Educating Carlton: Part 1

Can we trust Einstein?

Boss-Einstein Matter

The best test of a theory is not whether it can describe what we already know, it is can it describe what we do not know. Einstein developed some theory. It described a lot of stuff we already knew and did a pretty good job of it. It also described a lot of stuff we didn’t know, and who can say how good a job it did there? Much of that unknown stuff is still unknown. However, … In the 1920’s (?) a theorist named Boss proposed a new state of matter. The nature of theoretical physics is this: It’s tough. Boss was visionary, but wasn’t scientist enough to confirm what he thought, even theoretically. That’s no slam on Boss. As I said, theoretical physics is tough. Probably harder than Mt. Everest. A lot of people can make theories about reaching the summit, few can actually do it. He did the reasonable thing, he sent his theory to Einstein. Einstein ran it through and proved it, theoretically. Big deal, lots of people can make a theory and who can say how good it is? Over 30 years later technology had advanced enough to produce, for a short time, the first (probably ever in the entire universe) BEM. It has now been produced using several different elements, enough to say that it is not anomalous. It has probably never occurred naturally because it only exists at extremely cold temperatures. So cold that wherever there has been matter to be converted to this state it has been too hot to do so. By “too hot” I mean 1/100th of a degree C absolute. Way hot. Make a mental note because I’m sure to come back to this for “Thinking outside the box,” a later installment. The important thing here is that Einstein’s theories predicted not just a reaction, but the existence of something that had never even been observed. Kudos to the scientists that came up with air conditioning. They theorized ways to produce cold air and make ice and, and, and. But they knew that cold air already existed. They had handled ice from nature before they manufactured it. Einstein’s theories predicted something that had never been and proved out to be correct. His theories may not be perfect, even he thought this, but they do pass muster. Einstein was able to work out those theories – such ability being a mixture of science, art and magic – to predict BEM. For this reason we can trust the theory. Others have those capabilities and have been able to work out the theory to predict plenty else. Because these predictions are legitimate resolutions of the same theories we can trust them as possible.