Right place, wrong time

Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Learning something new is exciting. When you learn of facts that point to an amazing coincidence and result in unbelievably remarkable unintended consequences it is cause for reflection, often demanding a reconciliation of rational thought and mystical or divine belief.

I had such a moment when I looked and learned of the works of Albert Einstein who needs no introduction from me.

Einstein was a completely unknown who wanted badly to become a physicist but failed to enthuse those who were in positions to provide him the opportunity to achieve his dream so he worked as a petty bureaucrat in the patents registration department of a government office in Switzerland. He worked full time six days a week examining and summarising patent submissions and in his spare time thought up scientific theories, one of the best known is the formula e=mc2. His theories opened the field of quantum mechanics but the theory that his peers regard as the most significant scientific theory since Isaac Newton’s is the theory of general relativity.

I don’t propose to explain here what that theory is about (even physicists find it complex) but that is not important to this story. Let’s just settle on the explanation that it makes a relationship between time and space, which is to say that space can determine time and time can have an effect on space. The significance of the theory in the scientific world is that it provides explanation for the way in which gravity works. Newton’s universal theory on gravity was accepted for two hundred and fifty years and this unknown patents registrar published a theory saying that Newton’s theory was incomplete. Newton described what happened but he couldn’t explain why it occurred. Newton thought that the Earth’s gravity pulled objects towards it but Einstein’s theory is that things get pushed not pulled so he developed a theory that explained how this happens.

It took eight years to develop the theory but to have it accepted he had to provide scientific proof that things worked the way the theory proposed. To get the proof Einstein needed to demonstrate that light (which travels in straight lines) would deviate (ie follow a curved path) if it came close enough to a huge mass. The only example that Einstein could think of that would demonstrate that would be to photograph the path of stars as they came close to the sun but taking photographs pointed at the sun wouldn’t show anything because of the extreme light emitted from the sun. The only way to get the required photographs would be during a total eclipse of the sun when the stars shone but there was no light coming directly from the sun to “blind” the camera’s view.

Total eclipses don’t happen every day or everywhere. The next solar eclipse would be in eighteen months’ time in Crimea but this unknown bureaucrat who was challenging one of the most revered scientists in all of history on a theory that had been universally accepted found it very difficult to find an astronomer willing to do him the favour of financing and making the effort to travel to Crimea to photograph the event. He worked tirelessly writing to astronomers around the world trying to find one willing to take on the task. Eventually, against all the odds, he found not one but two! One was a very young, inexperienced fellow in Berlin and the other was an expert in astronomical photography from California. Both agreed to travel to Crimea, at their own cost, with their equipment.

A few months prior to the scheduled eclipse the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarejevo, precipitating the first World War. The Crimea was part of the Russian empire and Prussia was fighting on the other side of the war. The two astronomers decided to do their observations from two different parts of Crimea – to counter the odds of problems with their mission. As it turns out that didn’t help. The German astronomer was arrested by the Russians. A German carrying high powered telescopes in enemy territory was a certain give away. The American was not arrested as America was neutral in the war at that time and he was permitted to stay and observe the eclipse however, at the very time of the darkened sun, clouds obliterated the view of the stars and the American did not get any photographs. The mission was a total failure! Poor Einstein was bitterly disappointed. He had waited years to get an opportunity to prove his theory and he would have to wait for the next solar eclipse which was another two or three years away!

He was offered an opportunity to present his theory at a science conference to be held at the time of the next eclipse. In the meantime he reviewed his theory in meticulous detail and in the process found that his mathematical calculations included an error. Had he not found the error and the solar eclipse in the Crimea HAD been photographed the results obtained would NOT have given the predicted results. The theory would have been proven wrong by the objectively observed data and the world would not have found the theory of relativity, at least at that time, and Einstein would not have achieved the recognition that he did eventually receive.

The failure to obtain the data from the solar eclipse had given Einstein the opportunity to find and correct the mathematical error in time for later proofs that were eventually obtained from a viewing on Ninety Mile Beach on the north western coast of Western Australia, conducted by the same Californian astronomer. Examination of the photographs of the moving stars showed a curved line exactly as predicted by Einstein’s theory. The theory was proven, Einstein became a world recognised scientific genius (receiving “rock star” status in America) and he was presented with the Nobel Prize a few years later. It had taken fifteen years for him to develop and prove his theory, now regarded as his most significant achievement and one of the most important in the history of science.

Now the point of the story for me is this: Notwithstanding the heart wrenching disappointment in not getting any pictures in the Crimea, imagine how much more gut wrenching it would have been if they DID get photographs because the data that resulted would have DIS-proved his theory.

Ask yourself this: “What are the odds of your desperate efforts and years of planning being upset, not just by the untimely commencement of a World War but also having one of the observation teams arrested and the other being clouded out?” Could it be that some other force was acting to delay the process sufficiently for the theory to be reviewed and modified? Remember, we are talking about possibly the most important scientific theory ever made.