Christophorus 315
Christophorus 315
Page 47
Anniversary
The Einstein Formula
By
Elmar Brümmer
Illustration
Bernd Schifferdecker
The experience of relativity of time and speed, for which Albert Einstein laid the theoretical
basis just one hundred years ago, can be wonderfully comprehended in practice in motorsports.
A search for physical traces on a night at Le Mans.
The place where the theory according to which everything in this
universe is relative becomes concrete, is fairly difficult to get to. It
helps to have an all-wheel-drive car, and to know your way
around the French department of Sarthe. We’ve left far behind us
the main bleachers of Le Mans and the flashing lights of the
amusement park, installed for those who think twenty-four hours
is a long time. First, the road runs parallel to the track, then
under it. Finally, the asphalt of a little connecting road leads of
into a forest pathway. At some point, the car heads into the
bushes, and you have to travel the last steps up to the magical
place on foot—using a flashlight and fighting willow branches
whipping into your face. The thicket opens into a clearing, and
then a little grassy knoll appears. Behind that is a black hole.
That was relatively a lot of time and space for an introduction.
But after all, this is heavy stuff—earth-shaking even. If you want
to feel the theory of relativity, motorsports style, in combination
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with an enhanced goose-bump factor, you have to fight your
way through. Here is where you can see the proof of Einstein’s
thesis that time is not an absolute quantum, but only exists in relation to space and speed. It’s a natural platform, an insider’s tip,
where you can see the endless Hunaudières straightaway where
it ends—in a sharp hairpin, where the track runs back toward
Mulsanne. Wait there till dark.
Suddenly, two points of light appear out of nowhere at the left,
accompanied by a sound that proclaims enormous engine power.
Soon, the lights turn into a silhouette, the noise becomes infernal, a white object—it’s a ’98 Porsche 911 GT1—darts past,
brakes screaming, plates shining, the color of the points of light
changing as your head swings over to the right. They’re red
now, and disappearing rapidly from view. When something
moves at that kind of speed, it burns itself into your perception
at a number of different speeds: At the decisive moment, time A
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Christophorus 315
www.physics2005.org
www.einsteinjahr.de
Time passes in pensiveness on our thinkers’ hill, between two
sports car appearances. If you love race cars that still look like
sporty production cars, you could sit here for hours. How long
does a night in Le Mans last? Good question. Between twilight
and flashlight, the only concept of time that counts is the one
Einstein proposed with a watchword: “Time is what you see on
your watch.” That platitude may not fit the fearless thinker from
Ulm who changed world history with his thesis published one
hundred years ago—and not just the physical world. His famous
poster portrait—fit to adorn coffee cups—showing the scientist
with his tongue stuck out, somehow seems to be his essence: If
you want to give an impulse toward changed thinking on a large
scale, you have to be provocative. Today, the man would not just
be a prophet, he’d be a pop star. After all, he gave experimental
physics—a rather dry subject—something like sex appeal. Can’t
science be a little enjoyable, too? Especially when it moves from
simple experiments into an abstract dimension, of which we
know nothing but the formula E = mc2 (for the scientificallyminded: that explains the Brownian molecular motion, according to which energy and mass are transformable into one another,
combined by the square of the velocity of light; a fundamental
theorem of nuclear physics). That was, so to speak, the “Formula
One” of modern physics.
The United Nations has proclaimed 2005 the International Year
of Physics. The German-speaking countries have taken the occasion of parallel anniversaries—one hundred years since Einstein’s publication of the general theory of relativity, fifty years
since his death—to celebrate the Einstein Year. The man who
was granted Swiss citizenship at the age of twenty-two in 1901
was a genius. Most of the tests carried out today in reference to
his theories want not to confirm the professor but rather to disprove him. Only that hasn’t worked too well yet. Einstein’s
strokes of genius play in the great cosmos—which we have already addressed with the aid of the twenty-four-hour race—and
in the micro-cosmos, the realm of quantum mechanics. The
leaps that he made with his essays, and that humankind followed, were respectively gigantic. And yet, they were, initially, a
sideshow. Einstein had gotten a job in 1902 at the Swiss Patent
Office in Berne; in his spare time, he did his PhD.
His annus mirabilis, his so-called miracle year, was exactly one
hundred years ago. The twenty-six-year-old student completed
his dissertation and published his pioneering theories—not
only the special theory of relativity, but also the explanation for
the photoelectric effect, for which he would receive the Nobel
Prize in 1921. He became a adjunct professor for theoretical
physics in Zurich in 1909. His general theory of relativity, according to which gravity bends space and deflects light, would
be proven by a solar eclipse over Brazil and West Africa ten
years later.
“I never worry about the future. It will come soon enough,” is
one of the sayings that have been attributed to Albert Einstein.
Death caught up with him in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 18,
1955. All his life, he would coquettishly parry remarks about his
brilliance with “I have no particular talent, I’m just passionately
curious.” He would have been damn good out there on the hillside near Mulsanne. And that reminds us of another quotation:
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“If you want a happy life, connect it with a goal.”
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seems to pass more slowly—a phenomenon reported, too, by
those who spend the nights in the cockpits. Body and mind seldom travel at the same speed. These are moments apart, moments that give you a quick glance into the high physics of motor sports. If you see racecars thundering at you at 400 km/h
(250 mph), it’s hard to imagine how fast the speed of light—
about 300,000 km/s (186,000 mps) —must truly be. Only one
thing’s for sure: Nothing is faster. The matter starts getting
philosophical, as you try to formulate the question: Can time be
simply measured, like electric current? Could you stop it the
same way, as with an electric light switch? It gets under your
skin, and under your skull.