Einstein’s “Unified Field Theory” -- Technologies Possibly Deriving Therefrom.

Einstein’s “Unitary Field Theory” --

Technologies Possibly Implied by a Successful Completion Thereof.

Dear Reader,

Albert Einstein, whose work anticipated, and often predicted, so many phenomena that were only observed or confirmed long after his life time, spent the major part of his later years working on a “Unitary Field Theory”.  This was a theory that, extending Maxwell’s field theory unification programme that led to the unification of magnetism and electricity, was intended to reveal an undergirding unity of the fundamental “force” manifestations of Nature, starting with a unification of electromagnetism and gravity.

Standard accounts of Einstein’s unitary field theory, including the many papers published on that theory by Einstein, simply say that the theory “failed”.  Little discussion of the substance of that theory can be found in the standard accounts, nor are the criteria defining such “failure” specified.  It is hard to believe that Einstein’s “unitary field theory” was entirely a failure; that it contained no worthwhile insights or partial successes, or that today's myriad and untested "string" theories assimilated all that was of value in Einstein's work on unification.

For this reason, I have decided to publish, here, the text below, authored by one of our readers, whose conjectures and speculations might possibly point to an explanation for this wholesale neglect of Einstein’s most mature work.

For more information regarding, the Seldonian insights usually featured here, please see --

www.dialectics.info

For ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ -- see:

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¡ENJOY!

Regards,

Miguel Detonacciones,

Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.],

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison,

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

There were three key movements in the symphony of Albert Einstein’s life’s work, in a performance the breadth of which, many belief, might never be equaled:  The Special Theory of Relativity, the General Theory of Relativity, and “Unitary Field Theory”, also known as “Unified Field Theory”.

In the latter, Einstein sought to reveal the hidden unity of the two main fields of “force” recognized as such by physics at the time of Einstein’s work -- the Universal Electromagnetic Field, and/with the Universal Gravitational, or Gravitic [Asimov], Field”, in somewhat the way that James Clerk Maxwell had earlier discovered field equations which revealed the previously hidden unity of Electricity and Magnetism, and the ‘Electro-Magnetic’ nature of light radiations, both those visible and those invisible to the human senses.

The standard view is that Einstein’s “Unitary Field Theory” didn’t work.  Einstein published systems of equations attempting to formulate the hidden unity of Gravity and Electromagnetism.  But they “failed”.

I would not be surprised, although I presently do not have evidence that such is the case, if the Einstein Unitary Field Theory Equations did, at least partially, “work”, and “work” well enough to imply the possibility of technological applications -- the possibility of an ‘electro-magneto-gravitic’ technology.

The U. S. government already had its eye on Einstein.  A famous, approximate equation, arising in his first ‘symphonic movement’, the Special Theory of Relativity, implied the possibility of nuclear weapons, and Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt on that subject had, at least in part, triggered the gigantic and hyper-consequential Manhattan Project.  J. Edgar Hoover and the INS were endeavoring to deport Einstein because of Einstein’s “socialist” views.  The illustrious Kurt Gödel, Einstein’s buddy at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, had discovered an exact special solution to the system of ten “simultaneous” nonlinear partial differential equations that formulate, in pre-tensor mathematical language, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity -- a solution that described paths through space-time that could be interpreted as representing a kind of “time travel”.  There is ample evidence that Gödel complained often that he, too, was under government surveillance, ever since that discovery, a complaint “officially” dismissed as “paranoia”.  It is now known that Gödel’s mail was intercepted and opened, his phone tapped, and his home invaded by the U.S. secret police.  The same treatment was afforded to Einstein.

Again, I would not be surprised -- though, again, I presently have no evidence that such is the case -- if the Government had therefore, because of its technological, including military, applications, slapped a “top secret” sticker on all of Einstein’s further work on Unitary Field Theory, withdrawing that work from further “public science” elaboration and publication, and if Einstein acquiesced in that sequestration of his Unitary Field Theory, e.g., to avoid deportation, to keep that work from falling into Stalinist hands, etc.

It in conceivable, to my mind, that engineering work on the technological applications of that Unitary Field Theory, and, perhaps, of improved such theories, continued, in secret, under some kind of clandestine government project, in some ways akin to the Manhattan Project. 

It is also conceivable to me that this further work has led to ‘electro-magneto-gravitic field machines’, capable of utilizing electromagnetic energy -- e.g., electrical currents -- to generate, or “translate” into, gravitational energy, possibly including into negative gravitational “forces” -- anti-gravity “forces”, such as would be felt by bodies of “anti-matter” in a gravitational field generated by “matter” per the Dirac theory -- that could be harnessed in the form a propulsion system.  It is thus also possible, in my mind, that the U. S. military has already constructed a fleet of inter-planetary anti-gravity-propulsion spacecraft, although I presently know of no evidence that such is, in fact, the case, despite many claims to that effect from questionable sources.

Recently, a world class physicist, now deceased, has claimed to have achieved Einstein’s Unitary Field Theory -- and with a bonus that Einstein may never have anticipated!

The physicists name is Mendel Sachs, and his work has been all but ignored by the physics community, which may be just the typical treatment accorded to new scientific theories, or which might possibly reflect a government gag-order.

In the Preface to his 1982 book General Relativity and Matter, Sachs writes of his resulting 16 field equations, incorporating and extending the 10 field equations of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity --

“ ... The latter are 16 rather than 10 field relations at each space-time point.  ...”

“It is shown that this 16-component ... field incorporates the equivalent of the 10-component field of Einstein’s original ... formulation and a 6-component field that solves field equations of the form of Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism.” ...

“The matter field equations themselves are first order nonlinear differential-integral equations that approach the form of [linear] quantum mechanics as a linear approximation.  Thus, the formal...structure of quantum mechanics appears in this theory of elementary matter only as a linear (low energy) approximation for a general formalism that is based on the axioms of general relativity, rather than the quantum theory.”

[COMMENT.  This is the “bonus” I mentioned above:  Einstein himself had, inadvertently, launched the “Quantum Revolution” in physics, with his 1905 paper about “the photo-electric effect”, for which Einstein later won a Nobel Prize, and which formed part of Einstein’s work in that “miraculous year” in which he also published his Special Theory of Relativity.  But Einstein remained at war with the, still-prevailing, linear, probabilistic, acausal formulation of Quantum Mechanics for the rest of his life].

“Summing up, the general approach to general relativity theory that is developed in this monograph, which is strictly in accordance with Einstein’s views of a unified field theory, leads to a unification of the force manifestations of matter (thus far in terms of gravitation and electromagnetism) and its inertial manifestations.  Such a unification is derived in this monograph in terms of a set of self-consistent, inter-dependent field equations.”  [pp. xvii-xviii].

Later books by Mendel Sachs on this theory include Quantum Mechanics from General Relativity [1986], Relativity in Our Time [1993],  Quantum Mechanics and Gravity [2004].