Related papers: Lessons from Einstein's 1915 discovery of general …
We study the pages in Albert Einstein's 1916 landmark paper in the Annalen der Physik where he derived his field equations for gravity. Einstein made two heuristic and physically insightful steps. The first was to obtain the field equations…
We suggest that not only quanta may have played a role in Einstein's ideas on relativity, but that they themselves may be related to the dynamical and relativistic behaviour of the electromagnetic field exhibited in a Poincar\'e's 1900…
In this paper, we examine the relationship between general relativity and the theory of Einstein algebras. We show that according to a formal criterion for theoretical equivalence recently proposed by Halvorson (2012, 2015) and Weatherall…
The observed matter in the universe accounts for just 5 percent of the observed gravity. A possible explanation is that Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity fail where gravity is either weak or enhanced. The modified theory of…
Einstein identified singularities in spacetimes, such as at the Schwarzschild radius, where later relativists only find a coordinate system assigning multiple values to a single spacetime event. These differing judgments derive from…
There is general agreement that the universe began with an "explosion" of matter and energy at a "singularity", the "Big Bang". This paper analyses the mechanics of that beginning and two alternative theories related to it: - The…
In this contribution I discuss a peak in Einstein's endeavor to extract as much information as possible about the nature of radiation from the Planck distribution is his paper "On the Quantum Theory of Radiation" of 1916. This is one of the…
A fascinating and deep question about nature is what one would see if one could probe space and time at smaller and smaller distances. Already the 19th-century founders of modern geometry contemplated the possibility that a piece of empty…
While Special and General Relativity are well known by a very large number of people, Einstein's religious convinctions are almost ignored. The paper focuses on what was his view about immortality. Einstein believed in Spinoza's view of God…
Einstein's argument on the relativity of simultaneity itself is the first result of the special theory of relativity. The nature of this result is explored, and implications of this result for the structure and functioning of the physical…
Einstein's revolutionary light quantum hypothesis of 1905 and his further contributions to quantum theory are reviewed.
Although implicit in the discovery of the Schwarzschild solution 40 years earlier, the issues raised by the theory of what are now known as black holes were so unsettling to physicists of Einstein's generation that the subject remained in a…
In this work, Einstein's view of geometry as physical geometry is taken into account in the analysis of diverse issues related to the notions of inertial motion and inertial reference frame. Einstein's physical geometry enables a…
Einstein's relativity theory appears to be very accurate, but at times equally puzzling. On the one hand, electromagnetic radiation must have zero rest mass in order to propagate at the speed of light, but on the other hand, since it…
Einstein is considered by many as the father of quantum physics in some sense. Yet there is an unshakable view that he was wrong on quantum physics. Although it may be a subject of considerable debate, the core of his allegedly wrong…
For several decades there has been no breakthrough in fundamental physics as revolutionary as relativity and quantum physics despite the amazing advancement of applied physics and technology. By discussing several examples of what physics…
This article is a partly pedagogical, partly historical and partly technical review of special relativity and its experimental foundations, in honor of the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis.
One of the most discussed peculiarities of Einstein's theory of relativity is the twin paradox, the fact that the time between two events in space-time appears to depend on the path between these events. We show that this time discrepancy…
An alternative approach to Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) is reviewed, which is motivated by a range of serious theoretical issues inflicting the theory, such as the cosmological constant problem, presence of non-Machian…
The space-time of modern physics is tailored on light. We rigorously construct the basic entities needed by kinematics: geometry of the physical space and time, using as tool electromagnetic waves, and particularly light-rays. After such a…