Albert Einstein’s colossal mistake

Editor’s Note: Dr. Don Lincoln is a senior physicist at Fermilab who does research using the Large Hadron Collider. He has written numerous books and produces a series of science education videos. He is the author of, most recently, “The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Things that Will Blow Your Mind.” Follow him on Facebook. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

El Malahim. Ragnarok. Armageddon. Those are terms we use to describe the end of the world.

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity this November, we can appreciate the fact that this brilliant scientist came up with ideas that have fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe.

General relativity, in short, tells us that gravity is not quite the force Isaac Newton envisioned; gravity is actually the bending of space and time by mass and energy. This discovery led us to the widely accepted theory of Big Bang, which establishes the birth of the universe as 14 billion years ago.

But what about the death of the universe? For that, we need to turn to dark energy, one of the biggest scientific mysteries of our time.

Don Lincoln

For decades, astronomers thought that an expanding universe bound by gravity should grow quickly in the beginning and gradually slow as the stars and galaxies obeyed gravity’s inexorable tug. The only question really was whether gravity was sufficient to eventually stop the expansion of the universe and bring it all back together in a hot “Big Crunch.” This seemed like a very plausible scenario.

But in 1998, to everyone’s surprise, two groups of astronomers announced measurements of distant supernovae that showed while the early universe followed their expectations, about four billion years ago, the expansion of the universe began to speed up.

In complete contradiction to predictions, it seemed that something was overcoming the effects of gravity and pushing everything farther away at an ever increasing rate. These observations have long since been confirmed.

It turned out that Einstein imagined such a phenomenon when he was developing his theory of general relativity. He envisioned a “cosmological constant” that provided a repulsive form of gravity.

Following the best theoretical understanding and experimental evidence of his time, Einstein first added the term to his equations, but then took it out, as it didn’t seem necessary. Einstein regarded the fact that he invented the cosmological constant as a colossal mistake.

With the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, Einstein’s cosmological constant came back into vogue. But it wasn’t the only explanation.

Can we solve the mysteries of the universe? —

Deep in the Kitakami Mountains of Japan, a group of impassioned scientists are working on proposals for a revolutionary project: a machine that will hunt for dark matter. The aim of the International Linear Collider (ILC) is to shed light on the mystery of what makes up most of the universe. This problem has been pursued for millennia, but could this machine hold the key? Here, we take a closer look at the ILC and go on a journey through time to look at some of the inventions that led to the most significant breakthroughs in scientific history. Gallery by Monique Rivalland

Atom smasher —

The machine is colossal. Once built, it will consist of two opposing tunnels that run underground for 31km -- over 10 times bigger than the current largest linear particle accelerator in the world. But what is a particle accelerator? Think of it as an atom smasher, a device that propels particles -- in this case electrons and positrons -- towards each other at extremely high speeds (almost the speed of light) so that they collide and create a myriad of other subatomic particles that otherwise might not exist or that we might not be able to see. Observing these particles could teach us critical things about our origins and even uncover entirely new dimensions.

What the experts say —

Scientists estimate that we remain in the dark about a mind-boggling 96% of the universe. Brian Foster, European Regional Director of the International Collider Collaboration and former professor of physics at Oxford University explained to CNN how the ILC would "recreate the conditions fractions of a second after the Big Bang that created our universe." "If we are lucky," he added, "the ILC will detect a whole new family of particles that might help us to realize Einstein's dream of uniting all the theories of physics into one overarching theory." Decisions on the multi-billion dollar machine looks likely to start by 2015 and construction would take 8-10 years.

Boson breakthrough —

Plans for the ILC follow the recent discovery of the elusive Higgs Boson, which resulted in professors Peter Higgs and Francois Englert winning the Nobel Prize in Physics last month. The Higgs Boson, a subatomic particle that may help us understand why other particles have mass, was proposed by the two winners (and Robert Brout) back in 1964 but only proved last year by use of a circular particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider (pictured) at CERN.

Super HILAC 1972 —

Two scientists show the scale of an earlier accelerator at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Super HILAC (Super Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator) was one of the first accelerators that could accelerate the ions of all known natural elements to energies where they could be smashed apart. The lab is aptly named after Ernest Lawrence who invented the first circular accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley, back in 1929.

Bubble chamber 1970 —

It looks like a prop from a sci-film but in fact it's a research vessel called a bubble chamber. The bubble chamber was first used back in 1970 to detect subatomic particles called neutrinos. By filling the device with super hot liquid hydrogen scientists were able to watch particles interact. This 15-foot version was installed in the Bubble Chamber Building at U.S. research center Fermilab in 1971. Now obsolete, the chamber has been on public display since 2004.

Discovery of quarks 1968 —

Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Bottom and Top. These are the six 'flavors' of quarks. But you can't taste them -- they're the elementary particles that make up bigger particles such as neutrons and protons. Quarks exist only fleetingly outside of these particles and thus only be detected by their behaviour in high-energy collisions, which is precisely what happened back in 1968 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (pictured), when scientists observed Up and Down quarks. Initially proposed by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig in 1964, the discovery of quarks gave further credence to the "Standard Model" of physics and prior to the discovery of a Higgs Boson was widely regarded as the most significant advancement in physics of the last 50 years.

Nuclear chain reactor 1942 —

In the throes of World War II, an important letter arrived for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Written by Hungarian scientist Léo Szilárd and signed by Albert Einstein, the letter warned the President that Germany may be working on a powerful bomb. For the previous 10 years Szilárd, along with Italian scientist Enrico Fermi, had been experimenting with nuclear chain reactions and had filed a patent for a simple nuclear chain reactor. Finally, on December 2, 1942, the first artificial nuclear chain reaction took place in a racquets court at the University of Chicago (artist's impression). This launched the Manhattan Project and three years later the U.S. produced the first atomic bomb.

Electron microscope 1933 —

Szilárd was a canny young scientist who also filed a patent for the electron microscope back in 1928. However, it was Ernst Ruska in 1933 who managed to build the first electron microscope that exceeded the resolution of a standard light microscope. His invention, today an everyday piece of research equipment, used electron beams to illuminate tiny specimens and produce a magnified image of their structure.

The Geiger counter 1932 —

This very instrument was used by the scientist Sir James Chadwick, who discovered the neutron. As a young man he studied radiation in Germany under the creator of the counter, Hans Geiger. The Geiger counter detects the emission of nuclear radiation and is perhaps one of the world's best known radiation instruments. Still in Germany when WW1 broke out, Chadwick spent a few years in a detention camp west of Berlin, but after the war went on to be knighted for his achievements in physics.

Einstein's theory of relativity 1916 —

The most famous equation ever written by arguably the most famous scientist ever to live, Einstein's greatest tool was his brain. This is the earliest and longest manuscript on relativity that he ever wrote. In it he negates many assumptions made in earlier physical theories and redefines concepts of space, time, matter, energy, and gravity. While the equation denotes his theory of special relativity, which is concerned with light, Einstein's theory of general relativity helps us to understand planetary dynamics and the evolution of the universe.

Cathode used to discover electron 1897 —

This apparatus was used to discover the electron. In 1896, in Cambridge, Joseph John Thomson began experiments on cathode rays. Thomson showed that the cathode rays were particles with a negative charge and much smaller than an atom. They were later named electrons and in 1906 Thomso