Undoubtedly, Albert Einstein was a genius, because he found a way to mathematically describe what is daily happening all over the known universe. His relativity theory has been popularized with a simplified equation, E=MC2 (energy is equal to mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light), that he himself understood as imperfect, tried to fix, and declared valid only for objects at rest. However, Einstein is still fundamental, because, from deepening his studies, science has shown that human faculties are not enough for getting absolute truths. The page briefly explains some of Einstein’s biggest mistakes, as simply as possible. The purpose is confirming that the best human virtues are always humility and prudence.
The basic notion of energy is “capacity of doing work”, and is a peculiar property, according to Einstein, of mass, whose main law is that of its conservation. The first problem is that photons have energy but no mass, so that light has no mass. The second problem is that energy is not the ability of doing something, but the power to do it. It means that you can’t have motion without energy, but, unfortunately, energy is not necessarily linked to motion, and can be potential. Definitely, Einstein was wrong, mass and energy are not manifestations of the same thing.
Einstein affirmed that time is linked to space and mass, and is a dimension, more precisely the fourth dimension. He proposed an experiment with two clocks, for demonstrating that at the equator a clock goes slower than at the pole. Definitely, he was wrong, because of gravitational time dilation. He didn’t believe in the existence of gravitational waves, but, in the year 2015, science has proven the opposite fact. More than that, no one exactly know what time is, and it doesn’t seem to be depending on anything. Perhaps, time is the, restless and unstoppable, factor that brings energy to all the energies. At this point, science can’t go further, and only the consolation of philosophy is left to mankind.
Recently, scientists have discovered something about black holes, cosmic realities that Einstein wasn’t able to adapt to his theories. Moreover, Einstein didn’t know that the universe is expanding, at a speed faster than the one of light, even if he professed that nothing can be faster than light. Now, science knows that the universe is mostly (more than the 70%) made of a totally unknown energy, named “dark energy”. Where is the universe going to? I think that it’s going to the end of time, but I can’t prove that. I feel the duty to remember that we are observing the light coming from cosmic objects very far away, and for that our observations might be dated to about 13 billion years ago, while everything is constantly changing, second after second. It means that no one can exclude that the end of the universe is a process already started.
Of course, this is not the right blog for going deeper and deeper into sciences. Despite, I believe I can come to a pair of conclusions. The first is that life deserves the maximum respect, because of its complexity and rarity. The second is that mankind can’t trust itself too much, because even geniuses have been many times wrong.
File name is “Max Look’s mini-mix, humanism in science (Sept 2026)”, about 23’ of dance tracks related to scientific topics, especially of the electronic genre.
That’s the way of science, the playlist:
Capucino - genetica elettronica
Quant - once upon a quant
Jamiroquai - automaton
K-Scope - dawn of a new age
Daft Punk - robot rock
Sirius - uranium (Loda remix)
Tom Vedvik - high frontier
Jimmy Castor Bunch - space age
Mike Theodore Orchestra - moon trek
Meco - galactic
Mythos - powerslide
Crusaders - cosmic reign
Block 16 - electocution
Vangelis - pulstar
Rod n To(h) - metal fingers in my body
Kraftwerk - radioactivity
René Breithbarth - sci-fi
Giorgio Moroder - e = mc2
