[SideQuark]

>>time dialation (something completely alien to all before him

>Hendrik Lorentz prop

Lorentz did not think that time actually dilated; his notion of "local time" he considered purely a mathematical trick, unrelated to actual physics, in the same manner that renormalization sweeps away infinities in a clever manner.

Here's the quote: "While for Lorentz length contraction was a real physical effect, he considered the time transformation only as a heuristic working hypothesis and a mathematical stipulation to simplify the calculation from the resting to a "fictitious" moving system. " [1]

So no, Lorentz absolutely did not think physical time actually dilated. Stop repeating this nonsense.

Also, Lorentz was not the first to publish the time dilation formula. And, like Lorentz, all before him thought it a neat mathematical trick, devoid of actual physics.

Poincare did think it may be actual time dilation, but he too lacked the insights that Einstein had that put these dilation and stretching concepts not as ad-hoc after effects, but that they come from a simple, single physical principle. What's more, Einstein's way of looking at it all was the one that turned out to match reality the best.

For example, in 1905 Poincare introduced "Poincare stresses", another fictitious set of forces, to reconcile the math they didn't like from what they thought of as reality.

Lorentz and Poincare used the now-disproven aether as the basis for their theories. Einstein did not.

Spend a moment reading that wiki page, replete with sources, and especially the section on "The shift to relativity." It's abundantly clear that Einstein was the first to publish the correct interpretation, devoid of all the ad hoc (and physically incorrect) assumptions that Lorentz, Poincare, and others, used to reconcile their belief with the evidence. Einstein, in one simple argument, showed that one simple physical idea - light has the same speed regardless of observer - leads to the correct equations that model reality, needs no other ad hoc forces or aether or any other items.

Here's [2] notes from a talk I gave (and still give from time to time) on a simple derivation of all these things from the one principle.

You spend an incredible amount of time misrepresenting and discounting the work of Einstein, so much so that you're posting many, many wrong items. I gave up listing them since the sheer amount of it baffling. Why?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_ether_theory

[2] https://lomont.org/papers/2011/SpaceTimeTalk.pdf

[catmistake]

I'd also like to point out that Einstein was humble, and the myth of Einstein that developed was not his doing. It was the common man, the everyday people and the press of the time that said, incorrectly, "wow! He is so smart, no one can understand what he is doing!" Which is patently false. Non-physicists could not be expected to understand Relativity. But the physicist peers of Einstein didn't have much trouble with it, contrary to Arthur Eddington's famous quote in response to the statement that only 3 people in the world understood Einstein, "I am trying to think who the third would be." False. Physicists of the day that looked at his work understood his work.

To Einstein's credit, one of the hallmarks of his genius, he had an ability to take complex ideas and describe them very simply, so that any might understand.

It is General Relativity that is Einstein's really only major contribution worth noting. And that is enough! Though he was first to describe Special Relativity, had he not, someone else would have within a few years of his publication. But had Einstein not given us General Relativity, it might have taken another 50 or 75 years for that to appear. But it also absolutely would have come from someone else had Einstein never existed.

Einstein is amazing, he is just not at all the myth that everyone thinks he was. He was just a humble theoretical physicist.

[ChrisLomont]

>It is General Relativity that is Einstein's really only major contribution worth noting.

Special relativity was a leap no one else was making, despite 20+ years of people knowing enough to make the leap. He also postulated light was made of photons (which was correct) to explain the photoelectric effect, which is another amazingly important thing. That one a Nobel Prize, but according to you, this is not a major contribution?

He developed the quantum theory of heat, also correct.

He gave solid empirical evidence for atomic theory using statistical physics.

He showed energy and mass are interchangeable (E=mc^2).

He predicted gravitational waves, just recently demonstrated, giving Thorne and other a Nobel. Had this demonstration been during Einstein's life, he would have gotten another Nobel prize.

He discovered the field equations predicted a dynamic, changing universe, something so far from thought at the time he tried to fight it by adding a cosmological constant, but he published the dynamic possibility anyways.

He (with Rosen) created a model of wormholes in 1935.

He invented Bose-Einstein condensates (Bose published statistics on photons, Einstein modified that to apply more widely and demosnteated completely new states of matter).

I could go on and on.

It's baffling you consider all this, especially one Nobel prize and enough for a second, to not be major contributions to physics.

>had Einstein not given us General Relativity, it might have taken another 50 or 75 years for that to appear

Also not true. As you yourself pointed out, Hilbert was right there, and if Einstein had not published, it would not have been more than a year until Hilbert (or a host of others) would have made the same discovery.

This "50 or 75 year" claim is just pulled from nowhere, like a lot of your other claims.

Rereading your posts on this, you clearly have selected at every possible point an anti-Einstein view, far more than is reasonable from the evidence. I could go on to post a ton more sourced items you get wrong.

Oh well, hopefully anyone reading this deep doesn't just believe the things you wrote, but takes some time to check them. I've provided enough places for them to start.

[catmistake]

I disagree as to your opinions, which seem to just disagree for the sake of disagreement. The elements of Special Relativity were around. I stand by the assertion that someone else would have developed that theory within a few short years had Einstein not. And I stand by the assertion that General Relativity, had Einstein not existed, would have taken several decades before anyone would have fully put it together.

For anything Einstein is given credit for after about 1918, it was just the momentum of his popularity. Anytime another name is on anything, it is that other name that did most of the work, and because it was based on Einstein's earlier work, his name went on it also. And this is absolutely normal and expected in academia. Nearly all physicists do their life's work before they are 30, usually by the time they are 23. Einstein was nearly 40 when he published his Theory of General Relativity, and that is extremely out of the ordinary. You are seeing things, perpetuating the myth, when you place Einstein, the man, central to any breakthroughs after about 1918.

[ChrisLomont]

> Einstein was nearly 40 ... extremely out of the ordinary.

Over all Nobel Prizes, it happened around 1/3 of the time. In Physics since 2000, it happened 80% of the time [1]. Care to rethink this claim?

Have you read the original papers? I have. Do you understand the math, and can do calculations related to relativity? I can.

Again the claim General Relativity was not being solved by others? I just demonstrated Hilbert was right on Einstein’s heels, with a paper published right after Einstein, with the same results.

Why stick to that gun when I just cited the evidence, that you can check yourself? The original papers are both online for you to read.

Einstein and Hilbert even worked quite a bit together on it. Of course Hilbert was interested and working on it too.

By several decades do you mean a few months? Is this time dilation?

I get the feeling you do not know either.

[1] https://www.livescience.com/16911-scientific-breakthroughs-g...

[catmistake]

The specific fallacies you have chosen to employ to attempt support your frail argument are interesting. I have read Special Relativity in translation, it is short enough and there is little math. My German is not even pedestrian, so no, I have not read Einstein's original article on General Relativity.

No, I meant what I said. Special Relativity would have appeared within a few years of Einstein's publication had it not occurred, but for General Relativity derived elsewhere would have taken decades at least. Hilbert didn't have it and wasn't on anyone's heels.

[ChrisLomont]

>General Relativity derived elsewhere would have taken decades at least

Is this based on the quality of evidence you used when you claimed people over 40 don't do much science? That turned out to be wildly incorrect.

What do you base the "decades" claim on? There was no new math needing invented, no new empirical evidence needed, no new physics needed, and many people were close at the time, and certainly more and more physicists were heading down the same paths.

BTW, Einstein's most cited paper, by far, is from 1935, written when he was 56. I suspect that's some evidence he did good work after general relativity.

[catmistake]

It is in the ballpark. The point is that Einstein did not pull a rabbit out of his hat, others had thought similar weirdness, and Einstein was aware of it.

[ChrisLomont]

Claiming as factual all the things you did is not "in the ballpark." It's simply wrong, and oddly skewed to paint the worst possible light with ad hominem, misconceptions, and lies.

Yes, plenty of people were working on similar stuff - this is true for every single case I've ever dug into (Newton, Gauss, Tesla, Einstein, Witten, Feynman, Wright Brothers, Marconi, transistor, laser, fission, fusion, ...), but to claim (as you did) that the person who actually make the breakthrough did not do it (and backing it by lies, as I sourced), is deceitful.

I've yet to see someone create something so vastly improved from the world around them that it would not have been made by another person or group immediately. But that does not mean it's fine to discount the work of the person who did it first, especially if that requires falsehoods.

[catmistake]

No, I was correct. Ad hominem is an attack. I have not attacked you, and I do not see how you could find ad hominem in my replies. Unfounded paranoia is probably not something you should ignore.

My point was very simply was that Einstein did not walk on water nor did he operate in a vacuum. I am not sure why this is so difficult to believe.

[ChrisLomont]

>Ad hominem is an attack.

Ad hominem is not simply an attack; it's disparaging someone to undermine their argument.

>I have not attacked you, and I do not see how you could find ad hominem in my replies.

I didn't say tou attacked me. You threw in Einstein being a womanizer in a discussion about people worthy of Nobel Prizes. I don't think the Nobel comittee takes that into consideration.

>Unfounded paranoia is probably not something you should ignore.

Agreed. Since you brought up unfounded paranoia, and since you thought the ad hominem was about you attacking me when that is not what I wrote, you should get that paranoia checked :)

>My point was very simply was that Einstein did not walk on water nor did he operate in a vacuum. I am not sure why this is so difficult to believe.

I never claimed anything like that. Strawman?

I agree he didn't operate in a vacuum, which is why I think there's ample evidence his work would have been done by others soon after he did it if he did not exist. This is true for just about every person and discovery.

You're the one arguing that all of mankind could not have developed General Relativity for decades without Einstein.

Which is it? Was his work able to be done by others around the same time (i.e., not in a vacuum), or was his work so spectacular and impossible for all of mankind to not be able to produce it for decades (i.e., the walks on water argument)?

[catmistake]

Ad hominem is not simply an attack; it's disparaging someone to undermine their argument.

Which is why it is also fallacy. Attacking the man does not undermine the argument, so the argument stands unassailed. Anytime we say "you..." it is the beginning of an ad hominem fallacy. Informal fallacy is invalid argument.

The rest of your last comment is all ad hominem fallacy. It's all you you you with you.