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    Sidelights on Relativity (Illustrated Edition)
    Sidelights on Relativity (Illustrated Edition)
    Sidelights on Relativity (Illustrated Edition)
    Ebook56 pages26 minutes

    Sidelights on Relativity (Illustrated Edition)

    By Albert Einstein

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    About this ebook

    Two unabridged addresses summarizing aspects of Einstein's Special and General Theories of Relativity comprise this succinct volume. The first, Ether and Relativity, was delivered in 1920 and examines the properties demanded of the ether of space by the theory of relativity. Geometry and Experience, delivered the following year, describes the limits within which the Euclidean system can be held to be approximately true in relation to the concept of a finite universe. Written clearly and concisely, these lectures are a fascinating read for both scientist and layman. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateJan 3, 2013
    ISBN9781447483298
    Sidelights on Relativity (Illustrated Edition)
    Author

    Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein was a German mathematician and physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. His work also had a major impact on the development of atomic energy. In his later years, Einstein focused on unified field theory.

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      This little book, Sidelights on Relativity, presents two lectures given by Einstein. The first, concerns the relation between the ether concept and general relativity. Einstein concludes that the concept of empty space in general relativity is an existing entity, which may have properties (in analogy to the ether), but these properties are not mechanical or material in any sense, neither solid nor fluid. The second lecture, Geometry and Experience, gives a perfect example of the kind of property that empty space (modern version of the ether) may have. This property is that of 'curvature' which is the central concept of general relativity theory. He relates this concept to the geometrical measurements which are actually made in practice, in the sense of geometry as a physical science. He also gives some hints which may help the reader to visualize higher dimensional spaces. In addition, this lecture includes Einstein's often quoted remark "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality". For Newton, the space between particles was absolutely empty, consisting of exactly nothing. In the 19th century some physicists considered the possibility that space could be filled with a medium (the ether) with material properties (solid or liquid) which could support vibrations (oscillations of motion). Einstein rejected both of these views and introduced the idea of a space which could have non-material properties but not material properties. This key concept has had an influence in both relativity theories and quantum theories, but its full implication has not yet been assimilated by the scientific culture. Thus this book may be of greater significance than the title suggests. This book is reminiscent of the book Essays in Science (Philosophical Library, 1930's) which is a collection of writings by Einstein on various scientific subjects. That book is abstracted from a still earlier work Mein Weltbild which gives Einstein's views on many topics including social issues.

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    Sidelights on Relativity (Illustrated Edition) - Albert Einstein

    PUBLICATIONS

    ETHER AND THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY

    An Address delivered on May 5th, 1920, in the University of Leyden

    ETHER AND THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY

    HOW does it come about that alongside of the idea of ponderable matter, which is derived by abstraction from everyday life, the physicists set the idea of the existence of another kind of matter, the ether? The explanation is probably to be sought in those phenomena which have given rise to the theory of action at a distance, and in the properties of light which have led to the undulatory theory. Let us devote a little while to the consideration of these two subjects.

    Outside of physics we know nothing of action at a distance. When we try to connect cause and effect in the experiences which natural objects afford us, it seems at first as if there were no other mutual actions than those of immediate contact, e.g. the communication of motion by impact, push and pull, heating or inducing combustion by means of a flame, etc. It is true that even in everyday experience weight, which is in a sense action at a distance, plays a very important part. But since in daily experience the weight of bodies meets us as something constant, something not linked to any cause which is variable in time or place, we do not in everyday life speculate as to the cause of gravity, and therefore do not become conscious of its character as action at a distance. It was Newton’s theory of gravitation that first assigned a cause for gravity by interpreting it as action at a distance, proceeding from masses. Newton’s theory is probably the greatest stride ever made in the effort towards the causal nexus of natural phenomena. And yet this theory evoked a lively sense of discomfort among Newton’s contemporaries, because it seemed to be in conflict with the principle springing from the rest of experience, that there can be reciprocal action only through contact, and not through immediate action at a distance.

    It is only with reluctance that man’s desire for knowledge endures a dualism of this kind. How was unity to be preserved in his comprehension of the forces of nature? Either by trying to look upon contact forces as being themselves distant forces which admittedly are observable only at a very small distance—and this was the road which Newton’s followers, who were entirely under the spell of his doctrine, mostly preferred to take; or by assuming that the Newtonian action at a distance is only apparently immediate action at a distance, but in truth is conveyed by a medium permeating space, whether by movements or by elastic deformation of this medium. Thus the endeavour toward a unified view of the nature of forces leads to the hypothesis of an ether. This hypothesis, to be sure, did not at first bring with it any advance in the theory of gravitation or in physics generally, so that it became customary to treat Newton’s law of force as an axiom not further reducible. But the ether hypothesis was bound always to play some part in physical science, even if at first only a latent part.

    When in the first half of the nineteenth century the far-reaching similarity was revealed which subsists between the properties of light and those of elastic waves in ponderable bodies, the ether hypothesis found fresh support. It appeared beyond question that light must be interpreted as a vibratory process in an elastic, inert medium filling up universal space. It also seemed to be a necessary consequence of the fact that light is capable of polarisation that this medium, the ether, must be of the nature of a solid body, because transverse waves are not possible in a fluid, but only in a solid. Thus the physicists were bound to arrive at the theory of the quasi-rigid luminiferous ether, the

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