If Einstein played the violin better

"Without Einstein's theory of relativity, the world would be no different, just like the world would be no different without Mozart's Magic Flute and Monet's paintings."

Walking every day to the pall dispensing room, tired of thinking too much, he always wanted to find other paths, to avoid having to see the clock tower and train station, those things just dragged him into his thoughts. Think nonsense about time and motion. He told himself, well, I will give up, let physicists learn about the universe, I will be a secretary, a father, an ordinary guy. Or better yet, I'll be a violinist ...

... A hundred years later, Brad, a poor musician, a descendant of Einstein, got up late. Brad tried to stretch his eyes to see the time on the clock, because without a light emitting diode, the clocks often do not have lights. Brad didn't see e-mails nor the weather, because the Internet was still very poor. Brad decided to go to his sister's house for breakfast. The traffic was bad, Brad took a shortcut but got lost, not knowing where he was getting anywhere. If only Global Positioning System (GPS) is available. But where does GPS come from in a world where Albert Einstein turned to violin making?

At her sister's house, her granddaughter unexpectedly asked Brad: "What is the sun made of?". Brad also did not know very well, he replied to the story: "By iron, grandchildren!". But actually it was accepted by the whole world, because without the formula E = mc2, English astronomer Cecilia Payne was unable to retest in 1925 the notion that the sun was mostly iron, not hydrogen.

In the kitchen, Brad's older sister lamented about missing out on a big deal in the stock trading. In our world, the world where Einstein is a physicist, she would probably have more reasonable books in stock trading. Because the equations the bank uses to calculate optimal investment solutions are taken from Einstein's 1905 work on Brown's motion.

That's enough, it's all based on an unconvincing assumption that, if Einstein didn't do physics, no one else would bring him revolutionary advances in science.

Scientific historians still agree that, without Einstein, other brains could still make digital alarm clocks, broadband Internet, and GPS, DVDs and sensors for cameras. digital. But do not rush to take down Einstein's portrait, our view of the world will not be the same as it is now if Einstein switched to a violin. This is the story of general relativity, published in 1916.

In general, general relativity describes how gravitational fields distort the shape of space. Theories about big bang, black holes, gravitational waves ... all emerge from it. It is "so sublime" that a physicist has said, "it cannot be devised by anyone else".

When Einstein ecstatic realized the equivalence between acceleration and gravity, he found the clue to a series of ideas to formulate his theory. But, the next steps were not easy, Einstein had to learn an entirely new mathematical system - Riemann geometry. The development of the theory of relativity "tormented Einstein for eight years and nearly killed him," says astrophysicist Clifford Will of Washington University.

Many cultural history researchers have tried to follow Einstein's influences on the fields of poetry and music, but they have failed to produce results. Einstein's research itself was an art form.

When talking about his works, physicists often use words like "elegant" and "elegant". John Rigden of the University of Washington said: "Without Einstein's theory of relativity, the world would be no different, just like the world would be no different without Mozart's Magic Flute and the Monet painting ".