Even Einstein’s Blunders Were Blunders
Dear Magicians,
Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In fact, that’s the origin of the name “Monday M.A.G.I.C. Messages”!
But here’s the thing Clarke didn’t say: any sufficiently honest scientist is indistinguishable from a student.
Yesterday was Galileo’s birthday — 462 years ago. This week I’ve been thinking about Galileo’s book The Assayer—his 1619 masterpiece of scientific rhetoric. In it, Galileo declares nature is written in the language of mathematics. Beautiful. Revolutionary. And also the same book where he got comets completely wrong.
Galileo insisted comets were atmospheric illusions—optical tricks of reflected sunlight. Tycho Brahe had already proven, through precise parallax measurements, that comets were celestial bodies far beyond the Moon. Galileo dismissed him anyway. Why? Partly because Tycho’s cosmological system wasn’t pure Copernicanism. Partly because Galileo was stubborn. Mostly because even geniuses are human.
Einstein made similar mistakes. He called the cosmological constant his “greatest blunder”—then dark energy resurrected it. He spent decades chasing a unified field theory while ignoring quantum mechanics. He dismissed gravitational waves as mathematical artifacts. LIGO proved him wrong in 2015.
The Stoics had a practice called dokimazein—assaying coins to test their authenticity. Merchants could hear the difference between real and counterfeit by the ring of the metal. We do the same with hundred-dollar bills, rubbing them, holding them to light.
But how often do we assay our own ideas with the same rigor?
The lesson isn’t that Galileo and Einstein were frauds. The lesson is that even the greatest minds require friction to find truth. The mistake isn’t being wrong—it’s refusing to test the coin.
Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week,
Brian
Oh no! I was wrong, I thought you were into the deep magic. The “Open the Pod Bay Doors” neon sign in your background, and the Clarke quote, fit the evidence better than you being super into magic. I googled your acronym, and it stands for Memory, Appearance, Genius, Image, and Conversation. This is social signaling theory, but it still falls within the realm of illusionist performance art. Most magic has an often hilariously simple gimmick.
https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/close-up-magic/raven-starter-kit/
Most crackpots want to prove they are right. But they miss out on the great satisfaction that comes from stumping professors. That is the appeal of magic tricks and asking tough questions.
I suppose you are going to tell me that the steady state theory is falsifiable. But has it been falsified in a simple way that does not require multi-billion-dollar devices and an army of grad students and postdocs to rule it out on statistical grounds? Was there a verdict and root cause on the Hubble tension? I would have an easier time trusting science if funding was independent of positive results.
If I had to pick one physics axiom, it would be F = m·a. However, it should always be written as F = dP/dt, because if mass is not constant, we must use the chain rule and can obtain a nonlinear term like the one that is present in the Navier-Stokes equation. A particle is imagined to be like a hard sphere with a constant mass density, which means
F = dP/dt simplifies to F = mA
Because dm/dt = 0.
As modern physicists, we know the uncertainty principle is a law of nature. Now, suppose I have a particle with a nuclear cross-section, a probability area, and it travels through space, carving out a volume of probability space given by its cross-section, projected along a length L. This space it carves out overlaps with the uncertainty in the position of another quantum particle. By decreasing the uncertainty in position by a probability volume, does this measuring particle increase the volume of uncertainty in the momentum of the quantum particle by the same amount?
According to F = dP/dt, a change in momentum is a force. Does a particle that reduces another particle’s position uncertainty by briefly occupying that position change the momentum uncertainty of another particle? Does that change in momentum create a force between them? In this interaction, momentum is not a constant, but is the mass density a constant?
If the Schrodinger, Dirac, and Klein-Gordon equations are linear differential equations, then is a measurement nonlinear? Are Einstein’s field equations linear or nonlinear?