10 Times When Einstein Was Wrong About Physics

Albert Einstein is widely regarded as the greatest physicist of all time. Einstein won the Nobel Prize in 1921 for explaining the photoelectric effect - using Planck's quantum theory. But many argue (rightly) that he deserved a few more Nobel Prizes for works such as relativity, Bose Einstein condensate, etc.

However, there were times when even the genius of Einstein failed to comprehend the complexity of the universe. Einstein's debate with Niels Bohr are still remembered for how wrong Einstein's stance was on the uncertainty principle by Heisenberg. Till the end of his life, Einstein never made peace with the cornerstone of quantum mechanics.

Following are 10 notable times Albert Einstein was “wrong” (or at least incomplete) in physics - not in a mocking sense, but in the very human way. The lesson here is that even Einstein was wrong on many occasions so don't beat yourself up in life!

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1. Cosmological Constant (his “biggest blunder”)

Einstein added a term (Λ) to his equations to force a static universe, because he believed the universe couldn’t be expanding. Later, Edwin Hubble showed the universe is expanding. Einstein visited Hubble's observatory to confirm the discovery himself. Ironically, his biggest blunder Λ came back decades later as dark energy.

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2. Rejection of Quantum Indeterminacy

Einstein hated the idea that nature is fundamentally probabilistic. His famous line - God does not play dice with the universe, confirmed Einstein's opposition to the growing interest in quantum mechanics. Bohr famously replied to Einstein - Don't tell God what to do. And experiments later proved that quantum randomness is real, not just due to hidden ignorance.

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3. Opposition to the Copenhagen Interpretation

Einstein strongly opposed Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation, which says that tiny particles (like electrons) exist in a fuzzy mix of all possible states (like being in many places at one time) until we measure or observe them. The act of observing forces them to "pick" or "collapse" to just one state. Modern quantum mechanics overwhelmingly supports Bohr, not Einstein.

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4. Hidden Variables Belief

Einstein was looking for the ultimate theory, the theory of everything being his life goal. He believed that quantum mechanics must be incomplete and that hidden variables would restore determinism. Bell’s Theorem and later experiments (Aspect, Zeilinger, etc.) ruled out local hidden-variable theories.

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5. Disbelief in Quantum Entanglement

Quantum entanglement is when two or more tiny particles get linked, sharing the same fate no matter how far apart they are. Einstein called entanglement: “Spooky action at a distance”. He believed it showed quantum theory was flawed. Today, entanglement is experimentally verified and used in quantum computing and cryptography.

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6. Incorrect Prediction About Gravitational Waves (Initially)

Einstein first predicted gravitational waves (1916), then later doubted their existence, publishing a paper arguing they weren’t real. Einstein thought that gravitational waves were merely mathematical artifacts or too weak to detect. He eventually corrected himself and in 2015, LIGO directly detected them.

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7. Resistance to Black Holes

Einstein was skeptical that real objects, that too stars way more massive than the Sun, could collapse into singularities. He even wrote a paper arguing black holes wouldn’t form in reality. Today, black holes are directly observed, including the first image in 2019.

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8. Dismissal of Quantum Field Theory’s Direction

Einstein never fully accepted or contributed meaningfully to quantum field theory, which became the backbone of modern particle physics (Standard Model).

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9. Unified Field Theory Failure

In order to find theory of everything, Einstein spent the last ~30 years of his life trying to unify gravity and electromagnetism. He failed, and his approach turned out to be mathematically elegant but physically unproductive.

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10. Underestimating the Practical Impact of Nuclear Energy

Einstein initially believed nuclear energy would remain theoretical. Gradually he came to realize with the advent of world wars that nuclear energy could be detrimental for the world. Einstein himself admitted he had underestimated its real-world implications and wrote a letter to Roosevelt not to create atomic weapons.

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10 Surprising Facts About Satyendra Nath Bose

1. Despite giving his name to Boson and Bose-Einstein statistics, he never won a Nobel Prize, which is one of the biggest ironies in science history.

2. An impressed Albert Einstein personally translated Bose’s 1924 paper into German and submitted it for publication, leading to the discovery of Bose Einstein condensate.

3. Bose was a brilliant student throughout his academic career. He ranked first in M.Sc. Mathematics at Calcutta University in 1915.

4. Bose had no formal training in advanced quantum mechanics when he derived Bose–Einstein statistics—he arrived at it purely through intuition and symmetry.

5. Bose never received a PhD, yet became a professor and Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

6. The term “boson” was coined by Paul Dirac, not Bose himself, to honor Bose’s contribution to physics. Dirac and his wife Margit visited Calcutta in the 1950s.

7. Bose worked closely with Meghnad Saha, and together they translated Einstein’s and Minkowski’s papers into English for Indian students.

8. Bose played a key role in building modern science education in India, especially at Dhaka University and later Calcutta University after division.

9. Bose was nominated for the Nobel Prize multiple times, but the prize committee preferred experimental discoveries over theoretical ones.

10. Bose openly admitted he did not fully grasp how revolutionary his own result was—it was Einstein, not Bose, who immediately realized the importance and applied Bose's theory to matter, thus discovering fifth state of matter.

10 Unknown Facts About Physicist Max Born

Max Born (1882 - 1970) was a German British physicist and mathematician who was one of the pioneers in quantum mechanics. Born was also a great teacher and was doctoral advisor to physicists like Robert Oppenheimer and Maria Goeppert Mayer.

Born's work involving wave function is cool because it shows how the universe can be unpredictable and mysterious at its smallest scales, yet we can still make sense of it with mathematics. Born rule opened the door to discoveries that power modern gadgets like laser, LED and microprocessors.

10 hidden facts about Max Born

⚛️ 1. Max Born started his academic journey with mathematics. He was more interested in abstract mathematical ideas than physics. However, this changed when the quantum revolution began in Europe and Max went on to work on wave function, a key element in quantum physics.

🎓 2. Max Born was classmates with Albert Einstein's future wife and mathematician, Mileva Maric, who is said to have collaborated with Einstein on special relativity. Born and Mileva studied together at ETH Zurich.

💡 3. Max Born co-invented matrix mechanics with physicist Werner Heisenberg, but rarely gets credit for his work. Born was the first to realize the mathematics involved was non commutative matrices.

🏆 4. Max Born won the Nobel prize in 1954, for work he did in 1920s. It took nearly 25 years for the scientific community to recognize Born rule, which provides the probability of finding a particle in a specific state when a measurement is made.

Born is second from the right in the second row, between Louis de Broglie and Niels Bohr.

✈️ 5. Being a Jewish, Max Born fled Nazi Germany as he was politically vocal against the government. He escaped to Cambridge, with only one suitcase.

🎵 6. Born was a talented painter and musically gifted. He used to collab with other scientists including Albert Einstein. They played sonatas together, Einstein on violin and Born on piano.

📜 7. Born wrote letters to Einstein challenging determinism. He defended quantum indeterminacy, while Einstein famously replied, “God does not play dice with the universe.”

☮️ 8. Max Born was a strong advocate of peaceful use of science. After world war 2, he became a critic of nuclear weapons and signed Russel Einstein manifesto aiming for global disarmament.

🧳 9. Born never returned to Germany even after the second world war was over. He became a British citizen and chose to stay in the UK.

🧬 10. Musical genius ran in the family as Max Born's granddaughter is British Australian singer Olivia Newton-John, who sold over 100 million records.

5 quotes of Max Born

🔬 1. I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.

🧪 2. In science, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed.

🌍 3. The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world.

🪐 4. Science is not only the basis of technology but also the material for a sound philosophy.

🧠 5. Physics as we know it will be over in six months.

Why Was Albert Einstein Not Religious?

Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind. This popular quote of Albert Einstein has been repeatedly used, particularly in science versus religion debates. But from this statement alone can one say that Einstein was arguing for religion? A large number of believers definitely think so, referring to this adage and thus claiming the greatest scientist of the 20th century as one of their own.

However, Einstein had also famously written: "The idea of a personal God is a childlike one," in a letter to a friend dated 28 September 1949.

Einstein even went on to say, "You may call me an agnostic but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth."

From this saying alone, we can conclude that Einstein was neither a religious man in the usual sense nor was he a staunch atheist. Einstein was agnostic in belief. If you think about it, agnosticism really is the essence of science, whether ancient or modern.

Being an agnostic simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has "no scientific grounds" for professing to know or believe.

Does God play dice? (Einstein's most famous quote)

Einstein was expected to make many statements on the origin of life, the universe and existence of God. Some of the views resonated with religious groups, but that does not make Einstein a believer. Albert Einstein was in fact one of the most famous agnostics in America, others being Edwin Hubble, Carl Sagan, John Bardeen, etc. and yet Einstein's name and his quotes are selectively chosen as merely "tools" by debaters to silence an opposition.

What had Einstein meant really, when he said: Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind?

Actually, he was making a reference to a large part of human history in which science and religion were intertwined or interdependent. He put it like this, indicating that the interdependency still existed in the modern society.

This does not suggest in any way that Einstein was a deeply religious person and nor does it provide any surface to anyone to interpret it in such a way. If truth be told, Einstein had strongly asserted in one of his statements - "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses."

So if Einstein wasn't even religious in the most ordinary sense, why his name is often dragged in trivial debates? Because it is assumed by a large number of people that in science "Einstein" is the authority. But they are wrong, because in actuality there is no authority in science. Feynman said: You can be the most amazing minds, if your ideas do not agree with experiment it is wrong. No matter who you are.

This is precisely how science progresses, by challenging, by having no authority, by questions and doubts; whereas religion has not progressed for hundreds and thousands of years.

Einstein's views were simply, that nature is not nurtured. That nature itself is nurturing. This is the ultimate essence of Spinozism a philosophical system which was largely advocated by Einstein. Spinoza belief is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world, the universe, so far as our science can reveal it.

Just a year before his death, Einstein had replied to a fan in a letter, "It was of course a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."

Feynman Diagrams Prank By Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman, a Nobel prize winning physicist, was best known for being a playful thinker. Feynman was a charismatic scientist whose ideas seemed radical at the time, but became mainstream later on. One such idea was Feynman diagrams, introduced in 1948, which is now essential to quantum mechanics.

Prior to Feynman diagrams, physicists generally relied on rigorous mathematical methods to describe particle interactions. Feynman who had an innate ability to make things simpler decided upon the idea of using squiggly lines to represent complex quantum processes. It was unconventional.

That is why, many top physicists of the time did not welcome the initial use of Feynman diagrams. They thought it was a practical joke or an unnecessary addition to the existing syllabus. On the other hand, younger and open minded physicists were amused at the idea.

The Purpose Behind Feynman Diagrams:

1. Understand particle interactions (such as those between electrons and photons),

2. Compute the probabilities of these interactions, and

3. Illustrate the relationships between particles in a way that could be directly tied to physical phenomena.

example of Feynman diagram

The beauty of the diagrams was that they allowed for calculation of probabilities for various particle interactions in a systematic way, and they were tied directly to experimentally measurable quantities.

However, the figures were too cartoonish to be taken seriously at first. In the world of theoretical physics, rigorous mathematical treatments were the gold standard, and Feynman’s diagrams did not fit the bill.

Feynman being a teacher at heart had always this goal of making things simpler and clearer for others. He wasn’t particularly bothered by the initial skepticism, as he was more focused on getting the results right.

By the early 1950s, Feynman diagrams had become mainstream in theoretical physics. By the 1960s, they were integral to many different areas, not just quantum electrodynamics but also in quantum chromodynamics, the study of the strong nuclear force.

Feynman diagram prank

At Caltech, Feynman would sometimes draw completely nonsensical diagrams on blackboards in the middle of discussions. These "diagrams" were visually similar to real Feynman diagrams, with particles and interactions depicted in the standard way, but they had no real physical meaning. It was all non sense.

Feynman would watch his colleagues trying to decipher what he had drawn, as they thought each diagram is a "puzzle" to a new breakthrough. It was a fun way for Feynman to mess with people, as they would overanalyze his absurd drawings, thinking they were part of some complex investigation. Feynman would then reveal that the diagram was just a prank, which caused everyone to laugh and realize they'd been fooled by his playful nature.

10 Facts About Emmy Noether, First Lady of Mathematics

Despite facing adversity as a woman in a male-dominated field, Emmy Noether is regarded as one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century, with a significant impact on both mathematics and physics.

Following are ten amazing facts about Emmy Noether, who is often called the First Lady of mathematics:

1. Emmy Noether came from a family of mathematicians. Her father, Max Noether, was a mathematician and her brother, Fritz Noether, was also a mathematician.

2. Noether studied several languages and literature before pursuing mathematics at the University of Erlangen, where she earned her PhD in 1907.

3. In the early part of her career, Noether was not allowed to teach at any university due to her gender. Women were not treated as equal in academia at that time. She worked as an unpaid lecturer.

4. Noether is known for her groundbreaking work in abstract algebra. Perhaps her most famous contribution is a theorem which links symmetries in physics to conservation laws. Noether's theorem explains why there are laws like conservation of energy or conservation of momentum.

5. In 1915, Noether moved to the University of Göttingen, one of the world's leading centers of mathematics at the time. She collaborated with prominent mathematicians, including David Hilbert.

6. Emmy Noether also helped Albert Einstein, particularly in understanding and resolving issues within his theory of general relativity. In 1918 she proved two theorems that were basic for both general relativity and elementary particle physics.

7. In 1933, Noether fled Nazi Germany due to her Jewish heritage and moved to the United States, where she continued her work at Bryn Mawr College, where she was appointed as a professor.

8. Noether passed away on April 14, 1935, at the age of 53, after a surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. Noether's influence on mathematics continues to be immense, and her work laid the foundation for much of the development of modern abstract algebra and theoretical physics.

9. Noether's work was recognized by leading mathematicians of her time, including Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl, and Norbert Wiener, who described her as "the most important woman in the history of mathematics."

10. Despite facing adversity as a woman in a male-dominated field, Noether made a strong mark in academia. Einstein himself wrote in an obituary that she was "the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began".

5 Physicists Who Won Nobel Prize In Chemistry

All science is either physics or stamp collecting. This is how physicist Ernest Rutherford compared physics, the king of all sciences to other less fundamental sciences. Quite ironically, Rutherford won a Nobel Prize in chemistry later on.

In this post, let us take a look at physicists who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry:

1. Ernest Rutherford

Rutherford was a New Zealand physicist who is known for proposing the nuclear model of atom. Rutherford is also called the father of nuclear physics, courtesy of his gold foil experiment. He won a Nobel prize in chemistry in 1908 for his services to studies into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances.

2. Marie Curie

Madame Curie was a physicist and chemist who won two Nobel prizes in both the sciences. The first prize was received in physics, for investigations on radioactivity. The second Nobel, which was for chemistry, was won in 1911 for discovering radium and polonium.

3. Walter Kohn

Walter Kohn was an Austrian American physicist who won the 1998 Nobel prize in chemistry for understanding the electronic properties of materials. Kohn had received MA degree in mathematics from University of Toronto and PhD in physics from Harvard university in 1948.

4. John Pople

John Pople shared the 1998 Nobel prize in chemistry with Kohn, he won the coveted prize for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry. Pople got a PhD degree in maths from Cambridge university in 1951. He then worked as head of physics division at national physical laboratory in London.

5. Venki Ramakrishnan

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan won the 2009 Nobel prize in chemistry for research on ribosomes. He got his bachelor of science degree in physics in 1971. After that Venki Ramakrishnan received his PhD in physics from Ohio university in 1976. He spent the next two years making a transition from physics to biology.

5 Popular Characters Inspired By Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein is a world renowned genius whose influence knew no bounds when he was alive. Even after death, Einstein has served as an inspiration not only to students, but also to writers, filmmakers and comedians alike.

Most recently, Einstein was shown in Christopher Nolan's Oscar winning movie - Oppenheimer, a familiar portrayal of the genius by Tom Conti. Albert Einstein is seen as a mentor to Robert Oppenheimer, the protagonist. Historically, Einstein is known to have initiated a request for Manhattan project.

Following is a list of 5 popular fictional characters who are inspired by Albert Einstein:

1. The 1988 film Young Einstein presents a fictionalized version of Einstein’s early life. In this version, Einstein is shown as the son of a Tasmanian apple farmer who not only develops the theory of relativity, but also surfing and rock and roll. His theory, E=mc^2 is shown as method for splitting beer atoms!

2. In the 2001 film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Einstein was portrayed as a holographic personality called Dr. Know and voiced by Robin Williams.

3. In the film Back to the Future, Doc Brown is portrayed as a brilliant scientist, time traveler and inventor. He resembles Einstein and has a dog named Einstein, who is Brown's favorite scientist. No wonder Doc Brown's hair is all over the place like Einstein's. Christopher Lloyd, who played the character credited Einstein as being his inspiration for the character.

4. The 2009 film The Nutcracker in 3D includes a character named Uncle Albert which was played by Nathan Lane, who resembles Einstein, speaks with a German accent, and recites Albert Einstein quotes. On the internet, many of Einstein's quotes are often misattributed, but that is a different story.

5. Another Einstein like character appears in Nicolas Roeg's 1985 film Insignificance. The film includes a scene in which the genius scientist, played by Michael Emil, discusses relativity with an actress, resembling Marilyn Monroe. It is a popular notion that the two celebrities secretly met.

4 Physics Couples Who Changed The World

February is popular as the month to celebrate love and affection. In the world of physics, there have been couples who not only shared their lives but also their passion for physics. They often collaborated with each other on experiment, research projects and contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Following are 4 couples, who were both physicists:

1. Marie Curie and Pierre Curie

   Marie Curie was a pioneering physicist and chemist, known for discovering Radium and Polonium. Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and remains the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields (Physics and Chemistry).

   Pierre Curie was a noted physicist who made significant contributions to the study of magnetism and radioactivity. He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel for their work on radioactivity.

src: Wikimedia commons

2. Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot-Curie

   Irène Joliot-Curie, the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, followed in her parents' footsteps and became a celebrated physicist. She won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 alongside her husband, Frédéric, for their discovery of artificial radioactivity.

   Frédéric Joliot-Curie was a physicist and chemist who, along with his wife Irène, made significant contributions to the field of nuclear physics. Their work laid the groundwork for future discoveries in nuclear energy.

src: Bibliothèque nationale de France

3. Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber and Maurice Goldhaber

   Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber made important contributions to nuclear physics, particularly in the study of beta decay and nuclear fission. She and her husband Maurice were lab partners at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

   Maurice Goldhaber was a renowned physicist known for his work in nuclear physics, including the determination that the neutrino has a left-handed helicity. He won the Fermi award for his contributions in 1998.

4. Cécile DeWitt-Morette and Bryce DeWitt

   Cécile DeWitt-Morette, a French physicist, made significant contributions to the field of quantum field theory and general relativity. She was also known for her work in mathematical physics. She wanted to become a surgeon but due to limited opportunities in France during world war 2, decided to study physics and maths.

src: Brandon dinunno, wikimedia commons

   Bryce DeWitt was a theoretical physicist who made important contributions to quantum gravity and the formulation of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. He and Cécile collaborated on various research projects and co-authored several papers.

10 Facts About Astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar [1910 - 1995] was a Nobel prize winning scientist from India who is best known for studying the evolution of stars. He accepted American citizenship in 1953 and taught at the University of Chicago for almost all his life.

Following are 10 amazing facts on physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar:

1. He found the Chandrasekhar limit, currently accepted as 1.4 solar masses, which is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. If a star is more massive than this limit, it might end up as a black hole.

2. Chandrasekhar was tutored at home until the age of 12. In middle school, his father taught him mathematics and physics while his mother taught him Tamil and English.

3. Chandrasekhar studied at Presidency College in Chennai and the University of Cambridge. He was a long-time professor at the University of Chicago and editor of The astrophysical journal.

4. His paternal uncle was the Indian physicist and Nobel laureate C.V. Raman, who was the first Indian to win the coveted Nobel prize for discovery of Raman effect.

5. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar himself won the Nobel prize for physics in 1983 for his mathematical treatment of stellar evolution.

6. Chandra X-ray observatory, launched in 1999, is a flagship space telescope of NASA which is named after him.

7. Chandrasekhar was in dispute with English astronomer Arthur Eddington over the final stages of a star's life. Eddington, a renowned physicist, openly mocked and criticized Chandrasekhar limit in 1935.

Chandrasekhar continued to state that he admired Eddington and considered him a friend.

8. Chandra worked closely with his students and expressed pride in the fact that over a 50-year period (from roughly 1930 to 1980), the average age of his co-author collaborators had remained the same, at around 30.

9. Two of the students who took his course at University of Chicago, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, won the Nobel prize before he could get one for himself. Chandrasekhar supervised 45 PhD students in his teaching career.

10. After his death, his wife Lalitha made a gift of his Nobel Prize money to the University of Chicago towards the establishment of the Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Memorial Fellowship.

Bonus fact - Chandrasekhar was offered double salary at Princeton University in 1946 but the University of Chicago president matched the salary to keep Chandrasekhar in Chicago.

5 Predictions of Nikola Tesla That Came True (And 5 That Didn't)

Nikola Tesla was a genius Serbian American inventor who laid the foundations of alternate current power system. Tesla was an advocate of modern technology and made many convincing predictions about the future. Some of Tesla's predictions were proven correct in the 21st century and some have gone wrong, as you shall see in this post.

1. (Right) Alternating current

Nikola Tesla pioneered the generation, transmission and use of alternating current electricity. Tesla believed that one day in the future the entire world would use his power system over direct current.

Thomas Edison famously tried to show with experiment that alternating current was deadly. However, Tesla overcame that fear mongering by showing that AC was safe, inexpensive and usable over large distances.

2. (Wrong) Interplanetary energy exchange

One can see that Tesla and his ideas were on another level when he said that he would be able to complete interplanetary communication. In 1931, Tesla proposed a way in the future that would allow planets to transmit energy, from one planet to another, in large amounts of horsepower - regardless of distance.

3. (Right) Smartphone

In 1908, Tesla said - An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable one to call up, from one's desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe. Any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place.

4. (Wrong) Unlimited free energy

Tesla envisioned a future in which humans are able to harness the energy of ionosphere and distribute it wirelessly to anyone anywhere on the planet. This concept, while inspiring, has not been realized because of practical reasons.

5. (Right) Thought images, MRI

Tesla: I expect to photograph thoughts. In 1893, while engaged in certain investigations, I became convinced that a definite image formed in thought must produce a corresponding image on the retina, which might be read by a suitable apparatus.

The closest machine able to do as Tesla suggested is MRI scan. An fMRI scan can tell you something about what a person is thinking. Tesla predicted - "Our minds would then, indeed, be like open books."

6. (Wrong) Wireless electricity

One notable incorrect prediction of Nikola Tesla is transmission of wireless electricity through the air. There would be no need for wires in the future for long distance transfer using his Wardenclyffe tower. This idea of Tesla was impractical on many levels and was not realized on large scale.

7. (Right) Wi-fi

While wireless electricity did not succeed, wireless transfer of files - documents, photos, music, video worked. His prediction of the internet came true in the 1980s and wireless file transfer in the 1990s.

8. (Wrong) Anti gravity tech

Tesla predicted an anti-gravity technology which would allow levitation in day to day life. Despite ongoing research in this field, anti gravity remains impractical and still quite far from reality.

9. (Right) Robotics and automation

Tesla predicted that robots will replace humans in many fields. He predicted driverless cars. He predicted robots would do menial labor like lifting and loading. Today, not only this, but automation via artificial intelligence is putting human creativity at risk, as they create art and music.

10. (Wrong) Weather control

While modern science has explored temporary weather modification techniques like cloud seeding, a complete control of weather and climate as Tesla had envisioned has not come to fruition.

Paul Dirac versus Richard Feynman

Feynman and Dirac, two great physicists who made invaluable contribution to quantum mechanics and Nobel prize winners, were poles apart.

While Richard Feynman idolized Paul Dirac, they disagreed on many things. One remembers Dirac as an extremely shy person, who hesitated to speak. Feynman, on the contrary, was a chatty man whose anecdotes spread contagious laughter.

Dirac won the Nobel prize for correctly predicting the existence of anti-matter. Three decades later, Feynman won the coveted prize for his work with elementary particles.

Both physicists had a very distinct view of science. Dirac was inclined towards mathematics and considered beauty in one's equations to be important. While Feynman preferred the equation to stand the test of experiment.

Feynman said - Physics is not mathematics. Mathematics is not physics. One helps the other.

Dirac was of the view - It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment.

You can say that in this regard Feynman and Dirac were rivals as they say "Raibaru" in Japanese. They did not seem to agree on this one thing.

Yet, as a young man Feynman idolized Dirac. He said - 

Dirac made a breakthrough, a new method of doing physics. He had the courage to simply guess at the form of an equation, and to try to interpret it afterwards.

This equation is now called Dirac equation. It is a beautiful, small equation that predicts counterpart of matter, anti-matter. In 1932, Paul Dirac was recognized by Nobel prize in physics for his work.

Later on, Feynman's views changed.

Being a mathematical physicist, Dirac was of the view that if an equation has beauty, then one must be working correctly, on the right path. Feynman disagreed that beauty is paramount, but he still remained a Dirac fanboy.

Feynman's evolved thought was

No matter how beautiful an equation is, no matter who made the equation or how genius he was, if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong!

In 1962, the two great minds Feynman and Dirac met at a science conference.

Feynman a chatty fellow talked at length while a meek old man Dirac listened quietly. In the end, Dirac blurted out a question - I have an equation. Do you have one too?

Earlier in 1948, Feynman had invented a diagram to pictorially represent the interaction of subatomic particles. For this simplification work, Feynman won the Nobel prize in 1965. It is then interesting to note that both scientists won the Nobel prize in physics for proposing a simple solution.

One key takeaway from this story is that it takes courage to challenge your idol. Feynman admired Dirac all his life, but it was not wrong for him to disagree with his hero once in a while. Isn't that how science progresses? When great minds collide?