Albert Einstein’s biggest scientific mistake: Why the genius was wrong about major parts of the universe

Albert Einstein first published his theory of general relativity in October 1915. It was a groundbreaking way to explain the relationship between space, time, gravity, and matter in the universe.

He originally tweaked his formula so that it fit with the belief at the time that the universe was static by adding the cosmological constant. However, when it was discovered that the universe was actually expanding, he happily did away with his fudge, which he considered his biggest blunder.

Despite numerous attempts over the ensuing century to prove his theory wrong, time and again it has held up including in the findings of a recent study by scientists from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration. They were able to show that Einstein’s theory is still spot on using gravitational waves, something that the genius predicted but doubted existed.

Funny enough though, the gravitational waves had come from something that his theory said must exist but he resisted accepting as just being too bizarre of a phenomenon to exist in nature.

Albert Einstein’s biggest scientific mistake

Einstein hadn’t included the solution to his equation of the theory of general relativity when he first published it. An artillery lieutenant in the German army, Karl Schwarzschild, who was serving on the frontline of the Eastern Front, worked out the solutions and shared them with Einstein.

He found that there was a point at which a dying star would continue collapsing until it reached a point of “singularity,” where the laws of physics no longer work, as well space and time cease to exist. These singularities were later called a black holes, a term coined by astronomer John Wheeler in 1967. Despite the math staring them right in the face, both he and Einstein rejected that such a phenomenon could exist.

They weren’t alone. Several scientists were resistant to accepting the idea of black holes because it violated their intuitions of how the universe “ought to behave,” even though time and again, others kept showing that they had to be out there.

It wasn’t until 1971 that the first black hole was discovered. The Event Horizon Telescope captured the first visual image of black in 2019.

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