Einstein unpublished article found with: universe with no Big Bang

An unpublished manuscript by Albert Einstein recently discovered by two scientists from Waterford Institute of Technology shows that the Nobel Prize winner once considered a mathematical model of the universe very different to today’s Big Bang Theory.

The manuscript, which hadn’t been referred to by scientists for decades, appears to have been written in the 1930s.

The cosmic model it proposes is radically different to previously known Einsteinian models of the universe, but anticipates a controversial theory proposed by the Cambridge scientist Fred Hoyle in the 1950s, which argued that space could be expanding eternally.

The document had been stored in plain sight at the Albert Einstein Archives in Jerusalem. However, it had been mistakenly filed as a first draft of another paper by the theoretical physicist.
WIT physicist Cormac O’Raifeartaigh told Nature he ‘almost fell out his chair’ when he realised what the manuscript was about.

Together with collaborators at Cambridge University and the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, the WIT duo have submitted a translation and analysis of Einstein’s manuscript to the European Physical Journal and have posted a preprint of their paper online (their English translation is available here)

According to the ‘abstract’:
We present a translation and analysis of an unpublished manuscript by Albert Einstein in which he proposed a ‘steady-state’ model of the universe.

"The manuscript appears to have been written in early 1931 and demonstrates that Einstein once considered a cosmic model in which the mean density of matter in an expanding universe remains constant due to a continuous creation of matter from empty space, a process he associated with the cosmological constant.
This model is in marked contrast to previously known Einsteinian models of the cosmos (both static and dynamic) but anticipates the well-known steady-state theories of Hoyle, Bondi and Gold.
We find that Einstein’s steady-state model contains a fundamental flaw and suggest it was discarded for this reason.
We also suggest that he declined to try again because he found more sophisticated versions rather contrived.
The manuscript is of historical significance because it reveals that Einstein debated between steady-state and evolving models of the cosmos decades before a similar debate took place in the cosmological community."

The Irish scientists’ discovery has been picked up by a raft of international publications — in addition to Nature, it’s also been featured in Forbes and Scientific American.
Check out Einstein Archives Online for the original German version.
Read the analysis "Einstein’s steady-state model of the universe".

Source:
Image by esracoon.

Albert Einstein Memorials at Washington and at Ulm

Left: "The Albert Einstein Memorial in Washington's National Mall neighborhood is one of the most instantly recognizable landmarks in Washington DC. Measuring 12 feet / 3.5 meters, this large and imposing statue of Albert Einstein is actually seated on a bench, at the front of Washington's National Academy of Sciences." Sculpture by Robert Berks. Photo" By wallyg at Flickr.

Right: detail of "Jürgen Goertz bronze sculpture of Albert Einstein, Ulm’s internationally most famous son, in 1984. It is located on the grounds of historic Zeughaus. (Zeughaus is Ulm’s historic arsenal; today it is home to parts of Ulm’s municipal court.)

It consists of three elements:

The rocket symbolizes technology, the conquest of the universe and the atomic threat.

On this base you see a big snail shell which symbolises the opposite, namely nature, wisdom and skepticism about mankind’s dominance of technology."

The right photography is by by Kakapo2

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

Albert Einstein

Update: June, 14 2011

I changed the right picture because the previous one belongs to a blogger that I couldn't find the name and just making a link is not enough. I like this one! I love watermarks. I think all images should have them because it makes it easier for everybody to attribute, something I'm very careful.

Einstein - black holes and gravitional lens

The theory of general relativity has important astrophysical applications. Notably, it predicts the existence of black holes—regions of space in which space and time are distorted in such a way that nothing, not even light, can escape—as an end-state for massive stars. There is evidence that, indeed, such black holes as well as more massive varieties are responsible for the intense radiation emitted by certain types of astronomical objects (such as active galactic nuclei or microquasars). The bending of light by gravity can lead to the curious phenomenon of multiple images of the same astronomical object being visible in the sky, an effect called gravitational lensing which has spawned an active new branch of astronomy. General relativity also predicts the existence of gravitational waves, which have been measured indirectly; a direct measurement is the aim of projects such as LIGO. In addition, it is the basis of current cosmological models of an expanding universe. Photo: Extragalactic astronomy: gravitational lensing. This Hubble Space Telescope image shows several blue, loop-shaped objects that actually are multiple images of the same galaxy. They have been duplicated by the gravitational lens effect of the cluster of yellow, elliptical and spiral galaxies near the photograph's center. The gravitational lens is produced by the cluster's tremendous gravitational field that bends light to magnify, brighten and distort the image of a more distant object. Text Source: Nationmaster; Knowledgehush.

Einstein our next door neighbor

It's amazing how little of his theory is known by many of us and how much we like him. Einstein has lived in poverty and was not bright as a student. His clothes are normal, no suits, nothing that implies he is a superior person. He could be our next door neighbor. He spent most of his time at home studying his theories and trying to proof them to their colleagues. In order to proof the theory of relativity to skeptical physicist he decided to use this postulate: if relativity was true, then rays of starlight that passed near the Sun would be bent compared to the same rays when the Sun was elsewhere in the sky. In each case, the relativistic effects are caused by gravity from the Sun's huge mass. It only requires photos of solar eclipses to measure shifts in star positions and there was some of them so that the astrophysics could use. When they did examine previous photographs of solar eclipses, they found that the pictures were unsuited to proving or disproving Einstein's claim: the telescopes had been set to track the Sun's motion across the sky, not the stellar motions, and the slight differences between these perspectives obscured the small, predicted shifts in star positions. However, as time went by and other experiments gave equivocal results, the solar-eclipse experiment represented the best chance to test the truth of relativity. It was his British friend Sir Arthur Eddington, an renowned astrophysicist who believed in Einstein, that constructed a telescope with few resources and did try twice to photograph solar eclipse. The second time was in the spring of 1919 that Sir Eddington went on an expedition to Australia to take photographs of a solar eclipse that it was possible to confirm the correctness of general relativity theory. It change it all we are using his theory on daily basis without even knowing that without this theory many things would be different.

Photography: one of the many photos Sir Eddington took from Australian solar eclipse in 1919