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GraemeSkinner

Member

From: Eden Hall, Cumbria

Registered: 2004-02-20

Posts: 563

Website

Re: Einstein Year - A year celebrating physics

http://www.einsteinyear.org/]WEBLINK

from the website

What is Einstein Year?
Einstein Year is the UK & Ireland's contribution to World Year of Physics (WYP) and marks the centenary of the publication in 1905 of Einstein's three ground-breaking papers on special relativity, the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. These papers provided the foundation of modern physics, and activities throughout Einstein Year will explore ideas in contemporary physics as well as showing how our everyday lives are influenced by Einstein's legacy.

Experiments, info, etc on the website, what I found funny though was the poem by Sir Patrick Moore (full version on website)

"Futility" - Sir Patrick Moore
The deep futility of all ephemeral things
Which stir the soul to unimagined dreams
Of Brussels sprouts, and spinach in the snow...........

Have a look.

Graeme

-EDIT- I did search for a while on this topic as I thought I'd posted it before, could not see it anywhere though.

---

There was a young lady named Bright.
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
in a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
--Arthur Buller--

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Einstein Year - A year celebrating physics

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s … Scientists debate wait on "new Einstein"

*Interesting new article from Yahoo!  So he played the violin?  Mentions math and music connection.  Don't know much about Einstein personally.  Article mentions how times have changed, today he'd have had a harder time being heard, etc.

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

Gennaro

Member

From: Eta Cassiopeiae (no, Sweden re

Registered: 2003-03-25

Posts: 591

Re: Einstein Year - A year celebrating physics

Article mentions how times have changed, today he'd have had a harder time being heard, etc.

Actually, today he would have been laughed right out of the seminar. The astrophysics community before Einstein wasn't a mystic sect basing its beliefs on an a priori defiance of logic.
:;):

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Einstein Year - A year celebrating physics

Article mentions how times have changed, today he'd have had a harder time being heard, etc.

Actually, today he would have been laughed right out of the seminar. The astrophysics community before Einstein wasn't a mystic sect basing its beliefs on an a priori defiance of logic.
:;):

*Wow, you've just reminded me of how very little I know about the culture -- or cultures -- within the science community.  But off course, as I'm not part of it.  Probably my ideas of what is and what isn't, what is considered sacred and profane, how much Group Think might (or might not) dominate, are entirely "off."  :-\ 

Oh well, it won't cramp my enjoyment of science.  But it makes me sad, on a social level. 

--Cindy

---

We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

Gennaro

Member

From: Eta Cassiopeiae (no, Sweden re

Registered: 2003-03-25

Posts: 591

Re: Einstein Year - A year celebrating physics

Oh, don't be sad, Cindy. I didn't mean to sound dead serious. (Hard coming off on the right tangent in foreign languages sometimes.) Thankfully, there are a lot of cultures within academia. Some of the best are probably within natural sciences, I guess.