2024-04-02 11:24:33
The highest resolution image of the 1919 solar eclipse (Enhanced by European Southern Observatory (ESO)
In 1905, Albert Einstein was just an unknown physicist working discreetly in an office at the Bern Patent Office in Switzerland. That tedious work, however, left him many free hours to give free rein to his theories and ideas regarding the Universe. Under his desk he had a drawer where he kept his calculations and notes, a drawer which, with his peculiar sense of humor, he called “my own Department of Theoretical Physics.” But that year of 1905 was not going to be just any year, in fact today it is called the “Annus mirabilis” and Einstein would take out of that wonderful drawer his entire physical arsenal to publish four articles that would completely change the history of science.
The first of these articles explained the photoelectric effect and for this work alone, Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics. The second study was dedicated to Brownian movementthe third introduced the Theory of Special Relativity and, finally, in the fourth article he developed the mass-energy equivalence which today we all know, in summary, as E=mc².
Still, those articles weren’t all Einstein had up his sleeve… still a fifth fundamental article was missinga theory that he would end up publishing a decade later (1915) and that would be called: General Relativity Theory.
The physics of celestial bodies, united by gravity that Newton enunciated, was going to take an unexpected turn… the universal fabric formed by space-time was now curved in the presence of mass and energy. The equations fit perfectly but this theory needed a boost to confirm its accuracy. Albert Einstein was a great theoretical thinker, his equations explained physical reality in a revolutionary way but, without an experiment that would put them into practice and confirm them They would just be ideas on paper…
Continue reading the story
Fortunately, the cosmic experiment that general relativity required is not too unusual and, as we are seeing these days, it usually happens from time to time… Albert Einstein needed an eclipse in order to verify that the predictions of his theory occurred in the real world.
Infographic of the experiment to confirm the Theory of General Relativity in the solar eclipse of 1919
In 1915, what was most interesting regarding eclipses was the opportunity to check the deflection of light by the Sun’s gravity, thus proving Einstein right. For Newton, light had no mass, but the new theory stated that light not only had mass but would also be affected by the gravity of celestial bodies, such as the Sun.
To verify this deviation of light, a group of British astronomers, led by Arthur Eddington, Frank Watson Dyson and Andrew Crommelin, set out to two very specific locations where they might observe several stars during the total solar eclipse that would occur exactly on the 29th. May 1919. Eddington traveled to the island of Príncipe (Africa) and Crommelin traveled to the Brazilian city of Sobral. Everyone knew well the position of certain stars in the night sky, but now they might measure the positions of those same stars during the eclipse and it would be possible determine if light rays were really bent when passing close to the Sun’s gravitational field.
Eddington y Crommelin They obtained images of the eclipse using the technology of the time: photographic plates made of glass (precisely the images that I have used in this text) and were able to confirm, for the first time, that light was indeed affected by the gravity of the Sun… the Theory of General Relativity he was right in his prediction and, since then, astronomers and astrophysicists have continued to use eclipses to measure the deviation proposed by Einstein.
Today, this simple experiment is one of the best known and replicated throughout the world. In fact, recently, a amateur astronomer He reconfirmed Einstein’s ideas from his backyard during the 2017 eclipse.
YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED | ON VIDEO
“Einstein was right”: the discovery that brings us closer to solving the mystery of antimatter
1712088100
#solar #eclipse #confirmed #Einsteins #General #Theory #Relativity
