# What if Einstein never existed?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-einstein-never-existed/26819>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 25, 2000, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-einstein-never-existed/26819 "2000-07-25T18:59:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\
**Post date:** [July 27, 2000, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-einstein-never-existed/26819/21 "2000-07-27T04:32:38Z")

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I can still remember the chanting now…

Oct-A-Gon!  
Oct-A-Gon!

Yeah, those were the days.

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**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\
**Post date:** [July 27, 2000, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-einstein-never-existed/26819/22 "2000-07-27T07:27:04Z")

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If Einstein was never born, Cecil Adams would have just figured all that stuff out anyway. We would have had to wait thirty years longer but it would still have happend.

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**Author:** ![PaulT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b9bd4f/32.png) [@PaulT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PaulT)\
**Post date:** [July 27, 2000, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-einstein-never-existed/26819/23 "2000-07-27T14:12:02Z")

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Chronos: I am only a humble master’s student in physics, with an eye toward astronomy for my PhD. So I have some experience with special relativity, and have read most of the university’s available books on general relativity. I would not consider myself a bona fide expert, just an interested student, so feel free to overrule me at any time =)

Also, although Newtonian mechanics does predict approximately mass-independent orbits for massive bodies, I’m not sure that those orbits were logically extended to light, if only because light went from being thought of as a pure wave effect (through 1900) to being considered a massless particle (and thus immune to Newtonian gravitation). Were there any attempts made before 1918 to detect the deflection of light by gravity?

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**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\
**Post date:** [August 1, 2000, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-einstein-never-existed/26819/24 "2000-08-01T00:01:00Z")

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Why are you people so worried about what might have happened if Einstein was never born?

You _should_ be worried about von Schmelling, who might have been the world’s greatest physicist, but was never born.

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