Einstein, the Electric Universe & Expatriation
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 6:17PM News came out this week that physicists at CERN, the international nuclear research facility near Geneva, found that neutrino particles sent on a 500 mile journey got there 60 billionths of a second quicker than the light speed limit allowed.
What's 60 billionths of a second here or there, you ask? Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity says that light travels at a constant speed, regardless of how fast an observer is traveling, and that nothing in the universe can go faster than it.
If these particles truly did outpace light, that would upend physics as we know it.
More importantly, from my own personal perspective, this news sent me down a dangerous and time consuming trip into YouTube, Wikipedia and the World Wide Web that consumed an entire day.
A quick google search sent me off to some basic physics websites which led me to some Wikipedia'ing and I finally ended up at a video about the electric universe.
THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE
Ever heard of the electric universe? I had heard of it in passing numerous times over the past year. Enough times, and from enough of the type of people whose opinions I trust, that it had registered somewhere in my brain to be looked into in the future.
That future came today. After spending hours tunneling through documents and information - something that would shock my grade 10 physics teacher who gave me an F - I was enthralled by this concept of an electric universe.
More than this recent discovery in Switzerland, the entire concept that the universe is electric seems to throw the entire modern concept of cosmology on its head.
Cosmology seemed to always be full of holes, literally. Even to my amateur mind. The sun is a big, nuclear fireball? Black holes that can suck in and make things disappear only to shoot them out again? Comets made of ice and dust have a glowing tail? And, still to this day, I've never heard a reasonable explanation for where petrocarbons come from... or the oceans, for that matter.
Until today. Again, this is coming from a "F" student in physics (but Albert Einstein failed his entry exam into university in Switzerland too) but this theory of an electric universe, which throws on its head almost all of modern cosmology, makes a lot of sense.
I found the following video enthralling, especially how it explains mythology from ancient civilizations.
According to this article, if the electric universe theory is true, the earth may have been a planet of Saturn at one point, when Saturn was a brown dwarf and this is where it got its water and so-called "fossil fuels".
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Of course, any cursory look into physics will have you come across Albert Einstein's name almost every other paragraph. So, that led me to the Wikipedia page on Albert Einstein and to another hour of my day being devoted to the following excellent documentary on Einstein:
The man simply has to be one of the most interesting characters of the last century. It made me wonder, where is the big hollywood movie about him? This is as interesting of a story as it gets. Genius... changes the way people view the world dramatically with his mind... pacifist...divorced his wife, married his cousin... and probably one of the most recognized faces in the world.
But, wait. Pacifist? Hollywood, and the US Government propaganda machine, doesn't like that. Over a thousand movies have been made about World War II. And the socialist movie about the thief who steals from the terrible rich to give to the lovable poor, Robin Hood, has been remade and released almost every single year since 1908 (see the full list here). But, a movie about a pacifist genius who fled from numerous countries and wars? That doesn't work so well in Hollywood.
EINSTEIN THE EXPAT
Here at The Dollar Vigilante we are big proponents of not thinking of yourself as being a citizen of a certain state but as being a citizen of the world. In that sense, Albert Einstein is one of our heroes. He was born in the Kingdom of Württemberg, part of the German empire, and then was stateless from 1896 to 1901. In the 19th century you could still actually be stateless, a most wonderful state of affairs.
He then became a citizen of Switzerland from 1901-1911, then to Austria for 2 years and then became a German citizen again from 1914-1933.
He then fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and renounced his citizenship and again became stateless. He was an outspoken war opposer throughout most of his life and ended up having to make what must have been a terrible choice. He decided that rather than the Nazis getting atomic power first, he wrote a letter to US President Roosevelt and urged him to start a program to create the atom bomb first. A chain of events that would lead to hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians being incinerated.
All the while, as he fled or expatriated from country to country, dodging world wars and being ostracized for his opposition to them, he also created a list of scientific achievements that still shape our lives to this day.
Quite an amazing story. You'd think Hollywood would want to tell this amazing tale of the peaceful scientist who tore up numerous passports and was stateless twice in his quest for peace and knowledge. If only they had the time... but it's been over a year since the last Robin Hood remake so it'll have to wait. It is much more important for the kids of today to hear the important tale of Robin Hood: The Ghosts of Sherwood 3D.
Go get 'em Robin Hood! Make sure those rich pay their fair share!
Reader Comments (9)
You did this while gold had its biggest "losing" day in history - in absolute terms.
I have no problem, with that. Why not?
I am with you. We need an Einstein movie! A much more interesting topic!
(I'm serious, there is absolutely no need to watch gold, it will do what it needs to do regardless of whether we watch it or not!)
The headlines have been interesting... "gold tanks," "gold craters," etc.
Hey, gold just pulled back a little closer (from above) to its long-term rising uptrend.
So many themes here.... No room or time to discuss them all.
Einstein can't make it in Hollywood.
Gold can't get on the "recommended list" of mainstream investment advisories - yet it is rising "faster than the speed of light."
Check out João Magueijos research about Variable Speed of Light at the Imperial College of London.
PS: This is for you, from XKCD -> http://xkcd.com/955/
Thanks for the revelation about your knowledge of finance and commerce.