REVIEW—PAUL PARSONS' THREE-MINUTE EINSTEIN

Paul Parsons, 3-Minute Einstein: Digesting His Life, Theories and Influence in 3-Minute Morsels (Ivy Press, 2012), 160 pp. His publisher's blurb zealously informs us that Parsons' book "is the instant introduction to this great genius," containing "3-minute morsels" which are "easily digestible visual snack." Similarly, no less an authority than the University of Sussex's Visiting Fellow in Astronomy John Gribbin marvels over how nobody "has told the story of Einstein so succinctly while also being so accurate . . . as Parsons does" and how "the less well-known aspects of Einstein's science are not neglected." Gribbin is absolutely correct—Parsons has presented, perhaps, the most concise and attractive informative book about Einstein designed for the average layman.

The Fledgling Genius

Albert with his little sister Maja Einstein

The first section of 3-Minute Einstein recalls Albert Einstein's life as recounted from his birth at Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879, to his untimely death on April 18, 1955. Parsons informs the reader about Einstein's early childhood, education, love affairs, accolades, eventual rise to celebrity status and the mysterious Lieserl Einstein, even managing to lasso Einstein's left-wing social democratic stance—"respect for personal freedom, free speech, and individualism"—and his intolerance towards Soviet-style authoritarianism into the picture. (p. 56) However, in a twist of rich irony, it turns out that Einstein was targeted by the Red Scare—a Communist witch hunt spearheaded by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy.

More importantly, we learn that despite being one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, "Albert Einstein made a rather faltering start in life . . . not uttering his first words until past the age of two," which resulted in the Einsteins' housemaid even whimsically nicknaming him "the dopey one." (p. 22) Later during his enrollment at Zurich Polytechnic in Switzerland, Einstein often refused to follow his tutor's instructions in his practical classes and instead adopted his own methodology. Heinrich Weber, the head of the physics department, fumed, "You're a very clever boy, Einstein, an extremely clever boy. But you have one great fault: You'll never let yourself be told anything." Einstein's mathematics professor Hermann Minkowski even famously branded him a "lazy dog."

However, as the Tulane historian Walter Isaacson has noted, Einstein's "insouciant ability to tune out the conventional wisdom was not the worst fault to have." For example, while Einstein disdained experimental physics, he excelled in his study of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, which merged electricity and magnetism into a single interrelated phenomenon. At a young age, Einstein was also fascinated with how the needle of a navigational compass "would move in response to a seemingly invisible force." (p. 24) His curiosity about nature meant Einstein eagerly devoured books on science, mathematics, geometry and philosophy. It appears Einstein's contrarian demeanour was not a sign of delinquency, per se, but of a fledgling genius. To quote the great man himself, "Long live impudence! It is my guardian angel in this world."

The Beauty of Relativity

In the second section, Parsons provides a comprehensive tally of Einstein's contributions to scientific theories, not neglecting the more obscure elements of his science. Nonetheless, a whopping eighteen pages are dedicated to elucidating Einstein's two theories of relativity, which Gribbin alluded to by stating that "the two relativity theories take pride of place." In 1905—famously dubbed Einstein's miracle year—Einstein published his third Annus mirabilis paper proposing his special theory of relativity, which involved two postulates:

Firstly, prior to the historic Michelson and Morley experiment of 1887, nineteenth-century physicists believed light waves travelled through a physical substance "pervading the whole of space," referred to as the luminiferous aether. (p. 74) However, instead of positing the aether as a preferred frame of reference which defined what was happening—similar to Sir Isaac Newton's concept of absolute space—Einstein's theory of special relativity interpreted two objects moving at a constant speed to be the relative motion between the two objects.

Secondly, the theory of special relativity served as "Einstein's solution to the disparities between Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and the laws of relative motion." (p. 76) Imagine two vehicles travelling towards each other at a constant velocity of 60 MPH. From the frame of reference of one driver, the other vehicle is approaching at a relative speed of 120 MPH, as 60 MPH + 60 MPH = 120 MPH. According to the laws of relative motion, that logic should similarly apply to beams of light—if somebody tagged along with a moving beam of light, another beam of light proceeding in the opposite direction would travel at twice the speed. In contrast, James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism understood the speed of light in a vacuum to be a fundamental constant of nature. However, as Parsons invites the reader to ask, "How could light speed be a constant and yet vary relative to the motion of an observer?" (p. 74, italics added) Einstein's answer was "that light travels at the same speed in all frames of reference."—Ibidem

Gravity manifests itself in the curvature of the space-time fabric

Nevertheless, Einstein was cognisant of how his special theory of relativity was incomplete, as it was applicable only to the special cases of objects moving at uniform speed—it failed to account for acceleration. For the following decade, Einstein generalised the equations of special relativity to include accelerating objects (and the concept of inertia, which is "the way heavy objects . . . take more effort to accelerate than lighter objects"), which eventually climaxed to his ground-breaking general theory of relativity. (p. 80) "The general theory of relativity brought a wholesale shift in the way physicists thought about gravity." (p. 86) Instead of an intangible force exchanged between two bodies, gravity manifested itself in the curvature of the space-time fabric, shaping the landscape upon which celestial objects rested. Thus, the general theory of relativity predicted that the sun's gravitational pull would create the bending of nearby starlight. In 1919, the English astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington visited the West-African nation of São Tomé and Príncipe to test this exact prediction. After analysing photographs he took on his expedition, Eddington calculated the degree of bending to be 1.7 arc seconds—“his results [were] exactly in line with relativity's predictions." (p. 88) Eddington's confirmation of general relativity propelled Einstein to stardom.

Since then, as the American physicist Neil Ashby points out, "All observational tests . . . confirm both the special and the general theory. These tests have ranged from sensitive laboratory experiments involving optics, atoms, nuclei, and subnuclear particles to the observation of orbiting clocks, planets, and objects far beyond the Solar System."

Quantum Cats and Other Cool Stuff

Can a cat be both dead and alive simultaneously? You be the judge.

Everybody has probably heard of Schrödinger's cat, which is named after the renowned Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Although different variations exist, the original thought experiment invites us to envisage a cat trapped inside a steel chamber with a Geiger counter tainted with a radioactive substance and a flask of hydrogen cyanide hooked to a hammer. If the radioactive substance decays, the hammer is released and smashes into the flask, thereby, leaking the hydrogen cyanide. As a result, the cat dies. If the radioactive substance does not decay, the cat is still alive. However, an interesting implication arises: According to the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, prior to an outside observer making a measurement by opening the chamber, the radioactive substance exists in a quantum superposition of all possible eigenstates as described mathematically by the ψ function, where it is simultaneously decayed and not decayed. Thus, the cat is both dead and alive prior to an observer collapsing the ψ function into one definite eigenstate. To Schrödinger, his almost-paradoxical thought experiment was an illustration of how the Copenhagen interpretation was philosophically untenable. However, "what's not so well known is that it was actually inspired by a letter from Einstein, in which he imagined a pile of gunpowder detonated by quantum uncertainty being simultaneously exploded and not exploded."—p. 96

Niels Bohr bravely defends quantum theory against Albert Einstein.

Contrary to the overwhelming evidence, Einstein despised quantum theory. His contempt towards quantum theory prompted a series of debates between him and the eminent Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Funnily enough, Einstein greatly advanced our understanding of quantum entanglement—"spooky action at a distance"—through the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox alongside the photoelectric effect. In the photoelectric effect, the surface of a metal discharges electrons after being exposed to photons of light. However, as the German physicist Heinrich Hertz detected, under a certain cut-off frequency—that of ultraviolet light—no electrons were emitted. Drawing upon an idea suggested by the theoretical physicist Max Planck, Einstein explained the phenomena by stating light was comprised of discrete packets known as quanta. The photoelectric effect occurs when the energy of the quanta colliding with the metal's atoms are sufficient to overcome the forces holding the electrons in place—possible only "when the frequency is high enough."—p. 72

After the advent of his two legendary theories of relativity, Einstein searched for a unified field theory—a so-called Theory of Everything (ToE) by modern parlance—which would provide a single theoretical framework from which to describe the four fundamental forces of nature: electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear interactions.* Unfortunately, Einstein's attempts to merge gravity and electromagnetism were largely unsuccessful. "During the 1920s and '30s, newspaper headlines around the world proclaimed each of [Albert Einstein's] new unification models as unveiling a new understanding of the cosmos—before a fatal flaw would inevitably arise, proving it untenable." (p. 100) An early endeavour at creating a unified field theory which motivated Einstein in his ambitious pursuit was the Kaluza-Klein theory. Developed in 1919 by the German mathematician Theodor Kaluza and later progressed by the Swedish theoretical physicist Oskar Klein, the Kaluza-Klein theory posits a five-dimensional universe.  The workings within the fifth dimension accounted for electromagnetism, while "gravity was built into the four ordinary dimensions." (Ibidem) If there was a modern successor of the Kaluza-Klein theory, it would be contemporary cosmology's string theory.

Most interestingly, Einstein collaborated with the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard in building a silent refrigerator which "had no moving parts, operating solely on the flow of pressurized gases, and required no electricity, just a heat source." (p. 70) Einstein and Szilard patented their product—which, perhaps unfairly towards Szilard, was named the Einstein refrigerator—on November 11, 1930, before being officially licensed by the Swedish appliance manufacturer Electrolux. The motivation behind the project arose after Einstein was reading a newspaper account of the gruesome death of a family in Berlin, Germany, after their faulty refrigerator seal had leaked toxic fumes into the house. As valiant as their intentions were, Einstein's refrigerator was shortly superseded by more efficient compressor-based fridges. However, it was reported that in 2008, the Oxford engineer Malcolm D. McCulloch was planning to construct fridges suitable to "areas of the world without electricity."—Ibidem

Philosophy According to Einstein

Although only a single page is allotted to explaining Einstein's philosophy, Parsons still provides useful insights for the reader to grasp. During his lifetime, Einstein was a confirmed logical positivist. The central thesis of logical positivism was verificationism, according to which for some proposition p to be meaningful, p must be empirically verifiable. After flourishing in the domain of Western philosophy during the 1920s and 1930s, logical positivism collapsed into a dead movement. Philosophers recognised how logical positivism was self-referentially incoherent^. Ask yourself, "Is the proposition 'in order for a proposition to be meaningful, it must be empirically verifiable' itself empirically verifiable?" Obviously not! Thus, verificationism was a meaningless concept under its own admission. Ironically, Einstein was "a supporter of an alternative model [to quantum theory] known as 'hidden variable theory.' Until the 1960s, this theory was considered untestable."—p. 102 (The hidden variable theory was consequently disproved by the French physicist Alain Aspect's 1982 experiment which demonstrated a violation of Bell's inequality. More recently, the Kochen-Specker theorem placed certain restrictions on which versions of hidden variable theory are permissible.)

Furthermore, Einstein often arrived at conclusions through his intuition. In the theory of special relativity, "these were the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light. For the general theory, they were the equivalence principle and the revelation that gravity equates to curved geometry." (p. 102) A clear trend emerges: Instead of making a probabilistic inference through the experimental data—inductive reasoning—Einstein preferred to logically deduce conclusions from a principle—known as deductive reasoning. To illustrate the difference between the two, imagine the following syllogism: (1) transition metals are malleable; (2) copper is a transition metal; (C) ∴ copper is malleable. This is an example of deductive reasoning, where the conclusion (C) is logically implied within the conjunction of the premises (1) and (2). A case of inductive reasoning would be: (1) every species discovered here is carnivorous; (2) they all possess acidic saliva; (C) ∴ all carnivorous species possess acidic saliva. In this example of inductive reasoning, you start from specific pieces of information (1) and (2) and expand it into a broad general hypothesis (C) which furnishes the best explanation of the data.

Laymen often quote Einstein as saying, "The more I study science the more I believe in God." However, Einstein explicitly rejected the personal god of Western theistic traditions Who answered prayers or reconciled mankind through the atonement, even believing the idea to be childish. Instead, Einstein was an avowed pantheist who "came round to the idea of a God manifested in the harmony of nature," as advocated by the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. (p. 48) The historian Matthew Stanley states, "The term God appears to have functioned as a kind of linguistic placeholder for Einstein, providing an evocative and memorable way to refer to the orderliness and comprehensibility of the universe." Thus, the popular notion that Einstein's science was driven by his theistic beliefs is pseudo-historical nonsense. Nonetheless, when examining whether a theory was scientifically valid, Einstein would often ask himself whether God would have created the universe that way.

Reality Since Einstein

The third section of 3-Minute Einstein could rightly be titled "How Albert Einstein Changed the World." Allow me to briefly sketch five such changes:

Firstly, Einstein's magnum opus helped advance the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is "a constellation of satellites in orbit around the Earth." (p. 112) Because GPS satellites depend on atomic clocks to perform a process known as trilateration, which pinpoints the location of the GPS unit on Earth, they need to be adjusted for relativistic time dilation. The GPS unit experiences a stronger gravitational pull, meaning its clock runs slower in comparison to the orbiting GPS satellites by approximately 38 microseconds per day. Einstein's theory of general relativity provided the necessary tools to fix this conundrum.

Secondly, Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect essentially "paved the way for the modern revolution in solar power." (p. 114) Solar panels are manufactured from N- and P-type semiconductors, which are material possessing electrical conductivity between that of insulators and conductors.  The area where the N-type (carries the electrical current through negatively-charged electrons) and P-type (carries the electrical current through positively-charged "holes" in a sea of electrons) semiconductors are adjacent is referred to as a junction of N- and P-type semiconductors. Similar to the photoelectric effect, the photovoltaic effect states that as photons of sunlight fall onto the junction, an electron is emitted. Afterwards, the emitted electron is attracted towards the positively-charged P-type semiconductor while the positively-charged "holes" of electrons are attracted towards the negatively-charged N-type semiconductor. "Since positive charge flowing one way is the same as negative charge flowing the opposite direction, the two effects [mutually] reinforce one another to create an electric current."—Ibidem

Thirdly, it is estimated that around fourteen per cent of the world's energy is harnessed via nuclear power. Physicists during the 1930s had discovered how to bisect an atom's nucleus into two halves. However, they were baffled after noticing that the mass of the two halves added together was not identical to the original mass of the entire nucleus. Einstein's iconic equation E=MC^2 provided the correct answer—since "mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing," the mass deficit had been transformed into energy. This scientific dictum formed the foundations for nuclear fission, which is the procedure all modern nuclear power stations operate by. As Einstein bluntly put it, "Very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy."

Fourthly, Einstein first invoked the apparent absurdity of a phenomenon referred to as quantum entanglement in order to argue against quantum theory. According to quantum entanglement, in a pair of linked particles, an observer cannot describe the quantum state of one particle without reference to the other particle, even if the two particles are spatially isolated from each other. This is because the ψ function mathematically describing the two particles cannot be factorised into two distinct parts. (As an example, imagine two particles in an entangled quantum state with a net spin of zero. If one particle was discovered to be spinning clockwise on a certain axis, the other particle would always be observed to be spinning anticlockwise on the axis.) As bizarre as it sounds, quantum entanglement has been confirmed to exist by Dutch physicists experimenting with electrons in diamonds, thereby, proving Einstein wrong. However, in 1984, researchers at the International Business Machines (IBM) extended quantum entanglement into the realm of technology by using it "as the basis for a quantum communication system that's secure against eavesdroppers." (p. 122) For example, if Eve tried to secretly intercept a message between Alice and Bob in the quantum channel, she would unwittingly alter the message and, thereby, reveal her presence. "If the message is a private encryption key, that'll be used to encode further messages securely, then quantum communication ensures that this key is only seen by the intended recipients—if an eavesdropper is detected the key is canceled and a new one sent out."—Ibidem

Fifthly, in 1927, the Belgian Catholic priest and astronomer Georges Lemaître proposed a model of the universe founded on Einstein's general theory of relativity, prior to the Cambridge astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle's luridly referring to Lemaître's model as the "Big Bang" during a 1949 BBC radio broadcast. (During the 1920s, the Soviet Russian physicist and mathematician Alexander Friedmann independently discovered an expanding model.) Afterwards, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson's discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation and Edwin Hubble's 1929 observation of the redshift phenomenon provided powerful evidence for Lemaître's "Big Bang," contrary to Hoyle's now-defunct steady state theory. Hubble recognised that the redshift phenomenon was an indication for an expanding universe. Retrace the expansion into the past and the universe would eventually be shrunk down into subatomic proportions—approximately 13.7 billion years ago—where general relativity's classical account of gravity breaks down and we need to introduce a quantum theory of gravity. As the late Stephen Hawking noted, “We would expect classical General Relativity to break down near a singularity, when quantum gravitational effects have to be taken into account. So what the singularity theorems are really telling us is that the universe had a quantum origin, and that we need a theory of quantum cosmology if we are to predict the present state of the universe.” Unfortunately, no such theory reconciling Einstein's theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics currently exists.

A Lorentzian wormhole

Sixth, in 1935, Einstein and the American-Israeli physicist Nathan Rosen devised the concept of an Einstein-Rosen bridge—better known as a wormhole—which is a theoretical passage connecting two points in the space-time manifold. Under the tenets of the general theory of relativity, Einstein and Rosen demonstrated that wormholes are a definite possibility, although whether they actually exist is an elusive mystery. Parsons likewise informs, "In principle, at least, two regions of the Universe separated by great distance can be connected by a relatively short wormhole, which then acts as a quick dodge between them." (p. 128) Perhaps the passage of a wormhole begins at a black hole—a concentrated region of space-time where no matter and radiation can escape its gravitational field—and terminates at a hypothetical white hole—the opposite of a black hole, where matter and energy erupt so intensely that nothing can enter it. Faster-than-light superluminal travel is even speculated to be possible if the wormhole is short enough. However, wormholes would be extremely metastable, requiring what the theoretical physicist Stephen Hsu refers to as "some very exotic type of matter" in order to be stabilised. Electrically-charged Reissner-Nordström black holes are believed to be especially susceptible to forming wormholes.

Criticisms of 3-Minute Einstein

My several criticisms of the book are really quibbles. For example, Parsons commits an egregious error on p. 98, where he retells an anecdote of Albert Einstein's revelation when in conversation with the Russian physicist George Gamow. Gamow reported to Einstein how a student of his calculated that after concentrating the mass of a star to a certain point, "the net energy of the star is zero—because the star's mass energy [the positive energy] is exactly equal and opposite to the energy locked away in its gravitational field [the negative energy]." (p. 98) Upon Gamow's declaration, Einstein suddenly realised the exact same verdict could be applied to the universe on a large scale—the universe itself could possess a net energy of zero. (This thesis is called the zero-energy universe hypothesis.) However, from the zero-energy universe hypothesis, Parsons strangely deduces the bizarre metaphysical implication that, therefore, "our cosmos really could have pooped into existence where before there was nothing at all," furthering claiming Einstein's "calculations suggest space . . . sprang from nothing." Parsons' conclusion is dubious for two reasons: Firstly, this would be the equivalent of my arguing that because my debts and assets cancel out and my net worth is zero, there is no cause needed for my financial situation. Britain's premier theoretical physicist Christopher J. Isham has pointed out that there still is what he refers to as a "need for ontic seeding" in order to generate the positive and negative energy in the first place, even if it is nought on balance. Secondly, Parsons’ usage of the phrase "before there was nothing at all" is inaccurate, since space and time were conceived in the Big Bang. As Stephen Hawking charmingly expressed in an interview, speaking of a time "before" the Big Bang would be as erroneous as "asking for a point south of the South Pole"—it is simply an incoherent notion.

The blurb boldly claims that "each topic [is] divided into 3-minute bites that you can digest almost without pausing for thought." However, the section on Einstein's theories is dense and filled to the brim with technical jargon, meaning I often had to reread the text multiple times in order to understand its message, contrary to the exaggerated assertion that Parsons' book can be digested "almost without pausing for thought." Furthermore, Parsons often muddles the book with unnecessary features which do more harm than good. The "Related Thoughts" which lists relevant pages is superfluous, as the pages are already organised in chronological order and, although the quotations of Einstein Parsons provides sometimes do provide insights, it is clear that Parsons has resorted to the old tactic of desperately searching for and pasting any quotation which is remotely relevant, hoping it assists the reader—unfortunately, they mostly do not.

However, Still an Awesome Book

That aside, this is a marvellous book and a brilliant, readable and accessible introduction which includes engaging graphics and removes unnecessary verbiage. It should be on the Christmas wish-list of any science buff or curious laymen or anybody who is interested in the pursuit of knowledge. As Gribbin states, "Even if you think you already know about Einstein and his work, you will find something  to intrigue you here; and if you are not familiar with his life and times, there is no better place to start." At the end of the day, science is not a pastiche of esoteric and uninteresting ideas, but rather an amazing and beautiful dynamic process which starts from the curiosity of ordinary men and women like Einstein. My piece of advice is to keep thinking because, as the American astronomer Carl Sagan once declared,

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."

*To be fair, many physicists are skeptical a unified field theory could be discovered in the first place since the most promising theories out there are merely conjectural. "In fact, there's no compelling evidence that physics is . . . unified at all."—p. 120

^Better known as self-refuting.