The Book of Einstein of The Bible According to Einstein

The Theories and Life of Einstein

The eleventh book of Chronicles

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140                        The Bible According to Einstein

The eleventh book of Chronicles, called

Einstein

Science without religion is lame;
religion without science is blind.

– Albert Einstein         

Chapter I: Einstein’s Life and Work

And on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany, Albert Einstein, the scientific version of a prophet and a saint, was born. Now at the age of five, Albert was presented with a compass from his father. And Albert turned the compass in a circle. But the needle did not turn – the needle remained pointing to the north. And this had a profound effect on this young mind, for hitherto Albert had thought that contact was needed to make things move. And so Albert concluded that something deeply hidden had to lie behind the physics of the world. And in the case of a compass needle, that hidden, deep and mystical thing was magnetism.
     And at the age of ten, Einstein engaged in self-taught education – he read Euclid and learned the rudiments and fine points of geometry; he studied books on science and developed scientific curiosity.
     Now his father owned an electric factory in southern Germany. There, dynamos were manufactured to produce direct currents for consumption. And one day Einstein went out to tour the plant. And there, he saw moving conveyor belts, rotating wheels, turning gears and glowing bulbs. Thus he observed electricity in action and magnetism in the making. And in a tangible way did he learn what electromagnetism was about.
     And at sixteen years of age, he began to ask himself deep physics questions. For example, he asked, "What would it be like to ride a beam of light?" But at this early age, he had no answers. Thus already in his youth did he devote himself to thinking of the riddles of the Universe. And later he would devote himself to solving them.
     The year was 1905. And Einstein postulated that light consisted of particles called photons. And he proposed the theory of special relativity,143 whose basic assumption was the constancy of the speed of light when measured by any constant-moving observer. And he predicted that mass could be converted into energy and vice versa. Thus the relation between mass and energy,
E=mc2, was established. And he had the answer to the question of riding on a light beam: it could not be done, for no one can move at or faster than the speed of light.

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143 Special relativity is a generalization of Newtonian mechanics. It predicts that objects travelling near the speed of light behave quite differently from slowly moving ones. It also unifies space and time into one entity. For more on this theory, see the New Testament Book of Special Relativity.

 
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The New Testament                                       141

     It was 1916. And Einstein published the general theory of relativity, in which it was postulated that gravitation was not a mechanical force but the consequence of the curvature of spacetime created by the presence of mass. And his theory explained for the first time an irregularity in the motion of the planet Mercury, namely that the ellipse, which Mercury follows in its orbit about the Sun, should rotate with time by an extra amount equal to forty-three seconds of arc per century. And his theory predicted that light should bend around massive bodies like the Sun. And it implied the existence of gravity waves and black holes. And it predicted that light moving away from surface of the Earth should lose energy and undergo a red-shift; its wavelength should get longer.144 And this effect was called the gravitational energy red-shift. Likewise, the theory predicted that a clock near a very massive object such as a neutron star where gravity is strong, should run slower than a clock far from such a massive object where gravity is weak. And this was called the gravitational red-shift time-dilation.
     Hence in the span of just eleven years, much of the "old testament" of physics was rewritten. Thus Albert Einstein rewrote the gospels of Sir Isaac Newton. They would become books of the new testament.
     But Einstein did not embrace all the new developments of physics that were transpiring at the beginning of the twentieth century. And for example, he did not accept quantum mechanics and the probabilistic nature of the Universe,145 "I cannot believe that God plays dice with the Universe," he said.

God may not, but Nature does.

     And Einstein devoted the second half of his life in quest of a unified theory – he was searching for the Uni-Law. But the Uni-Law was too subtle even for the mind of Einstein.
     And as Einstein aged, he became more philosophical. And he became a pacifist and public figure. And one day he said, "God is subtle, but He is not malicious."

God may not be, but Nature sometimes is.

     And on April 18, 1955, did Einstein not wake up from a deep sleep. And the spirit and intelligence of Einstein escaped his body, rose up and was placed among the stars. And the ghosts of many other scientists rose with him – the fathers of electromagnetism, the discoverers of quantum theory, the physicists who had uncovered the fundamental subatomic interactions. And the ideas of Einstein and other scientific prophets were written in the textbooks and embedded in the minds of men and women.
     Somewhere it is written, "Einstein was a great scientific saint." Where it is written is between thy hands.

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144 When its wavelength is lengthened, light becomes redder. This is discussed in the fifth, sixth and eighth Books of Physics.
145 In the "quantum world," future events are not determined exactly; they proceed according to probabilities. See the New Testament Book of Quantum Mechanics.

 
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142                        The Bible According to Einstein

Chapter II: The Prophecies of Einstein

I spent my whole life trying to understand
the nature of electromagnetic light.

– Albert Einstein   

Now a few years had passed since the appearance of Einstein’s paper on gravity – it was May 29, 1919. A solar eclipse was taking place. And astronomers directed their telescopes and waited. But it was a cloudy day. And the astronomers were quite dismayed until suddenly the clouds broke open and there was light. And moments later, the sky grew dark, and stars near the Sun were visible. And the positions of the stars were measured. Now the positions were different from those when the Sun was elsewhere in the sky – starlight was being bent around the Sun. Hence through gravity, a massive object, such as the Sun, attracted light just as it attracted a body with a mass. Furthermore, the measured bending of starlight agreed with calculations from Einstein’s gravitation theory. And a prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.
     It was 1932. And Abbé Georges Lemaître proposed that the Universe began as an explosion and was still expanding. And in fact, such an expansion of the Universe was a consequence of Einstein’s gravitation theory. Now astronomers pointed their largest telescopes toward the distant galaxies and observed electromagnetic spectra.146 And the spectra of such distant galaxies were distorted in a systematic way: Lines of blue appeared as yellow, lines of yellow appeared as red and so on. And this was a velocity red shift, a Doppler effect for light. And it meant that the galaxies were speeding away from Earth and away from one another. Thus the fabric of space was indeed expanding, and the expanding space was carrying the galaxies apart. And it was as though the Universe were a big balloon and galaxies were painted dots on the surface of this hypothetical balloon. And someone or something was blowing air in it and making it inflate. And as the balloon inflated, the dots did move apart. But no one was blowing into the Universe, for the expansion of the Universe was natural: Einstein’s gravity theory had guaranteed it. Now the expansion rate was measured – in one year, five-billionth of a percent did space get stretched. The prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.

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146 Spectra are discussed in Chapter VI of the New Testament Book of Atomic Physics.

 
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The New Testament                                       143

     And the fractional rate at which the Universe expanded was assigned a name. The Hubble constant was that name. And the rate at which the Universe had expanded in the past likewise was called the Hubble constant. But the Hubble constant was not constant, for earlier the Universe expanded percentage-wise more quickly. Each time the Universe’s age has doubled, the expansion rate has dropped in half.
     Now as astronomers made more measurements of distances and speeds of galaxies, they better understood the stretching of the Universe. And they extrapolated back in time the positions of the galaxies. And when they went back fifteen-billion years or so, they realized that all galaxies were concentrated in a small region of all space. Thus approximately fifteen-billion years ago, all matter was lumped together in a tiny place. And in the beginning, matter flew apart like debris in an explosion. But the Universe did not actually explode – all it did was to expand. And that initial moment, when matter was concentrated into tiny space, was provided with a name. And that name was the Big Bang.
     It was 1939. The place was Copenhagen. And scientists split the uranium nucleus in two. The fission resulted in a loss of mass. Thus mass was converted into energy. And the loss in mass and the gain in energy were measured, and the relation between mass m and energy E was tested. And it agreed with the formula
E=mc2. And a prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.
     Now during the first few seconds of the early Universe when matter annihilated antimatter,
E=mc2 was used again and again, although no one had yet written the equation. Indeed, at that time no living creature yet existed. Indeed, no cell existed then; nor any molecule; nor any atom; nor even any nucleus. Yet E=mc2 was in effect, for E=mc2 is a law. Man does not make the laws of Nature. Man merely writes them in a form that he can understand.
     Although a few of the predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity had been tested to be true, still some scientist had doubts about the new ideas. They were non-believers. But other scientists did believe and they were driven to experiment and to confirm the theory beyond a shadow of a doubt. Thus scientists continued their search for truth and confirmation.147
     And in 1960, it came to pass that, in a laboratory, two scientists measured the wavelength of some laser light. And they directed the laser upward, measured the wavelength several meters up, and it was longer there. Now this meant that, as the light rose up, its energy decreased with height. This effect was the gravitational energy red-shift. And the difference in wavelength was measured and did agree with calculations from the Einstein theory. And a prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.

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147 Einstein’s gravity theory is known as the general theory of relativity. It is discussed in the New Testament’s sixth Book of Physics.

 
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144                        The Bible According to Einstein

     And similar measurements were made using extraterrestrial sources: Light that originated in the strong gravitational region at the surface of white-dwarf stars was carefully observed. And a gravitational energy red-shift was seen once more.
     It was 1964. And scientists waited until Venus was about to pass behind the Sun. And they directed intense radar pulses toward the planet. And the radar pulses travelled from the Earth, went past the Sun, struck the Venusian surface and rebounded. And the reflected radar pulses headed back to Earth. And after passing by the Sun, they arrived on Earth. Now the time for the journey was measured by the scientists. And the time was more than when the Sun was not between the Earth and Venus. And the experiment was repeated with the planet Mercury, when Mercury passed near the Sun. Now the measured time delays agreed with calculations from general relativity. And the gravitational time-delay red-shift was verified. And the prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.
     And an extremely accurate cesium atomic clock was placed in a modern jet. And a second cesium clock was kept on Earth. And the jet flew high above the Earth for fifteen hours and returned to Earth. Now Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity predicted that the clock flown high above the Earth should run slower than the clock on Earth where gravity was stronger – the clock in the jet should be forty-seven billionths of a second slow. And at the end of the flight, the times of the two clocks were read. And compared to the Earth-based clock, the time of the airborne clock was forty-seven billionths of a second less. Thus the gravitational red-shift time-dilation was confirmed.
     And in 1974, a new pulsar was detected by astronomers. It was in the constellation Aquila, fifteen-thousand light years from the Earth. Its name, 1913+16, told of its location: it was directed sixteen degrees above the equator and with a right ascension of nineteen hours and thirteen minutes. Now the pulsar beamed its radio signal seventeen times a second; in a regular manner did the beeps arrive. Hence, the pulsar signal functioned as an astronomic clock. But the clock told time with small inaccuracies. At times the clock was almost imperceptibly slow, while at other times it was almost imperceptibly fast. But the variations were perceptible and were detected by a thousand-foot radio dish in Puerto Rico. And from a detailed analysis of the variations in the signal, scientists deduced that the pulsar consisted of two neutron stars. And the variations in the signal allowed scientists to see the orbit.148 Thus astronomers "saw with ears."

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148 From the signal information the following was deduced. The two neutron stars were separated by an average distance of two-million kilometers. They moved at several hundred kilometers per second in an ellipse. And they went around each other once every eight hours. In 1993, Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor Jr. were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of 1913+16.

 
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The New Testament                                       145

     Now Einstein’s gravity theory predicted that the binary pulsar system should undergo the analog of the Mercury irregularity.149 But since the gravity in the binary pulsar system was much stronger, the effect should be much bigger. Calculations predicted that the ellipse should rotate four degrees per year. And astronomers listened to the pulsar and "saw" the ellipse rotate by four degrees per year. And a prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.
     Now because the orbit was an ellipse, the distance between the neutron stars did vary. And because the distance varied, the force of gravity between the two repeatedly grew stronger and grew weaker. Thus there should be a gravitational red-shift time-variation. Now the general theory of relativity predicted that there should be four-thousandth-of-a-second delays and advances in the pulses. And listening to the pulsar with their radio dish, astronomers observed lags and leads of one four-thousandth of a second.
     Now general relativity made an astonishing prediction: As the two neutron stars orbited each other, they should radiate gravitation waves and lose some energy. Hence the binary pulsar should act as a broadcast station which emits both radio-type waves and gravity-type waves. And as the two neutron stars lost energy, they should move toward each other and thereby spiral in. But since so little energy was lost in waves, they should approach each other very slowly – three-and-one-half meters in a year. And as they moved in closer, they should take less time to orbit one another. And listening carefully to the signal during many years, scientists did observe a decrease in the time to make one orbit. Thus gravitation waves were detected, although indirectly. Thus their existence, as predicted by the theory of general relativity, was verily confirmed. And from the observations, the decrease in the orbital time was measured. And from this time decrease, the loss in energy was so deduced. Thus the energy in waves of gravity emitted by the binary pulsar was by these means indirectly measured. And it agreed with relativistic calculations. And a prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.

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149 See Chapter I of this book.

 
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146                        The Bible According to Einstein

     It was 1979. A powerful telescope observed two quasars almost on top of one another. Never before had two quasars been seen so close to one another. And further observations showed that the two quasars were travelling at the same speed. And when the spectral lines of these two quasars were observed, they too were the same. Now such a coincidence could not be an accident. And scientists came to realize that the two quasars were not two – they were two images of one. And the situation was as a man who "crosses" his two eyes and sees in double. Now a telescope has but one "eye." How could a telescope "cross" its "eye?" Why was a double image seen? And a large array of radio dishes was directed at the strange exotic object. And it too revealed an extra image. Apparently the doubling did occur for radio waves as well as light. Now Einstein’s theory of gravity predicted that a very heavy object should act as a gravitation lens. If a massive galaxy existed between the quasar and the Earth, then the bending of electromagnetic waves by the galaxy would make a multiple of images. And astronomers directed their most sensitive telescopes to the region of the quasar. And one night when the atmosphere of Earth was calm and the sky was particularly clear, a faint galaxy between the quasar images was observed. And the distance to the galaxy was measured – the galaxy was halfway between the quasar and the Earth.
     And other multiple-imaged quasars were subsequently seen. And scientists concluded that the Universe contained massive galaxies, which caused spacetime to curve. And curved spacetime acted as unto a lens.150 And through the gravitational-lens effect, astronomers did see the curvature of space. Thus the basic principle behind general relativity was verified. And a prophecy of a prophet was confirmed.
     Now according to Einstein’s gravity theory, a small dark massive body also should bend light. But unlike a galaxy, which creates a multiple image, an object of the size of a large planet or small star should focus light. It should function as a magnifying glass, focusing rays of light into a brighter spot. Now in 1992, astronomers began to monitor millions of stars to see if any did get brighter. And the next year, several such events were seen. And after a short time, each such star dimmed, returning to its normal brightness, as the dark object finished passing by the star. Thus indeed there were invisible non-luminous objects which moved in front of stars and made them brighten. Hence, through gravitational lensing, astronomers saw what could not be seen with a telescope, radio dish or human eye. The invisible they saw. And these invisible bodies were assigned a name. And the name was MACHO, which means "massive compact halo object."

Spiritual prophets allow one to see the light.
Einstein allowed mankind to see beyond the light.

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150 This effect is called gravitational lensing.

 
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