Maxwell Discovers Relativity

Carl Sagan and several other physicists have speculated that James Maxwell, if he lived longer, would have probably discovered relativity and the beginnings of quantum mechanics. What if this happened?
 
Were people ready to deal with the idea?

[NOOB]Logically, we have atomic bombs by WWI and nuclear reactors provide cheap power in the 20s so the New Deal TVA doesn't happen and Roosevelt loses the election and then the USA ally with Hitler and the Nazis nuke London and Moscow and conquer Europe and go into a Cold War with the USA in the 50s [/NOOB]
 

Philip

Donor
Were people ready to deal with the idea?

I have a feeling they were not. The mathematics of Special Relativity were developed by Lorentz a decade or two before Einstein's work. However, Lorentz was not prepared to make the intellectual leap of accepting what the equations implied. Oddly, Einstein repeated Lorentz's error in his reluctance to accept the implications of quantum theory.

If Maxwell had gone on to do his own ATL Michelson-Morley experierment, he may have derived the mathematics of Special Relativity. I have a feeling that Maxwellian Relativity might have languished for several decades as a mathematical curiosity that did not represent anything real.
 
If Maxwell were to live longer and come up with the special relativity theory in the 1880's, then that could end up pushing physics faster. The problem is that Einstein's theory wasn't really accepted until his claim about starlight being gravitationally deflected by the sun was shown to be true, about 14 years after he published his theory.

How advanced was astronomy at that point? That is, could the astronomical observations that showed Einstein to be correct have been done before the turn of the century?

If Maxwell is able to come up with special relativity theory, and have it shown through astronomical observations before he dies (let's hold off his death a decade to 1889), then I think he would die with his special relativity theory being accepted.

If that is the case, then Einstein might end up the father of the atomic bomb. The timeline from when Einstein's theory was publicly accepted (1919) to the first atomic bomb (1945) would be roughly analogous to Maxwell's theory being publicly accepted (1889) to WWI (1915).

Of course the problem with all that is that Einstein would be developing the atomic bomb for the Central Powers. If it could be conceived and built, I have a feeling that the same commanders who didn't flinch in using poison gas would be willing to use this new weapon.
 
If Maxwell were to live longer and come up with the special relativity theory in the 1880's, then that could end up pushing physics faster. The problem is that Einstein's theory wasn't really accepted until his claim about starlight being gravitationally deflected by the sun was shown to be true, about 14 years after he published his theory.

How advanced was astronomy at that point? That is, could the astronomical observations that showed Einstein to be correct have been done before the turn of the century?

Good enough... although you still have to wait for an eclipse to work out properly. :(

[/quote]If Maxwell is able to come up with special relativity theory, and have it shown through astronomical observations before he dies (let's hold off his death a decade to 1889), then I think he would die with his special relativity theory being accepted.

If that is the case, then Einstein might end up the father of the atomic bomb. The timeline from when Einstein's theory was publicly accepted (1919) to the first atomic bomb (1945) would be roughly analogous to Maxwell's theory being publicly accepted (1889) to WWI (1915).

Of course the problem with all that is that Einstein would be developing the atomic bomb for the Central Powers. If it could be conceived and built, I have a feeling that the same commanders who didn't flinch in using poison gas would be willing to use this new weapon.[/quote]

Nah - the atomic bomb was explained by relativity but it wasn't made possible until particle physics advanced enough to do funky stuff like create plutonium and set off chain reactions. When Maxwell develops relativity they're still decades away from so much as discovering radioactivity, let alone figuring it out - or probing the atom -or discovering fission - or coming up with chain reactions - or working out the ungodly amounts of math and laborious physical processign required to build a bomb. They'd be lucky if nukes were developed by the late 30s.
 
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