Lecture by Douglas Hofstadter: Albert Einstein on Light; Light on Albert Einstein

A great book to read on this is by head of applied physics at Yale University, Professor Douglas Stone's "Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian." Einstein was pretty much the only physicist in Europe who truly believed light was a particle (well both a wave and a particle) for about 20 years (1902 - 1920). Bohr, ironically, wrote "if Einstein believes light is a particle, I will congratulate him by sending him a telegram" (the joke being that light CANNOT POSSIBLY be a particle because the science underlying telegrams is predicated on the idea that electromagnetic phenomena (light included) is a wave. Max Planck did NOT believe light was a particle; Bohr did not; Rayleigh did not; Nernst did not; a young Heisenberg did not (initially). It's so ironic that so many of the proponents of quantum theory in the 1930s did NOT believe light was a particle for nearly 2 decades. And the grandest irony is that the father of quantum theory, Einstein, did not like quantum theory. His main objection being that the observer should not have any effect on an experiment as such an assertion violates scientific objectivity - it implied, by Bohr's flawed reasoning, that the mere act of the observer observing an experiment changes the result of the experiment. It implied a subjective, anti-realist mysticism to physicis. Had Einstein lived long enough to see Bell's Theorem, I suspect he would have been a convert. Even Einstein's lesser known works were decades ahead of their time. As somebody who works in physics for a living, I'm blown away by his foresight. His two papers in 1935, on quantum entanglement (the famous EPR paper) and on wormholes (the famous Einstein-Podolsky Bridges), form the cutting edge of contemporary physics in the realm of quantum gravity (to unify all of physics). Susskind and Maldacena - two brilliant men - pioneered research into this. The only scientist in history comparable to Einstein was Newton (honorable mention to Maxwell).

[@brettmangel36]

1:55 to skip the intro

[@francescgarcia7340]

This is a true gem. Thank you so so much for sharing!

[@Silvertestrun]

Thank you!

[@rajchowdhury3006]

Cleared many popular nisconceptions,ossum lecture

[@John-lf3xf]

the spelling in this comment is astounding

[@soumitralahiri9393]

Awful spelling, but awesome lecture indeed!

[@Chris.4345]

ossum possum

[@anywallsocket]

ironically modern QFT doesn't have any rigorous definition of a localized 'particle', as an excitation of the associated field.

[@schmetterling4477]

It's not the first time that otherwise smart people fell for the corpuscular\stoff hypothesis. It happened before to Newton and during the days of the phlogiston.

[@anywallsocket]

@@schmetterling4477 "particles" are clearly digestible thoughts, whereas "waves" clearly aren't. more precisely, particles are aspects of humanly digestible "positions", and perhaps vectorless masses. whereas waves are humanly digestible "momenta", and perhaps vectorless energies. so i agree it's not surprising.

[@cizbarca]

Am I the only one missing sound?

[@HeadphoneTaco]

My audio is working fine, now. Is yours?

[@rgaleny]

IF RESONANCE MATTERS, WHY ISN'T IT USED IN FUSION REACTORS?

[@voidshell6273]

His German is flawless!

[@Achrononmaster]

While we sipped on our cups of tea/ Doug showed us analogy/ Each surrounded by a cloud/ of meanings that ring true and loud.

[@alimurreza]

Amazing talk!

[@barissannan2731]

simply wonderful!!!

[@Eldooodarino]

Ideal gas particles don't bash into each other. They're point particles. They bash into the walls.

[@bonob0123]

Hofstadter's Brilliance : Insufferability ratio = 1.0001

[@GodEmperorSuperStar]

Unpopular truth beats popular untruth.

[@orsoncart802]

Gott im Himmel! 😁 Seriously though - *excellent*! Thank you. 👍👍👍

[@schmetterling4477]

Unfortunately for all of us, Einstein was absolutely wrong about the particle nature of light. I wonder if he may have come close to admitting his mistake in the end, at least to himself. The answer what quanta are is, of course, trivial. Quanta are (irreversible) exchanges of energy between one part of a physical system and another. What "one part" and "the other part" are, is an arbitrary choice made by the physicist analyzing the situation. Is it therefor surprising that nature won't give us a unique answer? We are not even asking a unique question!

[@LoganMarcosSchmidt]

Lol trivial ok edge lord

[@schmetterling4477]

@@LoganMarcosSchmidt Ah, and there is the random internet person who didn't pay attention in science class.

[@ericsu4667]

The actual gravitational deflection of light predicted by Schwarzschild metric is about 2.1 arc seconds from a star to the earth. It is not 1.74 as claimed by Albert Einstein. Click on "70. Gravitational Deflection from Schwarzschild's Metric" on this website. sites.google.com/view/physics-news/gravitation

[@davidwilkie9551]

Amateur observations on quality professional expertise commentary are unnecessary and not justifiable. (Personal rule not to make personal comments about personality)