English
Related papers

Related papers: Einstein's E = mc^2 mistakes

200 papers

In his 1916 ground-breaking general relativity paper Einstein had imposed a restrictive coordinate condition, his field equations were valid for coordinate systems which are unimodular. Later, Einstein published a paper on gravitational…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2016-02-15 Galina Weinstein

Einstein established the theory of general relativity and the corresponding field equation in 1915 and its vacuum solutions were obtained by Schwarzschild and Kerr for, respectively, static and rotating black holes, in 1916 and 1963,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2016-09-08 Banibrata Mukhopadhyay

On November 18, 1915 Einstein reported to the Prussian Academy that the perihelion motion of Mercury is explained by his new General Theory of Relativity: Einstein found approximate solutions to his November 11, 1915 field equations.…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2014-12-02 Galina Weinstein

That the speed of light is always c=300,000km/s relative to any observer in nonaccelerating motion is one of the foundational concepts of physics. Experimentally this was supposed to have been first revealed by the 1887 Michelson-Morley…

General Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Reginald T Cahill

Einstein's first mention of the uniformly rotating disk in print was in 1912, in his paper dealing with the static gravitational fields. After the 1912 paper, the rotating disk problem occurred in Einstein's writings only in a 1916 review…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2015-04-23 Galina Weinstein

We review in the present article the conjecture of electromagnetic mass by Lorentz. The philosophical perspectives and historical accounts of this idea are described, especially, in the light of Einstein's special relativistic formula {E =…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2007-07-31 Saibal Ray

In 1917 Einstein published his Cosmological Considerations Concerning the General Theory of Relativity. In it was the first use of the cosmological constant. Shortly thereafter Schr\"odinger presented a note providing a solution to these…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2012-11-28 Alex Harvey

Lorentz [of the Lorentz transforms and Lorentz contractions fame] contended against Einstein that there had to be a medium in which electro-magnetic waves exist and propagate, and that that would of necessity be an absolute frame of…

General Physics · Physics 2007-12-03 Roger Ellman

Between 1905 and 1907, Einstein first tried to extend the special theory of relativity in such a way so as to explain gravitational phenomena. This was the most natural and simplest path to be taken. These investigations did not fit in with…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2012-08-28 Galina Weinstein

From its very beginning, Quantum Theory developed contrary to the intentions of its creators. For Max Planck it marks the failure of a long-term research program, in which he tried to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Domenico Giulini

We review and strengthen the arguments given by Einstein to derive his first gravitational field equation for static fields and show that, although it was ultimately rejected, it follows from General Relativity (GR) for negligible pressure.…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2014-01-15 Juan Betancort-Rijo , Felipe Jimenez Ibarra

On the basis of his `Z\"urich Notebook' I shall describe a particularly fruitful phase in Einstein's struggle on the way to general relativity. These research notes are an extremely illuminating source for understanding Einstein's main…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2015-03-30 Norbert Straumann

This short exposition starts with a brief discussion of situation before the completion of special relativity (Le Verrier's discovery of the Mercury perihelion advance anomaly, Michelson-Morley experiment, E\"otv\"os experiment, Newcomb's…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2025-06-24 Wei-Tou Ni

Long before the general theory of relativity was finally formulated in 1916, arguments based entirely on Einstein's equivalence principle predicted the well known phenomenon of the gravitational red shift. Precisely the same arguments are…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2013-10-08 Petros S. Florides

In 1907 Einstein discussed with Wilhelm Wien the occurrences of superluminal velocities in dispersive and absorptive media. Einstein tried to present to Wien an expression for the group velocity in dispersive media that was based on his…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2012-03-23 Galina Weinstein

What, if any, was Einstein's biggest mistake, the one most affecting our physics today? There is a perhaps apocryphal story, recounted by George Gamow, that he counted his cosmological constant as his biggest blunder. We now know his…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2019-05-23 Gary J. Ferland

Most early twentieth century relativists --- Lorentz, Einstein, Eddington, for examples --- claimed that general relativity was merely a theory of the aether. We shall confirm this claim by deriving the Einstein equations using aether…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2015-05-19 Maurice J. Dupre , Frank J. Tipler

Einstein became world-famous on 7 November 1919, following press publication of a meeting held in London on 6 November 1919 where the results were announced of two British expeditions led by Eddington, Dyson and Davidson to measure how much…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2020-10-27 Gerard Gilmore , Gudrun Tausch-Pebody

The Einstein postulates assert an invariance of the propagation speed of light in vacuum for any observer, and which amounts to a presumed absence of any preferred frame. The postulates appear to be directly linked to relativistic effects…

General Physics · Physics 2007-08-07 Reginald T. Cahill

In a recent article [1], Mansuripur has claimed that inside the matter, conventional Lorentz Force law should be abandoned in favor of a more general expression of the electromagnetic force density such as the one discovered by A. Einstein…

General Physics · Physics 2012-11-16 Mahdy Rahman Chowdhury Mahdy