Einstein’s Other Theory of Everything

Einstein completed his theory of general relativity in 1915 when he was 37 years old. What did he do for the remaining 40 years of his life? He continued developing his masterwork of course! Feeling that his theory was incomplete, Einstein pursued a unified field theory. Though he ultimately failed, the ideas he came up with were quite interesting. I have read a lot of old Einstein papers in the past weeks and here is my summary of what I believe he tried to do.

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#science #einstein #physics

[richardthompson]

I know some people will say it's too technical, while some say it's too dumbed down. I'm here to muddy the waters further and say you are presenting the information just right! Thank you for these well thought out presentations of dense material.

[USMiner]

I love when you present little hidden gems like this. I'd never run across this idea and physics history otherwise. Perfect level of technical explanation, as usual too.

[louislesch]

That idea that spacetime curled up onto itself is what makes particles is explored in a set of papers by Dr. Howard Perko. He has derived the equations from an idea that spacetime can be represented as hyper surface tension. So it’s not just a membrane, it can also have fluid dynamic properties as well and GR comes out if shear is set to zero. I think he is on the right track and I sincerely hope that you at least take a good look at his papers.

[michaelpettersson]

Finding flaws in Einstein's theories isn't disrespectful of Einstein. Improving on his search are actually to honour him.

[AAjax]

She used ALGOL/C/Java/... style comment markers to start+end her rant. Just when I thought I couldn't love the channel more!

[Zurpanik]

I'm trying to get some work done for a project of mine and I need interesting videos playing and couldn't find any until finally you popped up! I dread what it'll be like 13 minutes from now...

[ultrametric]

It's great to see ANYBODY talking about this finally. But I must point out a very much missing historical point - Weyl got the unification ball rolling in 1918 with an extension of Riemannian geometry in which the length scale was localized as a field. This brings in the A_mu as the "gauge field", which is where the term originated. Weyl's idea doesn't work in 4D because there are no irreducible Lagrange densities that are both coordinate scalars and gauge invariant. However it DOES work in 6D and allows a complete, irreducible solution to the problem. Einstein was right, again. (Look for "Gravitation and Electrodynamics over SO(3, 3)" if your are interested. It works in principle for any gauge group, but the calculations have only been done for U(1), which was hard enough by itself.) BTW Pauli showed the KK theory was itself reducible in that any generally covariant theory can be patched onto GR this way. The gravitational and electromagnetic potentials are physically different things after all.

[MrStevos]

When you talk about Einstein & show equations, you get excited and talk faster... BUT ! When you talk about Einstein & actual equations, is when us normal humans need you to talk slower !😁

[moocow]

These topics, GR, QFT, and their crossover and history are so important; please keep covering them

[dmback]

This is one aspect of the Wolfram physics project. That maybe particles are not elementary but rather an emergent thing in spacetime.

Their spacetime is actually space, on the form of a graph, and time, in the form of rewrites of the graph.

So it's not fundamentally equations, instead is an operational deception on how space and time actually works.

And particles could then be some kind of "knots" in the graph, analogous to how a knot on a rope is an emergent phenomenon of the rope itself. You can move the knot on the rope but it's still only rope...

I find this exciting as this is an entirely different paradigm to try to tackle the problem of a theory of everything.

[Mia-hr]

Is there an explanation, why gravity and electromagentism follow the same law of distance, namely, decrease with the square of the distance

[johnkeck]

I'm glad you're keeping Einstein's ideas alive, Sabine. We need to learn from history, both the good and the bad. Btw the idea that matter is the same as space (i.e., "extension") goes back to Descartes. The analytical-geometrical branch of physics (such as GR; as opposed to the thermodynamics-QM branch) is all downstream of Descartes.

[alfred-vzti]

hypnotic. i nod my head, i smile, and at the end of the exposition i have learned that einstein spent half his life wandering through physics to no avail.
there is a lesson in this: if you must study physics, do it in your spare time, but concentrate on cabinet-making or pottery. you have something to show for your time on earth.

[PerpetualScience]

Wow, this is exactly what I'm currently researching! It's technically just vacuum GR, but I've found that it seems to explain a lot. I've already overcame the issue Einstein had at 3:01 . I'll send you an email about it. Regarding 5:35, it could if you discard the cylindrical condition. Regarding 9:45, Teleparallelism is an equivalent formalism to 1915's GR. Both give the same predictions for vacuum GR, the case where Ricci curvature, torsion, and nonmetricity are 0. Consequently, Kaluza-Klein theory can be reformulated in tetrad formalism with more than one compact space, which can be more complicated than a 1-sphere. I suspect that Teleparallelism's Kaluza-Klein variant is more mathematically elegant looking than 1915's GR's Kaluza-Klein. I can also share with you my reasoning why this can still give rise to quantum effects. It actually has to do with a Superdeterministic formalism of GR I've been working on.

[SB-juyf]

It’s so funny to listen to you - i understand nothing, but it’s like watching Spaceship Enterprise

[alexmikhylov]

I'm not fat, my spacetime is curved in a particular way

[martineldritch]

Einstein's relativity was so dammed elegant that he couldn't believe the quantum world was any less elegant. But I'm no Einstein..or Hossenfelder for that matter, great videos thank you

[kylebowles]

I like these high level videos, it's more contextualized than just a history lesson and connects some dots that aren't obvious to people outside the field

[Thomas-gk]

Wonderful, Sabine! Exciting interesting content

[alansnyder]

I think this is a fantastic video and topic. My appreciation to Sabine for this.

As an undergrad engineering physics major, I read the book "Subtle is the Lord" by Abraham Pais and took the time to learn German specifically so I could read his book about Einstein's later papers. I studied Kaluze-Klein and the Einstien-Rosen papers specifically. I'm not smart enough to work at that level but do hope someone that is continuing with that line "particles and space-time warped in specific ways" idea. I think Sabine is right it is a line of thought that needs to be investigated more.