Einstein, a Great Victory for Intuitive Theory

When a team of scientists announced they had heard and recorded two black holes colliding a billion light years away, it fulfilled the last prediction of the General Theory of Relativity. A 100 year odyssey had proved to be a great victory for Intuitive Theory.

It was the first evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space- time that Einstein first spoke about a 100 years ago.

So, how did one man predict the vagaries of space-time without  the expensive observatory LIGO ( Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory ) which cost $ 620 million a 100 years later?

I can only attribute it to intuitive theory.  The human mind it shows is capable of fathoming the impossible.  Einstein himself believed in intuition.  

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein

The history of science has shown us again and again that discoveries are not only a function of theory but of intuition as well. After all the famous apple falling on Newton's head is the moment at which his mind started thinking of gravity.  Newton is known to have discovered calculus much later.  

Archimedes when posed with the problem of weighing the jewels in the King's crown discovered the law of displacement of water.  And then there was that 'ah-ah' moment that Arthur Koestler described when Archimedes shouted EUREKA!

It does seem therefore  logical systems have to run in parallel with intuitive processes for discoveries to happen.

The intuitive trigger in Newton's case was the apple and in the Archimedes's case was the bathtub.  The theory and the math came much later.  

Science made a big leap when it moved from the old sciences to the new sciences. In the old sciences you could observe phenomena. You could observe a distant star and give it a name.  And when you could see no further you would invent a better telescope to help you see even further.  All that changed with quantum physics.  You had to make predictions about how the world works with a world you could not see or observe. Physicists like Einstein and Bohr were placed with the difficulty of arriving at conclusions about a universe they could not see but could only imagine.  Now a 100 years later we are saying we can see or hear or perceive with our senses the truth in Einstein's theory.

In many ways Einstein not only gave intuition its rightful due he seemed to know that it wasn't being appreciated perhaps adequately in the society we live in.

He is also known to have said ' The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift'

“Until now, we scientists have only seen warped space-time when it’s calm,” Dr. Thorne ( one of the three physicists who dreamt of measuring Einsteins theories) said in an email. “It’s as though we had only seen the ocean’s surface on a calm day but had never seen it roiled in a storm, with crashing waves.”

So the little chirp that scientists heard from the two black holes billions of light years away was not only a victory for Einstein and science, it was a great victory for the limitless innovative ways the human mind can think.

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