fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial
  • Movie Night Gift Subscription
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

What Einstein really thought

by Bob Berman
April 1, 2016
in Columns, Nature
0
(Dominik Bartsch)
(Dominik Bartsch)

A new Einstein biography has just been released. Despite the great man’s justified celebrity, many misconceptions are repeated.

Take his ideas about religion. Some claim that Einstein believed in a personal God. Others insist that he was an atheist. But read his words, and it’s clear that he did not subscribe to a personal God (e.g., one who hears prayers), despite his famous line attacking quantum theory: “God does not play dice.” He also said, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.”

Nonetheless, it’s pretty clear that he sometimes used the word God to mean the underlying smartness of Nature. He believed that the laws of the cosmos are fashioned intelligently, not randomly or dumbly, and found it wondrous that they’re potentially fathomable to our minds.

Spiritually speaking, his most consistent conviction revolved around the issue of personal free will. Einstein disbelieved in its existence. He frequently quoted 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer – a self-proclaimed Buddhist – that “a man can do as he wills, but he cannot will as he wills.” In other words, our choices simply pop into our minds on their own. Our brain works autonomously, like the liver or kidneys. We do not control it. Einstein said that not putting stock in personal responsibility helped him forgive people.

In our control-oriented culture, Einstein’s view cannot even be called unpopular; it’s more like unheard-of. Society strongly affirms personal responsibility. Thus, biographers tend to omit this and instead stick to well-worn, deity-based religious discussions when it comes to Einstein.

His major accomplishments are often similarly misunderstood. (Charlie Chaplin told him, “They cheer me because they all understand me. They cheer you because no one understands you.”) Both his 1905 “Special” Theory of Relativity and his 1915 “General” one are breakthroughs largely because they showed that time, distance and mass have no absolute values, but change according to the observer, with the alterations dictated by environmental factors like one’s speed or the strength of the local gravity.

That a watch’s ticking of one second would take a much longer time in a different environment was huge. Einstein showed that, while light’s speed is always constant in the emptiness of space, almost nothing else is. This becomes more and more wondrously bizarre and non-intuitive the more one understands it.

Instead, most folks equate Relativity with Einstein’s most famous equation: E = mc². This too was groundbreaking, because it showed that, as we like to say in Woodstock, all is one. Matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. Any object, even a cigarette butt, is simply stored energy. His equation revealed exactly how one can convert to the other, as we famously saw on August 6, 1945 over Hiroshima.

E = mc² is easy to understand if you’re not a mathophobe. E is energy, expressed in ergs; “m” is an object’s weight in grams; “c” is the speed of light expressed in centimeters per second. Before you do anything else, you have to square this number. Now, light famously travels at a rate of 186,282.4 miles per second, which converts to 30,000,000,000.0 centimeters per second. Multiply this by itself, and you find that one gram of matter will convert to 900,000,000,000,000,000,000.0 ergs of energy. The equation can thus be written as E = m X 900,000,000,000,000,000,000.

If the object being converted weighs one gram (1/28th of an ounce), like a dollar bill or a paper clip, the energy it contains, if released, could light a 100-watt bulb for 30,000 years. The energy in a dollar bill could keep all of Woodstock’s lights burning for a year.

Join the family! Grab a free month of HV1 from the folks who have brought you substantive local news since 1972. We made it 50 years thanks to support from readers like you. Help us keep real journalism alive.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher
Previous Post

What happens if voters nix school budget

Next Post

Highland’s school budget passes; Miller and Gilmore win BOE seats

Bob Berman

Bob Berman, Ulster Publishing’s Night Sky columnist since 1974, is the world’s most widely read astronomer. Since the mid-1990s, his celebrated "Strange Universe" feature has appeared monthly in Astronomy magazine, the largest circulation periodical on the subject. Berman is also the long-time astronomy editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. He was Discover magazine’s monthly columnist from 1989-2006. He has authored more than a thousand published mass-market articles and been a guest on such TV shows as Today and Late Night with David Letterman. Berman is director of two Ulster County observatories and the Storm King Observatory at Cornwall. He was adjunct professor of astronomy and physics at Marymount college from 1995-2000.

Related Posts

Planet alignment? Not since Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds has the public been so mislead
Columns

Planet alignment? Not since Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds has the public been so mislead

March 31, 2023
Venus gets ready to dominate the evening sky
Columns

Venus gets ready to dominate the evening sky

March 24, 2023
Program to highlight new discoveries in the Bluestone Wild Forest
Nature

Program to highlight new discoveries in the Bluestone Wild Forest

March 23, 2023
Understanding gravity’s relentless and crushing pursuit
Columns

Understanding gravity’s relentless and crushing pursuit

March 17, 2023
As we March toward spring, the days slowly but noticeably get longer
Columns

As we March toward spring, the days slowly but noticeably get longer

March 9, 2023
What’s your celestial IQ?
Columns

What’s your celestial IQ?

March 3, 2023
Next Post

Highland's school budget passes; Miller and Gilmore win BOE seats

Trending News

  • After months of speculation, Uptown Kingston’s Market Basket reopens for business 1.7k views
  • Students sent to hospital after Rosendale crash involving school bus 1.3k views
  • School “swatting” strikes Kingston High as police issue statewide advisory 1.3k views
  • Stony Run deal passes, not everyone is celebrating 1k views
  • New Paltz Planning Board considers proposal for feline-themed café 637 views
  • Benefit concert for beloved Woodstock musician known for giving back to community 562 views

Weather

Kingston
◉
41°
Cloudy
6:38 am7:21 pm EDT
Feels like: 41°F
Wind: 0mph NW
Humidity: 85%
Pressure: 29.82"Hg
UV index: 0
SunMonTue
46/27°F
59/43°F
61/45°F
Weather forecast Kingston, New York ▸

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial
  • Movie Night Gift Subscription

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In
  • Free HV1 Trial

© 2022 Ulster Publishing