It was interesting reading this from the perspective of a Quantum Physicist. There was a focus on the debate between Bohr and Einstein on Quantum Physics. The point is that neither had a strong handle on wavefunctions. It is like getting a very best cheese-monger and the very best butcher to have a debate on wine. I don't mean to sound disrespectful but Einstein is really from the pre-Quantum era and Bohr overestimates his own thinking. The real tragedy is that a fourth group of people have emerged that I would call the 'fascile reconstrutivists' who take sound grabs and images that have a certain currency and mash them together. They come up with the wave-particle duality and quantum weirdness, and have a metric of success on how well they have habituated the general popular scientific audience to respond to the echoes of incomplete explanations. So let's recap the four groups as I have sorted them out. The hip popularly sanctioned explainer definitely has to be included, most definitely, as all hale to them they have got the mike and control the play. So here goes:
1) The rationalist searching for compatibility (Einstein)
2) The irrationalists claiming the explanations that do work (Bohr)
3)) The fascile reconstructiveness that are more about signing people up to a explanation brand concept and keeping them hooked. (Think mobile phone plan)
4) The analyst that have understood enough to work out what next needs to be understood.
The Einstein magnetic spin flip causing an angular momentum spin effect is such a classic and awesome experiment every one should know about it. It is profound. Is everyone plotting against me, distracting me a key points when this is not explained. It turns out that I have missed a few occasional things. In general, I have been deeply concerned and find out that indeed the original text book is had mucked up and I was scratching my head waiting for it to click. The macroscopic demonstration of electron spin just really takes your breath away. Imagine not being sure and seeing it, the chill that you would experinence seeing it. Now the Stern Gerlack experiment where a stream of neutral silver atoms are fired into a non-uniform field needs to be carefully explained or you are doomed to a basic conclusion that boundary of no explanation is mysterious close. Here it is the nonuniform field that is the clincher. Now Einstein's experiment with magnetization flip causing an angular kick is really believable. The only mystery to me is why isn't this a third year university experiment. I can imagine a micro torsion bar in vacuum, capacitor sensors and an oscillating magnetic field to see the driver in a high Q situation went the field frequency sweeps through resonance. I have to study this one.
What is the Einstein Refigerator? Having seen Cooperative Spontaneous Emission in mirrorless lasers for nitrogen, carbon-dioxide and fluorine based mirrorless lasers, I can't get my mind around how this would work to bring down bulk temperature.
I found the description of Einsteins last years of isolation from the broader Physics community just profound. The stage was set for the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force. We had experienced a point in history where a solitary genius could make an impact, then this impact reverberated creating such a wave so large and so energized that it left this poor soul behind. In the end he wanted to go, he had done enough.
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