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Albert Einstein

204 bytes added, 17:53, July 11, 2007
/* False attributions */ fact tagging
== False attributions ==
Many ideas and quotes are falsely attributed to Einstein. He did not invent very much of we now call special relativity. The Principle of Relativity, that the law of physics should be the same in all inertial frames, had already been published before Einstein. {{fact}} He did not discover the Lorentz transformation, or the Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism. He was not the first to propose that the speed of light is constant for all observers, {{fact}} or that the aether is superfluous and not observable. He was not the first to recognize and explain how special relativity causes an ambiguity in defining simultaneity. {{fact}} He did not combine space and time into a four-dimensional spacetime in his special relativity papers until others had been doing it for a couple of years.{{fact}}
Einstein was not the first to observe the equation E=mc<sup>2</sup><ref>H. Poincare published it in 1900. [http://www.serve.com/herrmann/ein.htm]</ref> as a consequence of special relativity, or to foresee its application to nuclear binding energies or antimatter annihilation. He did not foresee a nuclear chain reaction and had to be persuaded about the possibility of an atomic bomb.
Einstein did not originate the idea of using metric tensors to reconcile gravity with special relativity. {{fact}} It was not his idea to describe gravity in covariant equations, and he published papers supposedly showing that it was impossible. {{fact}} He did not discover the Lagrangian formulation of general relativity, and was not the first to publish the field equations. He did not foresee the expansion of the universe, {{fact}} the possibility of black holes, {{fact}} or dark energy.
Einstein never developed a unified field theory of any significance. {{fact}} He published papers on quantum mechanics, but always insisted on a deterministic interpretation.
Many quotes are falsely attributed to Einstein. Here are a few. "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left." "We use only 10% of our brains." "Evil is simply the absence of God." "Originality is the art of concealing your sources."<!-- please show location of quotes attributed to Einstein and who said them if they are to be attributed to another individual -->
==References==
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