Jongjin Park
Einstein thought that time was affected by speed. And 10 years later, he thought that space might be bent by gravity. So he speculated on the existence of a massive mass of gravitational force that creates such a curved space, and following long and complex mathematical calculations, he imagined the existence of an invisible black hole. He even thought that light is a wave, but due to the duality of being a particle, if it is a particle, it will naturally be affected by gravity, and if so, it will bend when passing by an object with great gravity.
Of course, the celestial body capable of exerting that much gravity around us was the sun, but we might not observe the phenomenon of bending of starlight coming from afar under the influence of the sun. During the day, the light of the sun was so bright that no stars might be seen, and at night the stars were bright but there was no sun. Then, when he realized that a total solar eclipse was approaching, he clapped his hands. During a solar eclipse, the moon blocks the sun and darkens for a short time even in broad daylight, so the stars are visible. He wrote a letter to the British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, explaining his theory and asking for help.
At that time, during World War I, Britain did not show much interest in its enemy, a German scientist, and above all, anyone who opposes Newton, who was born in England, was treated as someone who had already given up being a scientist. Therefore, they even criticized Einstein as a mad scientist, who had easily solved the problem of Mercury’s perihelion, which Newtonians had troubled with the general theory of relativity.
A devout Quaker, Eddington refused to be drafted for religious reasons and awaited labor camps for conscientious objectors. However, to confirm Einstein’s theory, he made a petition to observe the eclipse on Principe Island in West Africa, and the Royal Astronomical Society of England accepted Eddington’s ability to beat him with eclipse observations instead of going to a concentration camp.
Starlight behind the sun is obscured by the sun and invisible to our eyes. However, since the starlight passing around the sun travels straight through the space bent by the sun’s gravity, it can be observed from our Earth. Eddington captured the exact location of the star with a precision camera, and was surprised to compare the two pictures by taking pictures of the sun at the moment of a total eclipse.
As Einstein said, the star was photographed, but in fact it was not there, but because it was still hiding behind the sun. It was the only thing the light might see. The fact that light bends seems to contradict the principle of physics because it violates the straight line property of light, but strictly speaking, light did not bend but went straight through curved space, and the gravitational force of the sun bent space. It was indeed a great discovery.
In the year of the March Day Movement in Korea, Einstein and Eddington shook the foundations of modern physics. Eddington’s photos were published in newspapers around the world, and Einstein rose from an eccentric scientist to an advanced physicist. Finally, Einstein’s world has arrived.
Eddington said:
“I am the only person in this world who can understand Einstein’s theory of relativity!” (Writer)
Jongjin Park
