2005 is the World Year of Physics. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s miraculous year in which he published three revolutionary papers:
- March 1905 Explanation of the photoelectric effect.
- May 1905 Explanation of Brownian motion.
- June 1905 The theory of special relativity.
Three of his 1905 papers can be found at the Chronology of Milestone Events in Particle Physics. These papers are
- Concerning an Heuristic Point of View Toward the Emission and Transformation of Light. (Introduction of light quanta).
- On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. (The great relativity paper.)
- Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on its Energy Content ? (Septemebr 1905, E = mc2 paper).
Einstein’s paper on Brownian motion is available here.
As part of the Einstein centenary I’ve decided that it’s time to brush up on some general relativity (GR). A few years back I was going to do the GR course in the local physics department. When I started my degree, there were no physics prerequisites and there was no way in hell I was going to do any physics labs, I’m a theorist not an experimentalist (I did a huge amount of lab work in a previous life). So I happily went along, until 4th year when they changed the rules, so a few of my fellow students and I were left up the creek without a quantum mechanical analogue of a paddle , we needed physics prereqs, even though the course was given by mathematicians and there were no formal prerequisites the year before. Actually the informal prerequisite used to be “sufficient mathematical maturity”, which meant having done such a shitload of maths that you could probably handle anything they threw at you.
Anyway, enough griping. I never got any formal training in relativity but that doessn’t matter, I think 5 years of research has given me enough mathematical maturity. When I started my PhD my supervisor gave me a rather large pile of notes that took me more than a year to work through, and that was only to get up to speed with the topic.
Fortunately I’ve been doing my PhD part-time (until recently I was working full time) so I’ve had more than enough time to read all the related literature (and it is voluminous, considering this particular field only begain around 1990). I really should be working on something related to my PhD but I’d rather fiddle with the equations a bit more than write them up and get them published. I have two papers sitting here that are almost ready to submit to the journals. I need to trim them a bit before submitting, I think I’ve put in too many details. I’ve taken an interlude in my PhD studies recently and have been reading on whatever topic takes my fancy: differential geometry, cubic equations, relativity and a fair bit of cosmology. Lately I’ve been fascinated by the accelerated expansion of the universe, but I’ll save my musings for another post.
I’ve got three wonderful books on relativity sitting on my desk right now and a bunch of reprints, preprints and other stuff all over the place.
Now I just need to find a few spare hours, a place to put my whiteboard and some peace and quiet.