Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:37:50 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: chuckr@glue.umd.edu (Chuck Robey) Cc: jmb@freefall.freebsd.org, terry@lambert.org, csubl@csv.warwick.ac.uk, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: RMS's view on dynamic linking Message-ID: <199702251737.KAA26575@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.95q.970224212845.12907B-100000@professor.eng.umd.edu> from "Chuck Robey" at Feb 24, 97 09:43:36 pm
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> > produces three papers in one year, each worthy of a nobel prize > > in physics....and then gets a nobel for "the photo-electric > > effect??" that was the greatest?? > > I've heard this particular comment so often, but it makes perfect sense to > me ... the special and general relativity were really new, but the > photo-electric effect thing isn't given it's proper background. It had > nothing to do with way photo-cells work on a macro level (which a number > of people have brought up to me in misunderstanding) but instead was the > first application that really used the quantum effects to explain > something previously misunderstood, how photons really did have different > energy levels, and how quantum effects beautifully predicted things. > > Terry knows this better than I do, I just think that this particular > example, which everyone brings up, undervalues the "photoelectric effect". > > I think many people think of "the photo-electric effect" as Einstein > getting an award for a solar cell. Completely misses the point. Actually, the person who never gets any credit is Compton. "The photo-electric effect" in question is "the Compton effect". The value of Einstein's interpretation of the Compton effect is in the resoloution of the wave/particle duality of photons. It was the first step toward a unified field theory, and arguably Einsteins most important contribution. Even to this day, there's no clear judgment on the Copehagen interpretation of Quantum Electro Dynamics; all we know is that the math works, and there are several competing theories as to what the math is actually modelling, with no clear proof one way or the other. We tend to teach one rather than the other because algebraic soloution are easier for most people to understand than geometric. For what it's worth, Einstein's special relativity implies gravity waves, and though we've been looking since the 40's, we haven't seen any. Feynman argued against an external force carrier for gravity (the theory that the universe is a "balloon", and that gravitation is "air pressure" inside the balloon), but he was quite hung up on a particle carrier... a non-particulate carrier would be enough to invalidate the impact/energy-transfer calculations made by Feynman, and then we can look past that to comparing G to the background radiation level -- an interesting comparison, since it comes out to be about the same for several sigmas. To be really sure, we would need to set up 3 large masses with a know relative planar position (the calculation would be easier with 4, where the curvature would not have to be calculated) and brin in a third mass of the same size, from about halfway across the solor system, which has been accelerated to a significant fraction of the speed of light. The mass should come in on a vector at some small angle relative to the perpendicular to one "edge" of the triangle or tetrahedron, and at a small angle relative to the plane described by the two points on the edge and the center of mass of the equalateral triange (or tetrahedron). This would determine once and for all if gravity propagates at the speed of light (if so, our gravity wave apparatus has just been badly designed for nearly 60 years -- hard for me to believe). It may be that Einsteins other contributions are further lessened compared to his interpretation of the Compton effect, then... the Nobel committee picked the right contribution. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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