
What were Einstein and Gödel talking about? (2005) - RiderOfGiraffes
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/28/050228crat_atlarge?currentPage=all
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splat
_If I were to pull out a pair of binoculars and look at your speeding car, I
would actually see its length contracted and you moving in slow motion
inside._

This is not quite true. If you were to actually observe a relativistic object
with your eye, you would not observe the object to be contracted in the
direction of its motion. To quote A. French:

"It seems almost incredible in retrospect, but for over 50 years after
Einstein's 1905 paper there was an unchallenged belief among physicists that
the Lorentz contraction of a moving body could be seen or photographed. ...
When proper account is taken of the time for light to travel to a stationary
observer's eye from different parts of a moving object, one recognizes that
the appropriate instants at which light must start out from various points of
the body must be different, and hence are associated with different positions
of the body as a whole. The general result of this is that the body appears
distorted."

French then goes on to describe the case of a moving rod and the case of a
moving rectangular board. Were you to actually see either of these objects
moving relativistically, they would not appear contracted, but would instead
appear rotated.

It's a subtle point and it was not recognized until 1959 by J. Terrell.

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caudicus
While reading this I was wondering about Godel's constitutional loophole to
allow a dictatorship and Google'd upon a hacker news discussion of the same
topic: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447852>

~~~
muerdeme
It's interesting that the Constitution loophole story seems to be based on
hearsay. The New Yorker is pretty meticulous about fact-checking.

~~~
ableal
The quickest and latest summary (linked in the discussion caudicus posted
above) is probably this: <http://blog.plover.com/law/Godel-
dictatorship-3.html>

Follow to <http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/> to get the PDF of one
participant's telling. The first page is a handwritten letter, but the story
is typewritten.

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raganwald
A little more reading material:

[http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/G/Godel_universe.h...](http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/G/Godel_universe.html),
and: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel_metric>

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ableal
Searching for a detail, I found that this piece is reprinted in this book: _E
= Einstein: His Life, His Thought, and His Influence on Our Culture_ , by
Donald Goldsmith, Marcia Bartusiak (
[http://books.google.com/books?id=zGzcV40b3IkC&lpg=PP1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=zGzcV40b3IkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q=&f=false)
)

[The detail was the name of the founder of the Vienna circle, murdered in 1936
- it was the philosopher of science Moritz Schlick.]

The table of contents looks good. _Einstein's Bovine Dreams_ would be a good
name for a band ...

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RyanMcGreal
Incidentally:

> As another member of the institute, the physicist Freeman Dyson, observed...

This would be the same physicist who, among his many accomplishments, came up
with the concept of the Dyson Sphere.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere>

~~~
DTrejo
To see him and his son speak, along with possible Craig Venter:

[http://www.brown.edu/Research/CCMB/Conferences/SYMPOSIUMMAY2...](http://www.brown.edu/Research/CCMB/Conferences/SYMPOSIUMMAY2010/info.htm)

I'm definitely going to be there; email me if you're going/interested.

~~~
pchristensen
Holy geez, that's an awesome set of speakers! I wish I could go to that
conference.

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butterfi
Great read! There's lots to ponder, but this cracked me up:

In referring to the Pink Flamingos Godel's wife put in their front lawn, Godel
says "urchtbar herzig," or “awfully charming." If that isn't the greatest
definition of kitsch, I don't know what is.

[edited for clarity]

~~~
eru
Godel would probably have said "furchtbar herzig".

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jimbokun
It seems to me a certain definition of Heaven could be eternally accompanying
Einstein and Gödel on their walks to and from the office, trying to understand
just what the hell it is they are talking about.

(Or Hell, depending on your disposition towards such things.)

