By the time 1967 had rolled around, general relativity had been relegated to mathematics departments… in most people’s minds, it bore no relation to physics. And that was mostly because experiments to prove it were so hard to do – all these effects that Einstein’s theory had predicted were infinitesimally small.
Einstein wrestled with a problem back before we even knew the universe was expanding, and he was looking for a way to keep the universe from collapsing. And so he discovered, in his theory of gravity, something like this dark energy – he called it a cosmological constant – could play this role, pushing things away.
What Einstein was able to do was – to use a cliche – think out of the box.
Conventionally, one looks at history as something of the past. But after Einstein, who knows what is in the past and what is in the present?
Thomas Pynchon looks exactly like Thomas Pynchon should look. He is tall, he wears lumberjack shirts and blue jeans. He has Albert Einstein white hair and Bugs Bunny front teeth.
So, okay, I’m not a genius. Vincent Van Gogh and Albert Einstein were geniuses.
Einstein’s results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge.
I should have been a son of Einstein.
I was never top of the class at school, but my classmates must have seen potential in me, because my nickname was ‘Einstein.’
My fat cells have a memory like Einstein! I’m proof that surgery is not a magic potion. There are many ways to sabotage it.
I ended up being a businessman unwittingly. I wanted to be an academic; I wanted to be like Einstein.
During this time I had the singular good fortune of being able to discuss the problem constantly with Einstein. Some experiments done at Einstein’s suggestion yielded no decisively new result.
In Einstein’s general relativity the structure of space can change but not its topology. Topology is the property of something that doesn’t change when you bend it or stretch it as long as you don’t break anything.
It was Einstein’s dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein’s day hadn’t made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal.
And it really began with Einstein. We attended his lectures. Now the theory of relativity remained – and still remains – only a theory. It has not been proven. But it suggested a completely different picture of the physical world.
Bob Dylan has and Einstein had their own way of perceiving the universe and translating it for us.
You know the Einstein waves can be thought of as a distortion of space and time. But the way we see it, we see it as a distortion of space. And space is enormously stiff. You can’t squish it; you can’t change its dimensions so easily.
The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
I had a difficult time getting my arms around Einstein’s work, even when I was a physics major at one of the top universities in India.
You don’t have to be the next Einstein. You can just be you, and that’s more than good enough.
There are people who say, ‘Oh this guy is quite thick.’ I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don’t mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, ‘No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.’
I’m not exactly an Einstein, so I compensate by being more focused.
They say Einstein died while he was still trying to figure out gravity. I think I’m going to die still trying to figure out some of the things about Blink.
We’re going to be seeing things from regions in the universe where Einstein is the whole story. Newton you can forget about.
‘Moonwalking with Einstein’ refers to a memory device I used when I memorized a deck of playing cards at the U.S. Memory Championship. When I competed in 2006, I set a new U.S. record by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute and 40 seconds. That record has since fallen.
What was done is measure directly, with exquisitely sensitive instruments, gravitational waves predicted about 100 years ago by Albert Einstein. These waves are a new way to study the universe and are expected to have significant impact on astronomy and astrophysics in the years ahead.
The hero of the ‘Peanuts’ is Charlie Brown. I play the dog that sleeps on the top of his dog box who’s a philosopher. I’m drawn to that. So I’m drawn to Barbossa as I’m drawn to Einstein, because they are outsiders, and I suppose, as a character actor, that’s the turf that you’re locked into, in a way.
I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for.
The point is that the arts are important enough to have influenced the greatest minds and talents we know. Albert Einstein said that if he were not a physicist, he would probably be a musician.
The great Jewish scientists and philosophers of the last few generations – Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, Robert Oppenheimer and others – were natives of Europe and America.
My sense of religion is Einstein’s sense of relativity. I don’t believe in God. I believe that energy never dies. So the possibility exists that you might be breathing in some other form of Moses or Buddha or Muhammad or Bobby Kennedy or Roosevelt or Martin Luther King or Jesus.
I guess I was the class clown – with a name like Albert Einstein, you don’t hide in the back. I’d read the school bulletin to the class, and I’d add activities and make stuff up. It was good, a good 10 minutes every morning.
A healthy body means a healthy mind. You get your heart rate up, and you get the blood flowing through your body to your brain. Look at Albert Einstein. He rode a bicycle. He was also an early student of Jazzercise. You never saw Einstein lift his shirt, but he had a six-pack under there.
If Shaw and Einstein couldn’t beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.
All of this technology wasn’t available to Einstein. I bet he would’ve invented LIGO.
Once Ptolemy and Plato, yesterday Newton, today Einstein, and tomorrow new faiths, new beliefs, and new dimensions.
You can’t exactly bake a man to your specifications. Most of all, one shouldn’t alienate a candidate. A hybrid of Einstein, Tarzan and Inge Meysel doesn’t exist. Besides, the images of politicians in the media aren’t always accurate. I’ve had my share of experiences in that regard.
Einstein had looked at the numbers and dimensions that went into his equations for gravitational waves and said, essentially, ‘This is so tiny that it will never have any influence on anything, and nobody can measure it.’ And when you think about the times and the technology in 1916, he was probably right.
I was never top of the class at school, but my classmates must have seen potential in me, because my nickname was Einstein.
We don’t have to look back at da Vinci’s work and Albert Einstein’s work and Mozart’s work. We’re actually living in the time period that David Lynch is creating his art. We’re so lucky.
There was a long history of speculation that in quantum gravity, unlike Einstein’s classical theory, it might be possible for the topology of spacetime to change.
Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
One day when I was 8 years old, everyone was talking in hushed tones about a great scientist that had just died. His name was Albert Einstein.
One of the things I sort of dreamt about awhile ago is that if Einstein were still alive, it would be absolutely wonderful to go to him and tell him about the discovery, and he would have been very pleased, I’m sure of that.
When I get bored, or get stuck on an equation, I like to go ice skating, but it makes you forget your problem. Then you can tackle the problem with a fresh new insight. Einstein liked to play the violin to relax. Every physicist likes to have a past time. Mine is ice skating.
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