W swoich pracach, Einstain poruszał niektóre spośród najważniejszych fizycznych pytań i problemów epoki.

-- Wikipedia

Wybrane problemy:

  1. Kwantowa grawitacja: "W jaki sposób wyprowadzić efekt, który przypisujemy grawitacji, wychodząc od zasad mechaniki kwantowej?"
  2. Oś zła ("axis of evil"): "Czy obserwowana znacząca anomalia rozkładu promieniowania tła zgodna z ruchem i orientacją Układu Słonecznego ma źródło w błędach pomiaru lub przetwarzania na Ziemi, czy też stawia Układ Słoneczny i Ziemię w szczególnym miejscu we wszechświecie?"
  3. Strzałka czasu ("arrow of time"): "Dlaczego czas ma kierunek?"
  4. Masy cząstek
  5. Magnetorecepcja: "Na jakiej zasadzie zwierzęta, np. migrujące ptaki, wyczuwają ziemskie pole magnetyczne?"

Using the kinetic theory of gases, which at the time was controversial, the article established that the phenomenon, which had lacked a satisfactory explanation even decades after it was first observed, provided empirical evidence for the reality of the atom. (...) Before this paper, atoms were recognized as a useful concept, but physicists and chemists debated whether atoms were real entities. Einstein's statistical discussion of atomic behavior gave experimentalists a way to count atoms by looking through an ordinary microscope.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers

In a book of mathematical functions he [Gabriele Veneziano] discovered a name for this function. It was called Euler's beta function. Somehow this story got changed into the notion that he discovered the beta function as a function that would explain the strong force. That version neglects the year he spent deriving the mathematical function. In the book he only found out that the function had a name.

-- Thayer Watkins, Silicon Valley & Tornado Alley USA, https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/stringtime.htm

The discrepancy between how fast the universe seems to be expanding and how fast we expect it to expand is one of cosmology’s most stubbornly persistent anomalies.

Cosmologists base their expectation of the expansion rate — a rate known as the Hubble constant — on measurements of radiation emitted shortly after the Big Bang. This radiation reveals the precise ingredients of the early universe. Cosmologists plug the ingredients into their model of cosmic evolution and run the model forward to see how quickly space should be expanding today.

Yet the prediction falls short: When cosmologists observe astronomical objects such as pulsating stars and exploding supernovas, they see a universe that’s expanding faster, with a larger Hubble constant.

The discrepancy, known as the Hubble tension, has persisted even as all the measurements have grown more precise.

‒ Thomas Lewton, 27.04.2020, Quanta Magazine, https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-is-the-universe-expanding-so-fast-20200427/

Źródła:

  1. "The 10 Biggest Unsolved Problems in Physics", 2015, https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:979253/FULLTEXT01.pdf
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics