Related papers: Einstein's Hidden Scaffolding, with a Glance at Po…
We present a first English translation and analysis of a little-known review of relativistic cosmology written by Albert Einstein in late 1932. The article, which was published in 1933 in a book of Einstein papers translated into French,…
In his Autobiographical Notes, Einstein mentioned that on his road to the final theory of general relativity it was a major difficulty to accustom himself to the idea that coordinates need not possess an immediate physical meaning in terms…
In this article, we argue that the theory of special relativity, as formulated by Einstein, is a philosophical rather than a scientific theory. What is scientific and experimentally supported is the formalism of the relativistic mechanics…
We present a historical review of Einstein's 1917 paper 'Cosmological Considerations in the General Theory of Relativity' to mark the centenary of a key work that set the foundations of modern cosmology. We find that the paper followed as a…
At the 1927 Solvay conference, Einstein presented a thought experiment intended to demonstrate the incompleteness of the quantum mechanical description of reality. In the following years, the thought experiment was picked up and modified by…
This paper constitutes a background to the paper 'Quantum mechanics as "space-time statistical mechanics"?', arXiv:quant-ph/0501133, presented previously by the author. But it is also a free-standing and self-contained paper. The purpose of…
Einstein's 1935 critique of quantum mechanics is often associated with the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) argument, yet his private correspondence from that year reveals a more exact conceptual structure guiding his claim that the…
This remodeled form of Einstein's relativity theories retains and incorporates only experimentally proven principles. It is based on a generalized law for spinning and rotational motions, which is in fact the conservation law of momentum…
An apparent paradox in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, known as a Thomas precession rotation in atomic physics, has been verified experimentally in a number of ways. However, somewhat surprisingly, it has not yet been demonstrated…
This work deals with the questions of absolute space and relativity. In particular, an alternative derivation of the effects described by special relativity is provided, which is based on a description that assumes a privileged reference…
Einstein was in many ways like a detective on a mystery trail, though in his case he was on the trail of nature's mysteries and not some murder mystery! And like all good detectives he had a style. It consisted of taking facts that he knew…
Many of the technical complications associated with the general theory of relativity ultimately stem from the nonlinearity of Einstein's equation. It is shown here that an appropriate choice of dynamical variables may be used to eliminate…
Section 7 of Einstein's 1905 electrodynamics paper gives frequency-shift and aberration formulae that together describe an elongated ellipsoidal wavefront. A Lorentz contraction of this ellipsoid solves most (but not all) of the associated…
This work analyzes the difficulties in learning and teaching Einstein's theory of special relativity. An extensive bibliographic review has been performed, considering articles published in the most relevant journals on science education,…
We demonstrate that Einstein's general relativity theory arises as a special case in the framework of the Poincar\'e gauge theory of gravity under the assumption of a suitable nonminimal coupling of matter to the Riemann-Cartan geometry of…
The expressions of momentum and energy of a particle in special relativity are often derived in a quite unconvincing manner in elementary text, by resorting either to electrodynamic or quantum considerations, or via the introduction of the…
Einstein based his special theory of relativity on two postulates: (a) physical laws appear the same in all inertial frames, and (b) the speed of light in vacuum is an observer-independent constant. However, it is already known that the…
This volume covers one of the most thrilling two-year periods in twentieth-century physics, as matrix mechanics - developed chiefly by W. Heisenberg, M. Born, and P. Jordan - and wave mechanics - developed by E. Schr\"odinger - supplanted…
Einstein's 1905 derivation of E = mc^2 has been criticized for being circular. Although such criticisms have been challenged it is certainly true that the reasoning in Einstein's original derivation is not at all obvious. Einstein's…
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…