Einstein, Quantum Mechanics & the 1927 Solvay Conference: Einstein admits that Relativity was only a ‘thought experiment’.
Relativity explains nothing because it means nothing. Logically, if I say everything is ‘relative’ and there is no objective truth or meaning, that applies to Einstotle’s own theories. God and dice.
[Solvay, 1927. Bold = key actors. From back to front and from left to right: Auguste Piccard, Émile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Édouard Herzen, Théophile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, Jules‐Émile Verschaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Howard Fowler, Léon Brillouin, Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, William Lawrence Bragg, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr, Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, Marie Skłodowska Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles Eugène Guye, Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, Owen Willans Richardson]
“After all, relativity is riddled with holes – black holes. It predicts that stars can collapse to infinitesimal points but fails to explain what happens then. Clearly the theory is incomplete,
Moreover, quantum theory turns the clock back to a pre-Einsteinian conception of space and time. It says, for example, that an eight-liter bucket can hold eight times as much as a one-liter bucket. That is true in everyday life, but relativity cautions that the eight-liter bucket can ultimately hold only four times as much – that is, the true capacity of buckets goes up in proportion to their surface area rather than their volume.
This restriction is known as the holographic limit. When the contents of the buckets are dense enough, exceeding the limit triggers a collapse to a black hole. Black holes may thus signal the breakdown not only of relativity but also of quantum theory (not to mention buckets)”. 1 (Scientific American 2004)
The quote above is a good summary of why Relativity is nonsense. We have discussed why Quantum Mechanics (QM) nullifies Relativity. This was apparent during the 1920s when QM was discovered and pursued. The leader of QM was the German physicist Werner Heisenberg.
Certain Uncertainty
Heisenberg developed the Uncertainty Principle still used in the standard ‘science’ model today. It is an important part of the QM standard model.
Uncertainty Principle: When scientists view a particle, the uncertainty in identifying the position of a particle and the uncertainty in its momentum, should never be less than one-half of the reduced Planck constant: Δx Δp ≥ℏ2 where:
· Δx: Uncertainty in position (x being the position of the particle)
· Δp: Uncertainty in momentum
· ℏ: Reduced Planck’s constant (ℏ = h/2π)
For example, if we know ‘everything’ about where a particle, say an electron, is located (the uncertainty of its position is quite small), it does not mean that we know anything about its momentum or velocity. The opposite would also be true (we know the particle’s movement but nothing about its current location). Variations of this principle exist for energy and time.
Einstein of course disavowed and publicly criticized Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Mechanics. But Quantum Mechanics, initially depending on nothing more than statistical analysis, was having reasonable success in analyzing and predicting the effects of the subatomic world. There are issues with QM, but also definite discoveries and experimental proof. Einstein’s opposition was a losing battle which only highlights the philosophical and temperamental deficiencies of Relativists.
QM and open issues
Einstein was not completely wrong in arguing that QM was unsatisfactory at explaining the physical world of matter. But he never identified nor understood why QM had issues. His objection to QM was not based on science, but his ego.
If QM - or any aspect of QM - is correct, Einstein and his theories are rubbished.
There is no ‘scientific method’ in Einstein’s disparagement of QM. He never resorts to experimentation to prove a theory. His objections are merely metaphysical and defensive. There are however, some problems with QM.
There might be issues using Planck’s constant expressed as a fraction or a ratio of two integers. This constant is an ‘irrational number’ (an imprecise number with endless decimal points). The excuse given is rather tautological, namely that the constant expresses a law of nature which cannot be proven more accurately.
Bohr’s electron model may work with hydrogen with its one atom (which the early quantum enthusiasts focused on), but it does not work with atoms that have more than 1 electron (there is no proof that electrons orbit the nucleus in an orderly, Copernican manner as Bohr proposed).
1927, Paul Dirac tried to unify Quantum Mechanics with Special Relativity by proposing an equation which in mathematical terms only, achieves the relativistic description of the wavefunction of an electron that Schrödinger failed to obtain.
However, Dirac’s unification theory is unused, unproven mechanically, and was later replaced by Quantum Field Theory. Dirac in his writings was quite ironically, a steady critic of QM.
Beginning in 1927, Quantum Mechanics was applied to entire fields of particles, not just single particles. This is called Quantum Electro-Dynamics or QED. Dirac, Jordan and R. Feynman in 1940s were prominent. It attempts, but fails to explain, a quantum theory of electrons and positrons, within the electromagnetic field.
The future state of a system can be described by QED, but none of the mathematics or models can describe future states in a deterministic way as they claim. It is probabilistic theory and often wrong.
An object can never be in 2 states at once. You can’t be dead and alive. You can’t be here or there (unless you are bilocating which is a super-natural phenomenon outside of science). Schrödinger knew this and was making the simple point through the famous ‘Schrödinger cat’ thought experiment, that unless there is another variable involved (magic or supernaturality), being in 2 states is impossible. Yet QM has taken this and run with it all the way to QED and String Theory.
However, QED (quantum electrodynamic theory) has produced some concrete benefits. Particle accelerators and the breakdown of constituent matter for example. Atomic clocks of incredible accuracy. Understanding the emission of electron energy and being able to harvest that technologically. Most importantly the world of aether materiality including plancktons, neutrinos, energy, radiation and gravitation validate parts of QM or QED and invalidate Relativity.
If was one was Solomon with a weight scale, weighing the merits of QM versus Relativity, and if you as Solomon put the weight of QM evidence on the left scale and Relativity on the right, the left scale is touching the table and Relativity is hoisted in the air.
Einstein and unified models
From about 1930 onwards Einstein spent the rest of his career trying to meld General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics, without any success (no one has ever come close). In fact, his post-Relativity career was virtually fruitless. This failure suggests that one or both of the Relativity theories were wrong.
The panegyrics of the little philosopher engaged in ‘research’ post 1930 to save the world is so much drivel and propaganda. Even Einstein’s contribution to the American nuclear bomb program was minimal and tangential. Einstein spent his time – paid by various institutions – trying to salvage his theories. Einstein was focused on Einstein, nothing else.
Einstein had to align QM with his ontological philosophy of Relativity, or he knew Relativity was doomed. One of the direct threats posed by Quantum Mechanics was that it would invalidate the foundation of General Relativity namely the fraud of ‘space-time’, which Einstein ‘borrowed’ from the Hungarian physicist Palagyi and his own maths teacher Minkowski. QM denies space-time integration thereby overthrowing Relativity.
String physicist Brian Greene writes:
“Bell’s reasoning and Aspect’s experiments show that the kind of universe Einstein envisioned may exist in the mind, but not in reality. Einstein’s was a universe in which what you do right here has immediate relevance only for things that are also right here. Physics, in his view, was purely local. But we now see that the data rule out this kind of thinking; the data rule out this kind of universe”.2
String theory was an attempt to bridge QM with Relativity and ended up in confusion and absurdity, along with 10 dimensions. Though well-funded for some 30 years string-theory is just a failed attempt and explains very little about the micro-world. At least Greene and the string theorists are honest enough to criticize Relativity and why it is irrelevant.
God playing dice
Dating back to the 1920s Einstein was in a quandary and panic. He knew very well that his Relativity theory did not explain reality. Hundreds of scientists were on the attack and these incursions had started before World War I (a future post on this). This inner turmoil is revealed in his invocation of God or ‘The Old One’, reflected in his famous quote: ‘God does not play dice with the world’, which he wrote to fellow German physicist Max Born on December 12, 1926. What did he mean by this? His letter in part:
“Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.”
In Einstein’s view the ‘Uncertainty Principle’ and QM meant that at the micro-level, there was particle ‘chaos’. God was thereby at the craps table of the universe, tossing dice, playing games of chance. The quantized quantum world was not neat, ordered, or structured. Hypocritically, neither is Relativity’s fantasy world. Einstein was obviously confused. He criticised the theories and validated outcomes from QM on the basis that there was no overarching ‘model’ of theoretical physics to order QM.
Relativity has no unified theory, and is by definition, a process of chaos and interpretation. Many ‘Relativities’ exist.
As Einstein confessed to James Franck: “I can, if the worst comes to the worst, still realize that the Good Lord may have created a world in which there are no natural laws. In short a chaos. But that there should be statistical laws with definite solutions, i.e., laws which compel the Good Lord to throw dice in each individual case, I find highly disagreeable.”‘3
Einstotle’s confusion
Einstein believed that ‘natural laws’ around motion, time and gravitation could vary by ‘reference frame’, or by the context in which each object is found. This is philosophically absurd. An example is the spinning merry go around with centripetal force. Einstein argued that the universe might also be rotating around the merry go round with centrifugal force. One would more logically argue that God would create natural laws in an absolute reference frame, in which all activities transpire. This is not what Relativity proposes.
QM supports an aether and an absolute reference model. QM posits different states for a particle and even bilocation or different locations but all within an absolute frame. Particles such as positrons are created by the interaction of electrons and protons in the aether creating and annihilating matter. Einstein could never accept the creation of matter at the micro-level and certainly wanted nothing to do with an active material-rich aether which would negate his theories.
It appears that Einstein was searching for order and structure within his own self-created fantasy world of Relativity, where there is no time, no truth, no absolutes, no reality per-se and no logic. To the author these are the actions of someone who is not entirely sane. Everything in physics pace Einstein’s ontological metaphysics is ‘relative’.
Doubtful Heisenberg
Heisenberg was very unimpressed by Einstein’s appeal to God or his objection to the unstructured interactions of particles in the micro-world. Heisenberg knew that the chaos of modern physics was directly attributable to the little philosopher’s arcane philosophies and maths. At the Solvay conference in 1927, Heisenberg confronted Einstein with his make-believe world:
Heisenberg: “We cannot observe electron orbits inside the atom.…Since a good theory must be based on observable magnitudes, I thought it more fitting to restrict myself to these, treating them, as it were, as representatives of the electron orbits.”
Einstein: “But you don’t seriously believe that none but observable magnitudes must go into physical theory?”
Heisenberg: “Isn’t that precisely what you have done with relativity?”
Einstein: “Possibly I did use this kind of reasoning, but it is nonsense all the same.…In reality the very opposite happens. It is the theory which decides what we can observe.” 4
What sentient modern would say what Einstein said? Theory decides what I can see? This is not an intelligent statement. It comes from a very confused, not entirely sane philosopher, not a scientist.
Brutalised by Bohr
At the 1927 Solvay Conference, Neil Bohr of the electron model and Einstein went head-to-head, with Bohr excoriating the mathematical untruths of Relativity and why Relativity had nothing to say about electrons or particles in the quantum world. Heisenberg presented QM and challenged Einstein to accept that QM’s theory and observations, which were confirmed by experimentation, obviated much of Relativity. Einstein of course could not accept any of it.
As given above not all QM declarations are valid. There are plenty of problems with QM and string theory. Every theory has its issues. No theory, even based on observations, is immune from criticism. Newton’s theorems are a case in point.
Yet, QM does offer both theoretical and observational evidence which can explain some aspects of the micro-world. These proofs do not comport with Relativity. Yet Einstein simply refused to look at any of the facts or evidence which could validate QM.
This was his pattern. Deny, evade, criticise, misdirect and move on.
Hundreds of thousands of light experiments had proven the aether and found an inconstant speed of light. These were ignored and deliberately misinterpreted by Einstotle.
Other explanations for Mercury’s perihelion existed which were simpler and not relativistic – also ignored (in fact Einstein’s relativistic explanation plagiarised the Newtonian explanation by Gerber from 1887).
Einstein’s completely incorrect estimations for deflections of stellar locations near the Sun in 1913 and 1919 – ignored.
His Nobel prize given in 1921 for his photon-electron experimentation and theory (photons as particles), was disproven in 1916 by Robert Millikan, yet that disproof was also ignored (online, AI, textbook, Relativity-apologia claim the opposite of course!).RM
Relativity was just a joke
Even at Solvay surrounded by his peers he was quite incapable of viewing contrary evidence. As one physicist and commentator wrote:
“So with Einstein. . At times he was wryly humorous about his inability to accept the new world which his colleagues had created. Philipp Frank visited him in Berlin, apparently in 1932, and they began to talk of the new physics. Then, says Frank, ‘Einstein said, partly as a joke, something like this: “A new fashion has now arisen in physics. By means of ingeniously formulated theoretical experiments it is proved that certain physical magnitudes cannot be measured, or, to put it more precisely, that according to accepted natural laws the investigated bodies behave in such a way as to baffle all attempts at measurement. From this the conclusion is drawn that it is completely meaningless to retain these magnitudes in the language of physics. To speak about them is pure metaphysics.’”5
Talk about a lack of self-awareness. Einstotle the aphoristic metaphysician, whose circular maths created a 4-dimensional fantasy word, accusing the rather detailed experimental output of QM as ‘pure metaphysics’. This is not the statement of a scientist but of an angry philosopher. Again, Einstein performed precisely zero experiments to prove his Relativity theories.
“And when Frank pointed out to Einstein that he had invented the fashion in 1905 (meaning no experiments, just theories and ideas), Einstein answered: ‘A good joke should not be repeated too often.’ More cogently, he explained to Infeld – the Pole who had visited him in Berlin and who was later to join him in the United States – ‘Yes, I may have started it, but I regarded these ideas as temporary, I never thought that others would take them so much more seriously than I did.”6
What a bizarre character. Einstotle admits that Relativity was conjured as a philosophy if not a joke, and was surprised by how earnestly various disciples picked up his word salads and ingested them as truth and gospel!
Einstein thus deflects blame from his incoherent incompetence to others. In fact, it is factual to state that Einstein began his metaphysics and left others to struggle with mathematical and theoretical proofs. ‘Relativity’ was never extended nor ‘proven’ by Einstotle, nor anyone else for that matter.
Bottom Line
We can safely say that almost all the absurdities of modern physics and cosmology have their root in the ‘fantastic’ interpretations Einstein gave to those thousands of experiments which detected no motion of this planet but found a positive fringe result indicating the existence of the aether. Einstein did not invent ‘Relativity’, ideas about relative motion can be found in the school of Chartres in the 12th century. Even the classical physics of Newton contains relativistic equations. But Einstein did develop a version of Relativity that tried to ‘save the phenomena’ for heliocentricity.
By incorrectly interpreting the real conclusions from Michelson-Morley’s 1887 light interferometer experiment, Einstotle concocted outlandish ideas not premised on actual engineering or experimentation but based on poor metaphysics and philosophy. Arcane tensor calculus maths – tautological, incorrect – attempted to provide a cloak of ‘science’ to these ideas. This led to the fantasy world criticized at Solvay in 1927. Almost all of the other scientists at Solvay in 1927 were hostile in some way to Relativity. Even those that supported it in some fashion understood it was flawed and incomplete.
In fact, by 1930 it is fair to say that most knowledgeable scientists and even philosophers were against Relativity in some manner. Relativity succeeded because a small group contrived complicated maths which appeared to explain away the failure of light experiments to find the Earth’s movement; and fraudulently resolved mercury’s perihelion and solar light aberration. These ‘successes’ convinced the media that Relativity was ‘science’ and the money and funding soon followed.
Einstein always had a very limited and largely plagiarized view of both physics and cosmology. Relativity is an admixture of maths, philosophy and theoretical physics. It can therefore be divided up in many ways to satisfy at least mathematically, or metaphysically, a problem or observation. The 3 domains can participate and interpret ‘Relativity’ as they see fit, appealing to their own domain’s authority.
This is why so many ‘Relativity’s’ exist. As observed at Solvay back in 1927, there is not one single unified ‘Relativity’ theorem which explains observational evidence. Yet the little philosopher Einstein spent some 25 years looking to marry the disunified components of ‘Relativity’ with Quantum Mechanics. Bizarre.
Relativity explains nothing because it means nothing. Logically, if I say everything is ‘relative’ and there is no objective truth or meaning, this would apply to Einstotle’s own theories.
All hail.
(nb; future posts will elaborate on incoherent tensor maths of the Einstotle and why they are fraudulent)
RM Millikan writes in the very first sentence of his 1916 paper that, “Einstein’s photoelectric equation…cannot in my judgment be looked upon at present as resting upon any sort of a satisfactory theoretical foundation,” even though “it actually represents very accurately the behavior” of photoelectricity”. Phys. Rev. 7, 355 (1916) Published March 1, 1916 Millikan’s paper on Planck’s constant shows clearly that he disagrees with Einstein’s 1905 attempt to couple photon effects with a form of quantum theory. Currently light is considered as a wave of particles. Again Einstein was wrong.
1 George Musser, “Was Einstein Right?” Scientific American, Sept. 2004, p. 89.
2 Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality, 2004, pp. 120-121.
3 Ronald Clarke,Einstein: The Life and Times. p. 414.
4 Physics and Beyond, translated by Arnold J. Pemerans, 1971, p. 63.
5 Einstein: The Life and Times. , p. 414.
6 Ibid.