Albert Einstein proposed the cosmological constant and firmly believed that the universe is static, dismissing the views of other scientists.
Albert Einstein is a great scientist, but he made mistakes just like anyone else. For him, his greatest scientific mistake was “wanting the universe to remain still.” This perspective led Einstein to modify his equations, but he was mistaken in doing so, as reported by IFL Science on June 16.
Scientist Albert Einstein in 1947. (Photo: Internet).
In 1915, Einstein published the General Theory of Relativity, which far surpassed the limits of the Special Theory of Relativity. It became a comprehensive theory of gravity, explaining not only our universe but also very different ones. However, in describing gravity for mankind’s universe, he encountered a problem.
Einstein and most scientists of his time believed that the universe is static: it has always been so and has never changed, at least on a large scale. The Milky Way has always been the same and nothing would change.
However, when adding numbers to the calculations to ensure the Milky Way’s eternal existence, something peculiar happened. Everything ended up collapsing into a singularity (black holes also appeared from the equations but were not observable at the time). The Milky Way was not collapsing, so to resolve this philosophical conflict, Einstein added a parameter to his equations: the cosmological constant.
The cosmological constant had no observational evidence other than the fact that things were not collapsing into a point. However, in physics, proposing the existence of something before it can be observed is not unheard of.
When creating a physical parameter associated with something that may not exist, the author should perhaps be open to hints and corrections. However, Einstein was quite sensitive when questioned about it. He criticized and often insulted scientists who pointed out that his theory and observations were beginning to conflict with the cosmological constant. Within two decades, the prevailing consensus overwhelmed Einstein, leading him to abandon the cosmological constant, referring to it as his “greatest mistake.”
However, the story did not end there. In 1998, astronomers discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This mysterious and invisible driving factor is called dark energy. The best way currently to describe it in the equations of the General Theory of Relativity is indeed a cosmological constant. Although it differs from the parameter Einstein originally proposed, it remains a cosmological constant. Perhaps in the future, scientists will discover that dark energy is not what they think, and the equations will be altered again, but these mistakes pave the way for humanity to explore the cosmos.
