Subject: “Crystal Spheres”
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 02:55:05 EDT
Many thanks again, Kerry’s excellent work in “Crystal Spheres” is already recognized by a large and constant readership on the _www.aias.us_ (http://www.aias.us) site.
Dear Myron, Please find below the latest page of Crystal Spheres.  I think you will find it interesting! Around this time Myron became acquainted with optically induced magnetic processes, which led to the 1989 to 1991 papers on www.aias.us. This was mixed theoretical and simulation work and Kalos dedicated a Quarterly NSF Report to Myron’s work.  In this time frame, Myron tested out an IBM RISC 6000 with his TETRA based code, and found it to be as fast as the much more expensive IBM 3090-6S.  This signaled the beginning of the era of fast desktop workstations.  Extensive animation work was then carried out in collaboration between Myron and Chris Pelkie on the inverse Faraday Effect, which is now available on the www.aias.us site. This animation won honorable mention in a US / Canadian supercomputer competition won overall by Shapiro’s group, also of Cornell.       In the fall of 1990 Laura and Myron set out for the University of Zurich where Myron had been offered a position as a Guest of the University by Georges Wagniere to work on the inverse Faraday Effect.
 Myron Crosses Einstein’s Path.           Einstein studied for his degree in physics at ETH University in Zurich, which at that time was called ETH Polytechnic.  There, Einstein was so obsessed with the nature of light, that at times he failed to turn up for lectures because he was following his own path to ‘reveal the enigma’ of light!  Einstein’s lecturers were aware of his undoubted talents in physics, but were put off by his arrogance and failure to abide by the etiquette dictated by his position as a student.  As a result Einstein could not get a position in a university after he graduated, but did find an excellent position to suit his temperament and practical knowledge of electrical devices by working as a patent clerk in the Bern Patent Office. This ‘hands on’ practical knowledge of electrical generation came from his father’s business enterprises.  His father had been given contracts to light the streets of Munich in Albert’s school days. However, the business faltered when the follow on contracts were awarded to Einstein’s father’s rival Siemens. Siemens used the profits generated by his thriving business to turn ETH Polytechnic’s physics department into a state of the art facility for training physicists and physics teachers. In 1905 while working as a patent clerk Einstein published five papers which revolutionized physics.  His paper on the photoelectric effect asserted that rays of light are not continuous, but travel as discrete quantities or packets of energy which we now call quanta or photons.  This paper was to earn Einstein belatedly the 1921 Nobel Prize for physics and enabled him to return to Zurich as a Physics Professor at Zurich University, the ‘sister’ university to ETH. In 1905 Einstein’s explanation of Brownian motion proved to physicists that atoms and molecules existed. Einstein had previously studied the work of leading physics philosophers, such as Mach who did not believe in atoms, and Einstein’s work with Brownian motion brought home to the maturing Albert, that physics was unnecessarily abstract and Boltzmann was right to believe in the deterministic nature of matter at the atomic level!  Boltzmann’s equations for describing the particulate nature of matter by collisions between countless numbers of spheres did indeed have its root in real collisions between atoms and molecules.      Myron had since his early years in Aberystwyth also become obsessed by the nature of light in its chemical manifestation in spectroscopy.  Far infra red spectroscopy had become the main thrust of his work as soon as he had started working for his Ph D.  This work required Myron to consider how light in the far infra red low energy range would affect the movement of molecules.  In the infra red light causes the atoms in molecules to vibrate about their bonds. The enigma in the far infra red was how light caused molecules to translate, rotate and oscillate.  Myron’s move into computer simulation was essentially an extension of Einstein’s work on Brownian motion.  Thus for years Myron had been following a similar path to Einstein’s, but this connection was not obvious. When Myron moved to Zurich, Myron would not simply cross paths with Einstein geographically but also through the mutual desire of the two physicists to understand more fully the nature of light. Poetically then, Myron made the discovery at Zurich which would further our understanding of light and the photon and in time would facilitate the completion of Einstein’s life’s work! Einstein’s understanding of light built on the work of the Civil List Scientist Michael Faraday. Now Myron would build on the work of both men with his work on the inverse Faraday, which fittingly was carried out in Zurich with Wagniere research group. Kerry
