Related papers: Einstein's Real "Biggest Blunder"
The objective of this paper is not simply to present an historical overview of Einstein's cosmological considerations, but to discuss the central role they played in shaping the paradigm of relativistic cosmology. This, we'll show, was a…
Einstein in 1905, his year of miracles, wrote five papers which mark a watershed between classical physics and modern physics. They dealt with problem of reality of atoms, theory of special relativity which overthrew Newtonian conceptions…
Albert Einstein visited Spain only once, precisely one hundred years ago. The circumstances, of a very different kind, of this visit will be explained here. In special, some important events happened to Einstein during that period, which,…
A historical account of Einstein's 'Fernparallelismus' approach towards a unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism is given. In this theory, a space-time characterized by a curvature-free connection in conjunction with a…
Soon after he proposed three classic observational tests for the general theory of relativity, Einstein realised that a consistent description of the universe as a whole provided another important challenge for the theory. In this essay, we…
The cosmological constant (CC) term in Einstein's equations, Lambda, was first associated to the idea of vacuum energy density. Notwithstanding, it is well-known that there is a huge, in fact appalling, discrepancy between the theoretical…
The mantra about gravitation as curvature is a misnomer. The curvature tensor for a standard of rest does not describe acceleration in a gravitational field but the \underline{gradient} of the acceleration (e.g. geodesic deviation). The…
Einstein's theory of General Relativity is the benchmark example for empirical success and mathematical elegance in theoretical physics. However, in spite of being the most successfully tested theory in physics, there are strong theoretical…
The historical and conceptual foundations of General Relativity are revisited, putting the main focus on the physical meaning of the invariant ds, the Equivalence Principle, and the precise interpretation of spacetime geometry. It is argued…
We study influence of gravitational field on the mass-energy equivalence relation by incorporating gravitation in the physical situation considered by Einstein (Ann. Physik, 17, 1905, English translation in ref. [1]) for his first…
There is a myth that Einstein's discovery of general relativity was due to his following beautiful mathematics to discover new insights about nature. I argue that this is an incorrect reading of the history and that what Einstein did was to…
This paper discusses Einstein's methodology. 1. Einstein characterized his work as a theory of principle and reasoned that beyond kinematics, the 1905 heuristic relativity principle could offer new connections between non-kinematical…
It is a little known fact that while he was developing his theory of general relativity, Einstein's initial idea was a variable speed of light theory. Indeed space-time curvature can be mimicked by a speed of light $c(r)$ that depends on…
In 1945 Einstein concluded that [1]: 'The present theory of relativity is based on a division of physical reality into a metric field (gravitation) on the one hand, and into an electromagnetic field and matter on the other hand. In reality…
This year marks the hundredth anniversary of Einstein's 1915 landmark paper "Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation" in which the field equations of general relativity were correctly formulated for the first time, thus rendering general…
I discuss Albert Einstein's 1916 General Theory of Relativity. I show that in Einstein's 1916 review paper, "the Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity", he derived his November 25, 1915 field equations with an additional term on…
The content of Einstein's theory of gravitation is encoded in the properties of the solutions to his field equations. There has been obtained a wealth of information about these solutions in the ninety years the theory has been around. It…
In 1919 Einstein tried to solve the problem of the structure of matter by assuming that the elementary particles are held together solely by gravitational forces. In addition, Einstein also assumed the presence inside matter of…
In this paper I describe the genesis of Einstein's early work on the problem of motion in general relativity (GR): the question of whether the motion of matter subject to gravity can be derived directly from the Einstein field equations. In…
We review here the main contributions of Einstein to the quantum theory. To put them in perspective we first give an account of Physics as it was before him. It is followed by a brief account of the problem of black body radiation which…