Heaven and earth moved to make Albert Einstein a star a century ago.
By Devin Powell for Discover Magazine, Friday, May 24, 2019
Photo Source: ETH-Bibliothek Zürich/Public Domain; Alison Mackey/Discover;NASA GODDARD/JPL/SDO; NASA/Bill Ingalls; Wikimedia; David Rumsey Map Collection
A hundred years ago, Albert Einstein wasn’t a household name. He was a professor in Berlin, known to scientists, intellectuals, his divorced wife and the first cousin who would soon become his second wife — but not to the world.
His rise to superstardom began on May 29, 1919, when the moon and sun lined up just right for a solar eclipse. Photos of the astronomical event showed something strange: A few of the stars visible during the blackout were in the wrong place.
Einstein had foreseen this. Using his theory of general relativity, he made the seemingly crazy bet that the stars’ positions in the sky would shift during an eclipse, and even calculated by how much.
“Stars moved by exactly the amount general relativity predicted,” says Mark Hurn, a departmental librarian at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “It was the first experimental evidence for general relativity being on the right track.”
Not since Edmond Halley prophesied the appearance of his namesake comet had a scientific prediction come true so spectacularly. But whereas Halley vindicated Isaac Newton’s view of the universe, Einstein sought to topple it. And in a historical twist, the astronomers who made the German-born physicist a superstar came from England: Newton’s birthplace and Germany’s enemy during World War I, which had ended just before the eclipse. Their scientific quest to test Einstein’s theory would be celebrated for moving beyond the horrors of war.
“The romantic nature of this business of postwar reconciliation caught the public’s imagination,” says Daniel Kennefick, a historian of physics at the University of Arkansas. It all added up to sudden fame for the physicist behind the prediction. “The public became fixated on Einstein because of this eclipse.”
More ( article source) How the 1919 Solar Eclipse Made Einstein the World's Most Famous Scientist | DiscoverMagazine.com
By Devin Powell for Discover Magazine, Friday, May 24, 2019
Photo Source: ETH-Bibliothek Zürich/Public Domain; Alison Mackey/Discover;NASA GODDARD/JPL/SDO; NASA/Bill Ingalls; Wikimedia; David Rumsey Map Collection
A hundred years ago, Albert Einstein wasn’t a household name. He was a professor in Berlin, known to scientists, intellectuals, his divorced wife and the first cousin who would soon become his second wife — but not to the world.
His rise to superstardom began on May 29, 1919, when the moon and sun lined up just right for a solar eclipse. Photos of the astronomical event showed something strange: A few of the stars visible during the blackout were in the wrong place.
Einstein had foreseen this. Using his theory of general relativity, he made the seemingly crazy bet that the stars’ positions in the sky would shift during an eclipse, and even calculated by how much.
“Stars moved by exactly the amount general relativity predicted,” says Mark Hurn, a departmental librarian at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “It was the first experimental evidence for general relativity being on the right track.”
Not since Edmond Halley prophesied the appearance of his namesake comet had a scientific prediction come true so spectacularly. But whereas Halley vindicated Isaac Newton’s view of the universe, Einstein sought to topple it. And in a historical twist, the astronomers who made the German-born physicist a superstar came from England: Newton’s birthplace and Germany’s enemy during World War I, which had ended just before the eclipse. Their scientific quest to test Einstein’s theory would be celebrated for moving beyond the horrors of war.
“The romantic nature of this business of postwar reconciliation caught the public’s imagination,” says Daniel Kennefick, a historian of physics at the University of Arkansas. It all added up to sudden fame for the physicist behind the prediction. “The public became fixated on Einstein because of this eclipse.”
More ( article source) How the 1919 Solar Eclipse Made Einstein the World's Most Famous Scientist | DiscoverMagazine.com
