The Perfect Theory by Pedro G. Ferreira Read Free Book Online Page B

Einstein’s prediction, again.
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    On November 6, 1919, the team of explorers presented their results to a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society. In a series of talks led by Frank Dyson, the different measurements from the eclipse expedition were laid out in front of an audience of their distinguished peers. Once the problems that had faced the Sobral expedition were taken into account, the speakers showed that the eclipse measurements spectacularly confirmed Einstein’s prediction.
    J. J. Thomson, the president of the Royal Society, described the measurements as “the most important result obtained in connection with the theory of gravitation since Newton’s day.” He added, “If it is sustained that Einstein’s reasoning holds good—and it has survived two very severe tests in connection with the perihelion of Mercury and the present eclipse—then it is the result of one of the highest achievements in human thought.”
    The day after the Burlington House meeting, Thomson’s words appeared in the London
Times.
Next to a clutch of headlines celebrating the anniversary of the armistice and praising the “Glorious Dead” was an article with the headline“Revolution in Science. New Theory of the Universe. Newton’s Ideas Overthrown,” describing the results from the eclipse expeditions. News and opinions about Einstein’s new theory and Eddington’s expedition spread like wildfire through the English-speaking world. By the tenth of November news had reached America, where the
New York Times
published its own eye-catching headlines: “All Lights Askew in the Heavens,” “Einstein’s Theory Triumphs,” and the more convoluted “Stars Not Where They Seemed or Were Calculated to Be but Nobody Need Worry.”
    Eddington’s gamble had paid off. By testing and actually understanding Einstein’s new general theory of relativity, he had established himself as the prophet of the new physics. From then on, Eddington would be one of the few pundits to whom everyone would defer when discussing the new relativity, and his opinions would be sought, above anyone else’s, as a guide to how Einstein’s theory should be interpreted or developed.
    And, of course, Eddington’s spectacular mission had made Einstein a superstar. His findings would transform Einstein’s life and propel his general theory of relativity, at least for a while, to a level of popularity and fame rarely experienced by a scientist. He had dethroned Newton, who had reigned supreme for hundreds of years. Even though his theory was opaque and couched in a mathematical language that very few people understood, it had passed Eddington’s test with flying colors. Furthermore, Einstein had stopped being the enemy. The war was over, and while a lingering animosity against the German scientists remained, Einstein was excused. It was now publicly known that he hadn’t signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-three, and in fact he wasn’t even a German, but a Swiss Jew. As Einstein wrote in an article in the
Times
shortly after Eddington’s historic announcement at the RAS,“In Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be represented as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English.”
    From being an unknown patent clerk, with a tendency toward insolence, admired by a few specialists in his field, Einstein had become a cultural icon, invited to give lectures in America, Japan, and throughout Europe. And his general theory of relativity, which had first seen the light of day in a simple thought experiment in his office in Bern, was now fully formed as a new, completely different way of doing physics. Mathematics had taken a firm foothold in the physics of