Will there ever be another Einstein? This is the undercurrent of conversatio

游客2024-03-07  19

问题     Will there ever be another Einstein? This is the undercurrent of conversation at Einstein memorial meetings throughout the year. A new Einstein will emerge, scientists say. But it may take a long time. After all, more than 200 years separated Einstein from his nearest rival, Isaac Newton.
    Many physicists say the next Einstein hasn’t been born yet, or is a baby now. That’s because the quest for a unified theory that would account for all the forces of nature has pushed current mathematics to its limits. New math must be created before the problem can be solved.
    But researchers say there are many other factors working against another Einstein emerging anytime soon.
    For one thing, physics is a much different field today. In Einstein’s day, there were only a few thousand physicists worldwide, and the theoreticians who could intellectually rival Einstein probably would fit into a streetcar with seats to spare.
    Education is different, too. One crucial aspect of Einstein’s training that is overlooked is the years of philosophy he read as a teenager—Kant, Schopenhauer and Spinoza, among others. It taught him how to think independently and abstractly about space and time, and it wasn’t long before he became a philosopher himself.
    "The independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan (工匠) or specialist and a real seeker after truth," Einstein wrote in 1944.
    And he was an accomplished musician. The interplay between music and math is well known. Einstein would furiously play his violin as a way to think through a knotty physics problem.
    Today, universities have produced millions of physicists. There aren’t many jobs in science for them, so they go to Wall Street and Silicon Valley to apply their analytical skills to more practical and rewarding efforts.
    "Maybe there is an Einstein out there today," said Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, "but it would be a lot harder for him to be heard."
    Especially considering what Einstein was proposing.
    "The actual fabric of space and time curving? My God, what an idea!" Greene said at a recent gathering at the Aspen Institute. "It takes a certain type of person who will bang his head against the wall because you believe you’ll find the solution."
    Perhaps the best examples are the five scientific papers Einstein wrote in his "miracle year" of 1905. These "thought experiments" were pages of calculations signed and submitted to the prestigious journal Annalen der Physik by a virtual unknown. There were no footnotes or citations.
    What might happen to such a submission today?
    "We all get papers like those in the mail," Greene said. "We put them in the junk file." [br] What did the academic circles know about Einstein when he submitted five scientific papers in 1905?

选项 A、He often forgot footnotes or citations in papers.
B、He was little known when it comes to academics.
C、He was known as a young genius in math calculations.
D、He was rejected because of his "thought experiments".

答案 B

解析 细节题。根据题干中的when he submitted five scientific papers定位到原文第十二段。该段第二句提到,在1905年爱因斯坦提交5篇科学论文时,他在学术界还无人知晓。B项表述与原文相符,故选B。原文中说的是爱因斯坦的论文没有脚注或引用,而没有说他经常忘了写脚注或引用,故排除A项;爱因斯坦当时还并不为人所知,故排除C项;原文中说到爱因斯坦将“思想实验”论文提交了但是没有说他被拒绝,排除D项。
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