Einsteins light-beam thought experiments and relativity

Rather, we know that Einstein devoted some effort during the years leading up to his discovery of 1905, to so-called "emission" theories of light and electromagnetism. Einstein eventually found such theories objectionable and untenable. I propose that Einstein's thought experiment provided an especially cogent way of formulating those objections and thereby supported Einstein in his final decision: it give up an emission theory in favor of retaining the celebrated Maxwell-Lorentz theory, but with a radically altered theory of space and time.

Writing a half century later in ... Notes, Einstein recounted a thought experiment conducted while he was a 16 year old student in 1896 that marked his first steps towards special relativity. "...a paradox upon which I had already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light with ...

At the age of sixteen, Einstein imagined chasing after a beam of light. He later · recalled that the thought experiment had played a memorable role in his · development of special relativity.

They will gradually roll toward ... it has curved the fabric of the trampoline. Einstein was able to visualize this happening to the four-dimensional fabric of space and time....

Here, watch animations of Einstein chasing a light beam (which helped lead him to his theory of special relativity) and riding an elevator in free-fall (which convinced him that gravity and acceleration are one and the same).

But when you insist that you saw the police officer speeding neck and neck with the light beam, within a hairsbreadth of catching up to it, he says you are crazy; he never even got close. To Einstein, this was the central, nagging mystery: How was it possible for two people to see the same event in such totally different ways? If the speed of light was really a constant of nature, then how could a witness claim that the officer was neck and neck with the light beam, yet the officer swears that he never even got close?

Einstein proposed that the particle isn't in a superposition state, or two places at once; but rather it always has a "true" location, and people just couldn't see it. The phenomenon is demonstrated with a thought experiment in which a light beam is split, with one half going to Alice and the other to Bob.

A hallmark of Albert Einstein's ... issues and for elucidating his concepts to others. Einstein's thought experiments took diverse forms. In his youth, he mentally chased beams of light. For special relativity, he employed moving trains and flashes of lightning to explain ...

Lorentz invariance. Hence the law of induction – or the magnet and conductor thought · experiment – sets up the conflict between electrodynamics and the Galilean principle ... The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein.