Newtonian physics, and Einstein's calculations of the spacetime curve caused by Mercury's close location to the sun yielded exactly 43 arcseconds. One of the three classical tests of GR. Tests curved spacetime.

Perihelion of Mercury

Positivism

set of epistemological perspectives and philosophies of science which hold that the scientific method is the best approach to uncovering the processes by which both physical and human events occur. Though the positivist approach has been a 'recurrent theme in the history of western thought from the Ancient Greeks to the present day' the concept was developed in the early 19th century by the philosopher and founding sociologist, Auguste Comte.

Principle of relativity

the requirement that the equations describing the laws of physics have the same form in all admissible frames of reference.
a leading member of the Vienna Circle. He was an early and strong anti-Nazi. His notable works include The Logical Structure of the World (1928) and The Logical Syntax of Knowledge (1934). Carnap rejected metaphysics (but not philosophy) and used the phrase "aufbau" to mean not only structure but a building up, specifically the idea of building up the world out of well-understood bits, a rationalism away from the horrors of WWII.

Rudolf Carnap

Scientific world conception

defined by basic attitude and points of view and direction of research. Goal ahead is unified science. It knows no unsolvable riddle. Uses different perspectives to prove world not metaphysical: psychological, sociological and logical. It is the method of logical analysis that essentially distinguishes recent empiricism and positivism from the earlier version that was more biologicalpsychological in its orientation. Poincare argued in his philosophical treatise that not only does the telegraphic clock synchronization measure simultaneity - that procedure is what defines simultaneity. That is, clock synchornization is not simply a practical matter, but actually defining what simultaneity is. Einstein took this idea and ran with it and used this as the foundation for rewriting the domain of the physics of space and time, used to reconcile two seemingly incompatible principles.

Simultaneity

Spacetime

mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Space is 3D and time is fourth dimension. Spacetime is a consequence of Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, but it was first conceived mathematically by Minkowski.

Time dilation

an observed difference of elapsed time between two observers which are moving relative to each other, or being differently situated from nearby gravitational masses. An observer will see the other observer's clock ticking at slower rate than his/hers. This effect doesn't arise from technical aspects of the clock or the fact that any signal needs time to propagate, but from the nature of space-time described by theory of relativity.
A thought experiment in special relativity in which one twin makes a journey into space in a high speed rocket and turns around only to find that his twin has age less on Earth. The paradox arises as each twin perceives the other as travelling, so each should paradoxically find the other to have aged more slowly. Explanation 1: the space twin violated the rules of special relativity's explanatory power by slowing down, turning around, and speeding back up again, so her measurements are inaccurate. Explanation 2: by moving in the positive x direction, the space twin traveled less spacetime distance than the earth twin. Because of the invariance of spacetime distance, the difference in the accumulated 2 is a difference in their ages once both twins are back on earth. Thus, the space twin is younger than the earth twin.

Twin paradox

Unified science

the construction of a "constitutive system" in which every legitimate statement is reduced to the concepts of lower level which refer directly to the given experience. "The endeavour is to link and harmonise the achievements of individual investigators in their various fields of science"]. From this aim follows the search for clarity, neatness, and for a symbolic language that eliminates the problems arising from the ambiguity of natural language.

Vienna Circle

Also known as the Ernst Mach society, the Vienna Circle was a group of philosophers based at the University of Vienna. The circle was chaired notably by Moritz Schlick (trained as a physicist but took a role as a philosopher), and included, among others, Rudolf Carnap, Phillip Frank (brother of Josef Frank, architect) and Otto Neurath. The members of the Vienna Circle all believed in logical positivism. Their goal was to create a "Unified Science" in which every legitimate statement could be reducible to the summation of concepts which, at their basest level, would refer directly to given experience. They published the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. The Vienna Circle seized upon Einstein as a symbol and inspiration because of his redefinition of time and space (i.e. clocks and rulers). They thought their theories were compatible with so many disciplines that they would work together to create a better world.

Vladimir Fock

according to Loren Graham, Fock was a representative and proponent of Einstein's theory of relativity within the Soviet world. At a time when most Marxist philosophers objected to relativity theory, Fock emphasized a materialistic understanding of relativity that coincided philosophically with Marxism.
the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era. Galison thinks that historical explanations for the popularization of relativity theory that incorporates the "zeitgeist" (i.e., "it was a time when people were confused and looking for a new way of thinking after WWI") are bad explanations.

Zeitgeist