The Einstein Enigma

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The Einstein Enigma is the title of the 2017 German translation of a novel by the Portuguese author José Rodrigues dos Santos , which was published in 2006 under the title A Fórmula de Deus .

It has so far been translated into 18 languages, and the film rights have also been sold. The novel combines entertainment (agents, secret weapons, love stories, etc.) with the world of astrophysics, a fictional manuscript by Albert Einstein (“The Formula of God”) and topics such as the emergence and fall of the universe. JR Dos Santos shows parallels between Eastern spirituality and Western science. The book comes after the alleged evidence for the so-called strong anthropic principle that the thinking on which the book is based is "... attractive in a certain way - as long as one does not ask mundane questions such as the reality or verifiability." difficult to give a second novel that conveys as much knowledge from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry, philosophy and mathematics as Das Einstein Enigma. ”The thematic continuation of the novel is The Key of Solomon .

action

Tomás Noronha, cryptologist and history professor at the New University of Lisbon, is in his capacity as a consultant at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Cairo, where he is approached by the beautiful Iranian Ariana Pakravan and invited to dinner. She works for the Iranian Ministry of Science and makes him a lucrative offer: He is supposed to help decipher a still unpublished manuscript by Albert Einstein . The amount offered is too tempting. Despite a number of concerns, he signs the contract.

Back in Lisbon, Tomás received a call from the American cultural attaché asking him to come to an important meeting at the embassy. There it turns out that the cultural attaché is an employee of the CIA , which got wind of the Iranian project. A CIA agent explains to Tomás that the Einstein manuscript is a manual for an easy-to-make atomic bomb that Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion commissioned when he met Albert Einstein on May 13, 1951. An atomic bomb in Iranian hands poses an unforeseeable threat to the security of the United States . The CIA makes it clear to Tomás that he has to work for them too. So he becomes a double agent. He is supposed to decipher the manuscript for the USA - exclusively, of course.

However, the Iranians do not let Tomás read the manuscript in full, they only ask for a puzzling poem to be deciphered

Terror if fin
De terrors tight
Sabbath fore
Christ nite

and an ominous two-line:

See sign
! ya ovqo

Since Tomás is not allowed to leave Iran until he has solved the riddle and the CIA urges him to find a quick solution, an exciting chase breaks out that leads to Tibet . There Tomás and Ariana Pakravan are looking for clues from the missing Portuguese physics professor Alberto Siza, who was an employee of Albert Einstein in the 1950s. The two meet the Tibetan monk Tenzing Thubten, who introduces them to the Buddhist way of thinking , which shows astonishing and fascinating parallels to Western science.

With the help of his dying father, a mathematician and colleague of Professor Siza, Tomás finally gets on the track of one of the greatest mysteries in the world: the scientific proof of the existence of God.

Backgrounds and theses

The novel is based on the idea of ​​what would have happened if Albert Einstein had discovered a scientific way to prove the existence of God. First the question is asked what God actually is.

Topics such as the theories of relativity and the origin of the universe ( Big Bang ) as well as its possible end scenarios ( Big Crunch or Big Freeze ) are explained in a generally understandable manner . Heisenberg's uncertainty principle , Gödel's theorem of incompleteness and Alain Aspect's experiment with entangled photons make the fascination of quantum mechanics tangible.

The Buddhist wisdom mentioned above is compared in the book with modern scientific research results and parallels are drawn.

The book postulates that science has not proven the God of the Bible, but that the universe is so complex that its creation suggests a deliberate intelligence - a "The God". This way of thinking roughly corresponds to the strong anthropic principle, according to which it could not have been possible without a controlling intelligence that u. a. Natural constants would have assumed precisely those values ​​that the emergence of life and humanity has become possible ( intelligent design ).

JR Dos Santos' sources

José Rodrigues dos Santos draws on numerous popular scientific sources, some of which are controversial, including The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler as well as The Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler, The Constants of Nature by John D. Barrow and The Accidental Universe by Paul Davies , The Science of God by Gerald Schroeder, Theories of the Universe by Gary Moring, Universe by Martin Rees , The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein, The Evolution of Physics by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld , The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory and La nature dans la physique contemporaine by Werner Heisenberg , Chaos by James Gleick , The Essence of Chaos by Edward Lorenz , Introducing Chaos by Ziauddin Sardar and Iwona Abrams, Chaos and Harmonie by Trinh Xuan Thuan, Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics by Robert Hilborn, Sync by Steven Strogatz , The Plan of God and God and Modern Physics by Paul Davies, The Tao of Physics by F ritjof Capra , Introducing Time by Craig Callender and Ralph Edney, A Brief History of Almost Everything by Bill Bryson , Five Equations that Changed the World by Michael Guillen, and How We Believe by Michael Shermer .

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christoph Pöppe: Gottesbeweis à la Einstein. Book review of Das Einstein Enigma . In: Spektrum.de. May 11, 2017. Retrieved October 2, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Beatrix Petrikowski: The Einstein Enigma by JR Dos Santos. Book review. In: BuchAviso.de. March 18, 2017. Retrieved October 17, 2017 .