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Einstein and Beyond
MAY 2005
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In Learn More the National Geographic magazine team shares some of its best sources and other information to expand your knowledge of our featured subjects. Special thanks to the Research Division.
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 Did You Know?
We will never know whether it was the noise or the fumes that Albert Einstein most wanted to eliminate when he invented a refrigerator.
Einstein—thinker extraordinaire, but also a tinkerer—disliked the noise that the new mechanical refrigerators of the day produced. And when he learned that a family in Berlin died when toxic coolant leaked through faulty seals in their unit, he set to work. Einstein brainstormed with a young physicist from Budapest, Leo Szilard, and the two earned a patent in 1930 for a refrigerator that had no moving parts, did not require electricity, and circulated coolant at a constant, safe pressure.
Their design eliminated the leak-prone, noisy mechanical compressor of standard fridges. Einstein and Szilard replaced it with an ingenious pump that, in Einstein's words, worked "by means of an alternating electric current, [in which] a magnetic guide field is generated which moves a liquid mixture of sodium and potassium. This mixture moves in alternating directions inside a casing and acts as the piston of a pump; the refrigerant is thus mechanically liquified and cold is generated by its re-evaporation." That design ran on electricity, but the two physicists also came up with variants driven only by heat or water pressure.
Such a refrigerator would have required no maintenance. It was a perfect, silent appliance. Nevertheless, it was never manufactured. The Depression set in, and new technologies that relied on less dangerous coolants made the Einstein-Szilard model obsolete.
—Barbara L. Wyckoff
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Related Links
Gravity Probe B
einstein.stanford.edu
Learn more about Gravity Probe B, the latest experiment that's putting Einstein's revolutionary general theory of relativity to the test.
Beyond Einstein
universe.nasa.gov
Find out about a series of astrophysics missions designed to answer these three questions: What powered the big bang?; What happens to space, time, and matter at the edge of a black hole?; And what mysterious dark enery is pulling the universe apart?
American Institute of Physics exhibit on Einstein
www.aip.org/history/einstein
AIP's Center for History of Physics offers a comprehensive tour of Einstein's life and work.
Quantum Universe
interactions.org/quantumuniverse/index.html
Recent report to the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy addresses questions facing cosmologists today. Links provide a wealth of information.
Albert Einstein Archives
www.alberteinstein.info
Thousands of original papers from the archives of Hebrew University brought online in a collaborative effort of the Jewish National and University Library and the California Institute of Technology.
Carnegie Observatories
www.ociw.edu/ociw/about
Brief history of telescopes on Mount Wilson and Palomar Mountain, which were instrumental in early discoveries about our universe.
Mount Wilson
www.mtwilson.edu
More about Mount Wilson Observatory as it celebrates its 100th birthday.
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Bibliography
Bartusiak, Marcia. Archives of the Universe. Pantheon Books, 2004.
Christianson, Gale E. Hubble, Mariner of the Nebulae. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1996.
Folsing, Albrecht. Albert Einstein. Penguin Books, 1997.
Guth, Alan H. The Inflationary Universe. Helix Books, 1997.
Pais, Abraham. "Subtle is the Lord…" The Science and Life of Albert Einstein. Oxford University Press, 1982.
Siegfried, Tom. Strange Matters. Joseph Henry Press, 2002.
Thorne, Kip S. Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy. W. W. Norton and Company, 1994.
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NGS Resources
Delano, Marfe Ferguson. Genius: A Photobiography of Albert Einstein. National Geographic Books, 2005.
Suplee, Curt. The New Everyday Science Explained. National Geographic Books, 2003.
Achenbach, Joel. "The Power of Light." National Geographic (October 2001), 2-31.
Zimmer, Carl. "How Old Is It?" National Geographic (September 2001), 78-101.
Suplee, Curt. Milestones of Science. National Geographic Books, 2000.
Sawyer, Kathy. "Unveiling the Universe," National Geographic (October 1999), 8-41.
Smith, Bradford. "New Eyes on the Universe." National Geographic (January 1994), 2-41.
Boslough, John. "Worlds Within the Atom." National Geographic (May 1985), 634-63.
Canby, Thomas Y. "Pioneers in Man's Search for the Universe." National Geographic (May 1974), 626-33.
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