# Questions regarding Einstein's "cosmological constant" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 19, 2014, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-regarding-einsteins-cosmological-constant/705038 "2014-11-19T03:01:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-regarding-einsteins-cosmological-constant/705038/21 "2014-11-22T21:40:51Z")
A few things struck me after reading Isaacson’s biography of Einstein. Someone who comes up with a unified field theory would need both a very wide and deep understanding of all 4 forces (Strong, Electromagnetic, Weak and Gravity) and have an intuitive/uncommon ability/feel for the interaction of these forces on each other. Moreover, that person would need the right mathematics to solve a unified field theory equation. Without Riemann’s tensor analysis that wouldn’t have been possible. > **[The 100 Greatest Mathematicians](http://www.fabpedigree.com/james/mathmen.htm#Riemann)** > > List of the Greatest Mathematicians ever and their Contributions “By imposing metrics on manifolds Riemann invented differential geometry and took non-Euclidean geometry far beyond his predecessors. Riemann’s other masterpieces include tensor analysis, and the theory of functions. His generalized notions of distance and curvature described new possibilities for the geometry of space itself. Several important theorems and concepts are named after Riemann, e.g. the Riemann-Roch Theorem, a key connection among topology, complex analysis and algebraic geometry. He was so prolific and original that some of his work went unnoticed (for example, Weierstrass became famous for showing a nowhere-differentiable continuous function; later it was found that Riemann had casually mentioned one in a lecture years earlier). Like his mathematical peers (Gauss, Archimedes, Newton), Riemann was intensely interested in physics. His theory unifying electricity, magnetism and light was supplanted by Maxwell’s theory; however modern physics, beginning with Einstein’s relativity, relies on Riemann’s curvature tensor and other notions of the geometry of space.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-regarding-einsteins-cosmological-constant/705038/22 "2014-11-23T02:10:05Z")
There are a whole heck of a lot of things without which a grand unified theory wouldn’t be possible, and we don’t even know what all of them are. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-regarding-einsteins-cosmological-constant/705038/23 "2014-11-23T11:34:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Actually, I don’t think including the cosmological constant was a blunder at all, even given the data Einstein had available (though the way he used it was a blunder). It actually follows rather neatly from the math of general relativity, as something like a constant of integration. In my opinion, the intellectually-honest approach would be to say “the theory has this parameter in it, and we don’t know its value, but it might be zero”. Then future observations can attempt to determine whether it is in fact zero. I think this is something that deserves to be stressed. It’s often portrayed as if Einstein’s use of the CC was essentially as a ‘fudge factor’, something he arbitrarily included in order to satisfy his preconceptions. But the CC itself is a very natural piece of mathematics that emerges from the principles of General Relativity; it’s only its precise value that is set arbitrarily. Setting it to zero is not necessarily more natural than giving it any other value—in every case, in a more fundamental theory, one would hope for a deeper explanation of why it has that precise value (if one isn’t persuaded by anthropic arguments). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-regarding-einsteins-cosmological-constant/705038.md?page=1)