Einstein

Einstein is the biggest rock star of the 20th century

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Every now and then a news story is published where this or that scientist claims to have achieved something surprising: deny or confirm a theory put forward by Albert Einstein more than a hundred years ago. The unusual interest that the physicist arouses today is only the result of a process that already occurred while he was still alive: his status as a “star”, his status as celebrity. How is it possible that a theoretical physicist has achieved such fame and recognition? At Xataka we believe we have the answer: remove Adele and Taylor Swift because, behind Einstein’s casual hair, hides the biggest pop-rock star of the 20th century. Einstein’s story has everything to succeed, a story that could be called “the gravitational physics equation that made Spielberg cry”: that of a young Jewish man, shy, somewhat clumsy and with speech problems who fails his exams and, as he finishes his degree, cannot find a job. in yourshas to get to work in a gray patent office. That young man will take three years to revolutionize the world of physics and, by extension, the world in general. The tours Einstein spent much of the 1920s and 1930s on tour. Precisely, he was outside Germany when the Nazis took power and that, taking into account the desire they had for himsurely saved his life. He visited many places and there are hilarious anecdotes. Of course he was also in Spain. And the media and society at the time went a little crazy. Julio Camba wrote in El Sol that “the public that filled the classroom of the Faculty of Sciences. Mr. Einstein was welcomed with a great round of applause. Undoubtedly, all of us gathered there admired him a lot; but if someone asks us why we admired him, they will put us in quite a serious situation.” Cartoons like this image of Bagaria that we attach below filled the front pages of the newspapers in Madrid, Zaragoza and Barcelona. After all, he was already a Nobel Prize winner (the diamond disk of science). Thanks to that it became popular even among the popular classes, such as says historian Thomas Glickwalking down the street, a chestnut seller recognized him on the street and shouted to him “Long live the inventor of the automobile!“How long live it!” The groupies and the haters There is no rock star without groupies. That’s how it is. Fans sneaking into the singer’s house to steal a souvenir are a classic in the world of music. It also happened to Einstein. In late May or early June 1978, Michel Aron (newly named editor of New Jersey Monthly) approached a 27-year-old editor named Steven Levy and said, “I want you to find Einstein’s brain.” Rumors had been circulating for years about the brain in question. Steven Levy scoured the entire United States to find the coroner who performed the physicist’s autopsy. When he found Thomas S. Harvey He confessed that he had stolen the organ without the family’s permission and had been taking it around the United States for more than 30 years. Undoubtedly, Einstein also took the fan phenomenon to another level. Einstein some strong smear campaigns. It is logical, taking into account that among his detractors were some of the greatest experts on haterism in history. “100 scientists against Einstein“was perhaps the most aggressive campaign. But he resolved it with a phrase: “One hundred? Why so many? If I were wrong, only one would be enough…”. For the rest, the truth is that it must be recognized that he quickly became an endearing, distracted and somewhat crazy being. Einstein for a while They say that at a social gathering, Marilyn Monroe crossed paths with Albert Einstein, they started talking and, at some point, she said to him: “Professor, we should get married and have a child together. Can you imagine a baby with my beauty and intelligence?” Einstein very seriously responded: “Unfortunately I fear that the experiment will go the other way and we will end up with a son with my beauty and intelligence.” The anecdote, which is almost certainly lieshows the social and cultural stature of that Jew from Ulm called Albert Einstein. A carving that has generated countless cultural products. Some tremendously good. Become a symbol of peace, creativity and the use of science to help humanity, any excuse is good to celebrate it publicly. For our part, we just need to finish with what is perhaps the most important quote that Einstein said in his life. “Rest and be relatively good.” In Xataka | Einstein’s first violin had passed unnoticed. Until an auction house put it up for sale. In Xataka | What is a light year and why it is impossible to travel it in less than a year, according to Einstein’s relativity In Xataka | More than 100 years ago Einstein predicted gravitational lensing. Thanks to this we have discovered a “dark matter bridge” Image | Collab Media

His first data revalidates Einstein and put the dark matter on the map

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The Euclid telescope, launched in 2023 by the European Space Agency, has finished overwhelming its first great task. Designed to make a map in detail of the universe To help us understand dark matter and energy, Euclid has been analyzing three regions of heaven from point L2 of Lagrange. Despite being just the First mission data setwhich will extend at least until 2030, the European space telescope has already detected 26 million galaxies, some of which are 10.5 billion light years. Now the team, aided by volunteers and learning algorithms for reinforcement, has begun to publish the most complete and detailed map of the distribution of objects of the universe, which includes huge clusters of galaxies, bright quasars fed by supermassive black holes and gravitational lenses that divert the light of farthest objects. A first look at the Cosmic Network A deep field image of the Euclid space telescope Galaxies are not randomly distributed. They form a structure called Cosmic Network, similar to a web, whose filaments are made of ordinary matter and dark matter. Dark matter does not emit light, but affects the way galaxies are formed and evolved. Euclid accurately measures the shape, size and distance of galaxies to understand how the cosmic network is organized. He map that is makingwhose first three pieces have just completed, will be key to finding out what dark matter and dark energy are really. We know that dark matter exists because it gravitationally affects galaxies (it turns them faster than expected). And we know that there is a dark energy responsible for accelerating the universe. But they are a mystery. Different types of galaxies classified by human volunteers and the AI ​​of ESA Since its deployment, Euclid has sent 100 GB of data daily. It is impossible to manually classify each image, so scientists resorted to artificial intelligence and citizen science to classify 380,000 galaxies. 10,000 human volunteers collaborate in galaxyzoo.org To teach a so -called Zoobot to identify the different forms of galaxies. The volunteers classify the objects (“spirals”, “with arms”) and their responses are used to reset the AI ​​or readjust the accuracy of the algorithm. 5,000 strong gravitational lenses Gravitational lenses detected by Euclid One of the aspects that most excite scientists in the first Euclid data set are gravitational lenses. Euclid has already detected about 5,000 possible strong gravitational lenses, very rare objects that form obvious visual effects, such as arches or Einstein rings. These curvatures of space-time, predicted by the theory of general relativity, allow to observe distant objects that would otherwise be invisible, helping to understand how dark matter is distributed. It is expected that at the end of the mission, Euclid has identified about 100,000 strong lenses, multiplying the amount we currently know. Questions to solve The Euclid space telescope had a complicated deployment due to the accumulation of ice in its lens, but the ESA engineers managed to solve any setback. The results published today demonstrate the very high sensitivity of the telescope. During the next few years, Euclid will observe between 30 and 50 times these regions of the cosmos, accumulating more and more information and discovering new galaxies and phenomena. Added to the observations of the newly released NASA Spherex Telescopethe information we will have of the universe will increase exponentially. With the most detailed map of the universe, scientists will try to understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95% of the universe, and how they relate to each other, while solving other transcendental questions: what is the structure and history of the cosmic network? How has the expansion of the universe changed over time? Is the theory of the gravity of Einstein complete, or does it need large -scale modifications? Images | THAT In Xataka | 110 years later, Einstein continues to win bets: the Euclid telescope has discovered a ring in space-time

So we will never create an Einstein or a Newton

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We are almost playing the AGI With the fingers, apparently. We do not say it, they have been telling it for some time true personalities of the technological world. Let’s see: Sam Altman believes that he will arrive In a few thousand daysbut of course, you need to create Hype To raise more and more funds. XAI’s slogan, Elon Musk’s startup – known by His unfulfilled promises-, indicates that with its AI we can “understand the universe.” Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, also believes that We will create an AGI in five years (And meanwhile, he will swell Gpus). And demis Hassabis, CEO of Deepmind, It seems to coincidealthough we must admit that Google seems to be something more cautious with those statements. But all that are promises. Expectations Smoke. The unfortunate optimism of this industry has caused a colossal gold fever in which investments Bets in new startups and especially in data centers –Hello, Stargate– They are absolutely spectacular and more typical of a bubble. Can these expectations meet? Clear. But nothing ensures 1) When we can have an AGI and especially 2) that in fact we get to have it. And that is an important problem, because the expectations about AI have shot themselves, and that is dangerous. Is it a promising advance? Definitely. Is our world changing? For now, rather little. It must be taken into account that other past technological revolutions also took time and generated distrust and skepticism in the beginning. We have in fact famous cases of true zascas throughout the mouth in the technological field: Thomas Watson, president of IBM, said in 1943 “I think there is a world market for about five computers.” Bill Gates allegedly said –Although then denied it— that “640k (memory) should be enough for anyone” -. His great friend Steve Ballmer – who He has more money than him, That is to say— I laugh on the iPhone When it was launched. Robert Metcalfe, coinventor of the Ethernet standard, said In 1995 “I predict that it will soon become a supernova and collapse catastrophicly in 1996”. Then he recognized his mistake and literally He ate his words. There are many and important leg weather for people who theoretically knew a lot about what I was talking about. And all of them demonstrate one thing: predicting the future is not only impossible, but dangerous. And that makes us clear that perhaps we have to give a (great) opportunity to AI, no doubt. So we will never have an AI that Einstein or Newton just But today we may be waiting too much of her. It is just what he raised In a brief but brilliant essay in x Thomas Wolfco -founder and Chief Science officer of Huggin Face. According to him what they promised us – or what we are still talking about – is very dissent to what we really have. And what was promised and told is that the world of science will revolutionize. What will we have New medications, new materialsnew discoveries. And the reality is that although there is some news Really promisingthere are no revolutions for the moment. For Wolf what we have is “A country of men who say yes to everything on servers“, that is, that AI, although it is assertive and expresses its opinion firmly and safely, does not usually challenge users. And most importantly: it does not challenge what he knows. As he explained, many people fall into the mistake of thinking that people like Newton or Einstein were excellent students, and that genius comes when you manage to extrapolate those great students. As if making AI have the best student in the world was enough. And it is not: “To create an Einstein in a data center we do not need a system that has all the answers, but rather one that is capable of ask yourself things that nobody had thought Or no one had dared to ask. “ It is a powerful and probably true message. While Sam Altman said the Superintelligence I could accelerate the scientific discovery and Dario Amodei – the anthropic assured That AI will help us formulate priests for most types of cancer, reality is another. And the reality according to Wolf is that AI does not generate new knowledge to “by connecting previously unrelated facts. (…) simply fills the holes of what humans already knew.” Here perhaps the statement is somewhat negative, because the AI ​​does generate new knowledge and new content connecting precisely those data with which it is trained. We saw it recently In the field of microbiologyfor example, and also in all those works of text, image and video that make us consider what creativity is and if the machines can become creative. Wolf is not alone in that speech. Google François Chollet’s exingenero, now in front of the Benchmark Arc Prizecoincides. According to him, AI is able to memorize reasoning patterns – which are those used in reasoning models, such as O1 or Deepseek R1 – but it is not likely to reason alone and adapt to new situations. Thus, according to Wolf the current AI is like a fantastic and very applied student, but one who Do not challenge what has been taught. He has no incentives to question what he knows and propose ideas that go against the data with which he has been trained. It is limited to answering questions already formulated. This expert affirms that we need an AI that wonders itself “what happens if everyone is in error with this?” although everything that has been published on a certain subject suggests otherwise. The solution it proposes is to leave the current benchmarks. He talks about an “evaluation crisis” that makes the tests focus on questions that have clear, obvious and closed answers. Instead, it should be valued especially that AI is capable of bold approaches and go against the facts. “That may ask” questions not obvious “that lead her to opt for” … Read more

We have dedicated six years to process images of a black hole to reach a conclusion: Einstein was right

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Several years have passed since the Telescope of the Event Horizon (EHT) published the famous first image of a black holetaken in 2017. The photo has yes doquestioned by some researchersbut the EHT last year published a second image of the black hole M87*, taken in 2018. The new photo not only validated the original, but once again corroborates the Einstein’s general relativity theory. The largest radio telescope. To obtain the image of the black hole in the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, we needed to build a radio telescope about 10,000 kilometers in diameter. Since the land has a diameter of 13,000, the EHT took a more reasonable path: Extract data from different receptors, telescopes and radio antennas from all over the world and combine them by interferometry. The EHT produced 250 Petabytes of information in a one -week interval. It took a couple of years to process all the information and publish an image. But first, he added a new telescope to the project (the GLT of Greenland) and took the second image of M87* that saw the light in 2024. Six years processing. The second image of the black hole M87*, taken a year and ten days after the original, in April 2018, took six to process and publish, but it was worth it. On the one hand, proves that 2017’s observations were fine. The Persistence of the size of the central shadow In both images confirms the original estimate of the dimensions of the black hole, dissipating the criticisms about the simulations dependence to calculate this data. On the other, comparing the two images shows that the ring of matter around the black hole is rotating as expected. The brightest part has moved 30 degrees, which is consistent with the models of the hole. We are seeing what Einstein predicted. Located 55 million light years from us, M87* is a supermassive black hole in the center of an elliptical galaxy that manipulates the subject with its magnetic fields and expels the one that does not consume at speeds close to that of light. The image of 2018, like its predecessor of 2017, reflects this tumultuous activity with a bright ring around it. This validates the theory that the diameter of the event horizon, and therefore that of the black hole itself, is intrinsically linked to its mass, framing a central shadow that Albert Einstein’s equations predicted more than a century ago. Why it looks like a donut. That brilliant donut called accretion disc should be very fine, but we get very dispersed and unemployed. Throughout the trip he has made through space, his light has dispersed by the dust in interstellar space, which leads us to see it in this way. Despite the dispersion, the image is clear enough to confirm not only Black hole rotation but also the alignment of its rotational axis with a powerful stream of material (“relativistic jet”) that moves away from M87. The importance of reproducing results. Although it will take six years to arrive, this vindic confirmation the findings of the EHT and is seen as a milestone for global scientific collaboration, in addition to a robust confirmation that we are facing the shadow of a black hole and the matter that orbit it. Future data analysis will help better understand how magnetic fields and plasma flows within the accretion disc interact. In the next decade, we could even have videos of the evolution of M87* in time thanks to the next generation program of the EHT (NGEHT), which promises images of greater resolution and a broader range of frequencies. All thanks to the collaboration of observatories from all over the world. Image | Event horizon telescope In Xataka | A group of astrophysics has knocked down Kerr’s hypothesis. Black holes are still a source of surprises In Xataka | There is water since the beginning of time: NASA has found 140 billion oceans to 12,000 million light years *An earlier version of this article was published in February 2024

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