New Physics

In 1900, the German physicist Max Planck discovered that Newton's laws could not be used to describe energy radiation. Although he tried to apply the hitherto reliable principles, they gave him some very strange results which were obviously untrue.

The laws of classical physics did not seem lo stand up when applied to energy.
A few years later, Albert Einstein made some interesting discoveries about the nature of light, and proved scientifically that light is made up of particles, or photons, which emit energy in small packets or 'quanta'.

The only problem with this was that a hundred years before, an Englishman called Thomas Young had proved that light is in the form of waves. Both theories held firm, and in 1905 light could be described as particle or wave.

This lack of certainty was to be one of the main pre-occupations of physicists for the next half century, and Einstein struggled with its implications until his death:

'What nature demands from us is not a quantum or a wave theory; rather, nature demands from us a synthesis of these two views which has thus far exceeded the menial powers of physicists.'
                                                                         Albert Einstein
After the publication of the Theory of Light, which was many years later to "win him the Nobel Prize, Einstein went on to publish his Special Theory of Relativity which tells us that mass and energy are different vibrations of the same thing: in fact, we no longer talk of mass and energy, but energy/mass, and similarly, no longer of space and time, but of space/time.

Although most educated people can quote Einstein's theory in its shorthand form, very few of us have truly grasped the implications of it. There is good precedent for this.

In the sixteenth century the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus pointed out that the Earth was not the centre of the universe. It was not a popular theory and took centuries to make its impression on the average man.

Similarly, Einstein's discoveries have yet to make an impact on our view of reality. Even the physicists working with these theories have problems in coming to terms with them. Albert Einstein himself likened the discovery of Relativity Theory to 'having the ground taken from under my feet'.