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The New York Times’s headline the following day was “LIGHTS ALL ASKEW IN THE HEAVENS – EINSTEIN THEORY TRIUMPHS.”Īt a press conference held at the National Science Foundation in Washington D.C. A theory of physics which had reigned ascendant since 1687 had been overthrown by a Quaker in African forests. After Eddington’s observation, the results were conclusive -light from Taurus was bent twice as much as they would have been had Newton’s theory been accurate. Two decades later, Eddington would write in his book The Philosophy of Physical Science that “For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.” And here on Principe, Einstein faced closing deliberations. There, on the warm waters of the south Atlantic, Einstein’s theory was to face its Experimentum crucis, its possibly fatal test.

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Such deflection, however, could only be measured during a full solar eclipse.Īs secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, Eddington had the resources to chart an expedition in two locations -one in Brazil, another on the West African island of Principe, off the coast of Guinea -in the path of a complete solar eclipse that was to occur on May 29 th, 1919. Classical Newtonian mechanics predicted a light deflection half of what general relativity did. A prediction of Einstein’s theory, which explains gravity as the curvature of the space-time continuum due to the influence of physical mass, was that light from distant stars should be slightly bent to a particular degree by the mass of a sun.

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Fighting in Europe led to a virtual intellectual embargo on the free exchange of collective theorizing and experimentation which is the prerequisite for scientific progress, but Eddington would nonetheless read, observe, and ultimately popularize the provocative theory concerning space, time, and gravitation derived by another pacifist living on the other side of the Western front.Īlready well known, Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity would be the most radical shift in our understanding of physics since Isaac Newton -if it could be confirmed. Perhaps because he was the child of Quakers -that pacifist, non-conformist sect -the astronomer Arthur Eddington would become one of the few British scientists during the height of the Great War to take seriously a theory proposed by a German Jew named Albert Einstein. You can also find Rewire News Group’ religion coverage here. Religion Dispatches has moved back home to.