Who doesn’t know Albert Einstein? Because of its popularity, anything that smells of genius is often associated with its name.
The world figure who lived in 1879-1955 is one of the most famous scientists in history. Quoted from Live Science, his name has almost become a synonym for the word genius.
Besides E = mc^2, Einstein actually also discovered a series of other things. Want to know anything? Check out the list according to the Live Science website.
7 Einstein’s Inventions That Changed the World
1. Space-time
One of Einstein’s earliest achievements was the special theory of relativity. He found it when he was 26 years old.
Special relativity is one of the greatest scientific revolutions in human history. This concept changed the way physicists think about space and time.
When he discovered it, Einstein showed how space and time could be connected and interchanged with one another. The trick is through the speed of light of about 186,000 miles per second or 300 thousand kilometers per second.
2. E = mc^2
This very famous equation is a branch of special relativity. In traditional physics, mass measures the amount of matter contained in an object.
Meanwhile, energy is a property that an object has according to its motion and the forces acting on it. In addition, energy can exist in the absence of matter, for example in radio waves or in light.
On the other hand, Einstein said that mass and energy are the same things, as long as you multiply mass by c^2, to make sure they end up the same as energy.
3. Laser
The discovery of the laser is not often associated with Einstein, but in the end, it was his work that made this technology possible.
The term laser was coined in 1959. Laser stands for light amplification by stimulating the emission of radiation. According to the American Physical Society, as quoted from Live Science, stimulated emission is a concept that Einstein had developed more than 40 years earlier.
In 1917, Einstein had written a paper on the theory of quantum radiation. Among them explain how photons of light that pass through a substance, are able to stimulate the emission of further photons.
As a theorist, Einstein did nothing further about this idea. Meanwhile, other scientists recognized the enormous practical potential of stimulated emission too late.
4. Black Holes and Wormholes
Einstein discovered that giant objects, such as planets and stars, actually disrupt the structure of space and time. Thus, it is this disturbance or distortion that produces the effect we perceive as gravity.
Einstein explained general relativity through a series of complex equations, with a very wide range of implementations. Perhaps the most popular solution to Einstein’s equations is the solution proposed by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916 about black holes.
However, what is more interesting is the collaboration of Nathan Rosen and Einstein in 1935. Their thinking illustrates the possibility of a shortcut from one point in spacetime to another. The theory which was originally called the Einstein-Rosen bridge was later known to all science fiction fans as Wormholes.
5. The expanding universe
In 1915, the first thing Einstein did about his general theory of relativity was to apply it to the universe as a whole. However, the answer he got seemed wrong to him.
From what he got, it was implied that the structure of space was in a state of continuous expansion, pulling galaxies with it so that the distance between them continued to grow.
Einstein at the time thought that this could not be true. So he added the cosmological constant to his equation to produce a static universe.
However, in 1929, Edwin Hubble observed another galaxy and discovered that the universe was actually expanding, just as Einstein’s equations had originally predicted.
6. Atomic bomb
Einstein had an important role in the practical development of the first atomic bomb. In 1939, some of his colleagues warned of the possibility of nuclear fission and the terrible things that could happen if the Nazis had such a weapon.
According to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, Einstein was persuaded to raise concerns in a letter to then US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The final impact of Einstein’s letter was the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb against Japan at the end of World War II.
But it should be noted, although many famous scientists joined in the project, Einstein was not included in it. Einstein was denied a security clearance because of his political leanings, says the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
7. Gravity waves
In 2016, it was announced the discovery of gravitational waves which are a consequence or other branch of general relativity. Gravitational waves are tiny ripples that propagate through the fabric of space-time. It is often stated that Einstein had predicted the existence of these gravitational waves.
Einstein actually never really decided whether these gravitational waves were predicted or ruled out in theory. Astronomers took decades to figure this out in various ways.
The discovery of gravitational waves alone provides astronomers with a new means to observe the universe, including rare events such as black hole merging.