fashion nova plus
narrator: when we think of e = mc2 we havethis vision of einstein as an old wrinkly man with white hair. e = mc2 is not aboutan old einstein. it's actually about a young, energetic, dynamic, even a sexy einstein. albert einstein: what would i see if i rodeon a beam of light? michael faraday (dramatization): perhaps somesort of electrical force is emanating outwards from the wire. humphry davy (dramatization): what? william thomas brande (dramatization): faraday,my dear boy, electricity flows through a wire, not sideways to it.
michael faraday: you see, john? you see? antoine lavoisier (dramatization): it is mygreat ambition to demonstrate that nature is a closed system, that in any transformationno amount of matter, no mass, is ever lost, and none is gained. jean-paul marat (dramatization): the people... captain: lavoisier. jean-paul marat: ...it is they who will determineright and wrong. francois-marie arouet de voltaire (dramatization):emilie, you are being absurd. why ascribe to an object a vague and immeasurable forcelike vis viva? it is a return to the old ways.
emilie du chã‚telet (dramatization): areyou capable of discovering something of your own? francois-marie arouet de voltaire: i discoveredyou. emilie du chã‚telet: there is no righttime for the truth. otto hahn (dramatization): fraulein meitner? lise meitner (dramatization): yes? otto hahn: otto hahn. lise meitner: the nucleus is our focus. kurt hess (dramatization): the jewess endangersour institute.
heinrich horlein (dramatization): we can'tharbor a jew. if she stays the regime will shut us all down. lise meitner: he's split the atom. otto robert frisch (dramatization): no, no,no. you've split the atom. albert einstein (dramatization): energy equalsmass times the square of the speed of light. mileva maric einstein (dramatization): wouldyou like me to check your mathematics? google is proud to support nova in the searchfor knowledge: google. major funding for nova is provided by thehoward hughes medical institute, serving society through biomedical research and science education:hhmi.
funding for einstein's big idea is providedby the national science foundation, america's investment in the future. and by the alfred p. sloan foundation, toenhance public understanding of science and technology. and the u.s. department of energy, fosteringscience and security. major funding for nova is also provided bythe corporation for public broadcasting and by pbs viewers like you. thank you. narrator: a hundred years ago, a deceptivelysimple formula revealed a hidden unity, buried deep in the fabric of the universe. it tellsof a fantastic connection between energy,
matter and light. its author was a youthfulalbert einstein. it's the most famous equation in the world: e = mc2. station master (dramatization): all aboard. narrator: but while we've all heard of einstein'sbig idea, very few of us know what it means. in fact, e = mc2 is so remarkable that eveneinstein wasn't sure if it was really true. mileva maric einstein: albert, darling, youare later than i expected. we've only got sausage and cheese tonight. what is it? albert einstein: we need to talk. mileva maric einstein: has something happened?
albert einstein: oh, no, nothing, sorry, no.i spent most of the day staring out the window at work looking at trains, and i started tothink about an object and how much energy it had. can i explain it to you? mileva maric einstein: of course you can,but first, dinner—food and talk. albert einstein: i think the gods are laughingat me. narrator: the gods were not laughing at einstein.he'd united, in one stunning insight, the work of many who had come before him, scientistswho'd fought, and even died, to create each part of the equation. the story of e = mc2starts long before einstein, with the discovery of "e" —for energy.
in the early 19th century, scientists didn'tthink in terms of energy. they thought in terms of individual powers or forces. thesewere all disconnected, unrelated things: the power of the wind, the force of a door closing,a crack of lightning. the idea that there might be some sort of overarching, unifyingenergy which lay behind all these forces had yet to be revealed. one lowly man's driveto understand the hidden mysteries of nature would begin to change all that. david bodanis (author, e=mc2): young michaelfaraday hated his job. he was uneducated; the son of a blacksmith, he'd been lucky tobecome a bookbinder's apprentice. but faraday craved one thing, he craved knowledge. heread every book that passed through his hands.
he developed a passion for science. all ofhis free time and his meager wages were poured into his self-education. he was on the thresholdof an incredible journey into the invisible world of energy. narrator: faraday had impressed one of hismaster's customers and was rewarded with a ticket that would change his life. michael faraday: excuse me please. can i pass,please? william thomas brande: can i pass? michael faraday: some of us are trying toimprove ourselves, if people will let us. chater (dramatization): of course, of course.pass, pass. this way to a better life.
s. james gates, jr. (physicist, universityof maryland): in the early 1800s, science was the pursuit of gentlemen—something faradaywas clearly not. he had a rudimentary education, he'd read widely, he'd gone to public lectures,but in 1812, he was given tickets to hear sir humphry davy, the most prominent chemistof the age. narrator: nineteenth century scientists werethe pop stars of their day. their lectures were hugely popular, tickets were hard tocome by, and davy reveled in his status. john newman (dramatization): they're waiting. humphry davy: i know. narrator: he was also a keen follower of thelatest fashion: nitrous oxide, or "laughing
gas." he said it had all the benefits of alcoholwithout the hangover. humphry davy: electricity, ladies and gentlemen,a mysterious force that can unravel the confusing mixture of intermingled substances that surroundus and produce pure, pure elements. how do we do this? s. james gates, jr.: davy was an absolutelyfirst-rate scientist, however, many will come to say that his greatest discovery is michaelfaraday. humphry davy: ...unknown metals. unknown thatis until i, i isolated potassium from molten potash and sodium, as i showed you last time,from common salt. that same metal... narrator: faraday may not have been born agentleman, but he wasn't going to let class
barriers stop him from pursuing a career inscience. he worked for nights on end to bind his lecture notes into a book for his newhero. michael faraday: lord, help me to think onlyof others, to be of use to mankind. help me be part of the great circle that is your workand love. lord, i am your servant. humphry davy: this is excellent work, faraday.so, what is it you aim to do with your life? michael faraday: my desire, sir, is to escapefrom trade—which i find vicious and selfish—and to become a servant of science, which i imaginemakes its pursuers amiable and liberal. humphry davy: really? well, i shall leaveit to the experience of a few years to set you right on that score. look, i haven't anythingat the moment. i'll send a note if anything
comes up. narrator: despite this humiliating setback,faraday was determined to break free from his daily toil. his patience was rewarded. humphry davy: newman, meet mr. michael faraday,he's going to be my helper while i recover. he assures me he is a christian fellow. perhapswith god and faraday in charge of the chemicals you and i will be safe in our place of work. john newman: thank you, professor davy. welcomefaraday. michael faraday: oh, no, thank you. and thankyou, sir humphry. humphry davy: just stick to your job and doas you're told, and you'll be fine, faraday.
narrator: faraday became the laboratory assistant,eagerly absorbing every scrap of knowledge that davy deigned to impart. but in time thepupil would surpass the master. the big excitement of the day was electricity. humphry davy: another charge, newman. narrator: the battery had just been inventedand all manner of experiments were being done. but no one really understood what this strangeforce of electricity was. s. james gates, jr.: the academic establishment,at the time, thought that electricity was like a fluid flowing through a pipe, pushingits way along. but, in 1821, a danish researcher showed that when you pass an electric currentthrough a wire and place a compass near it,
it deflected the needle at right angles. narrator: this was the first time researchershad seen electricity affect a magnet: the first glimpse of two forces, which had previouslybeen seen as entirely separate, now unified in some inexplicable way. humphry davy: faraday, come look at this.you're the bright spark around here, perhaps you can work it out. oersted's reported anamazing finding. we're just replicating it here. william thomas brande: let's try the compasson the other side. chater: now, that is remarkable.
william thomas brande: but if the electricalforce is flowing through the wire, why does the needle not move in the same direction,parallel to the wire? humphry davy: quite. chater: let's try turning the whole apparatusround. humphry davy: again, newman. chater: so, the electrical force goes thisway, the compass points that way. how can one affect the other? michael faraday: perhaps the electricity isthrowing out some invisible force as it moves along?
humphry davy: what? michael faraday: perhaps some sort of electricalforce is emanating outwards from the wire. william thomas brande: oh, my dear boy, letme tell you that at the university of cambridge, electricity flows through a wire, not sidewaysto it. michael faraday: well, that may be what theyteach at cambridge, but it doesn't explain what's happening before our eyes. humphry davy: now, now. let's just get on.let's swap the compass to below the wire. narrator: why the compass was deflected atright angles, why the electricity was affecting the compass at all, dumbfounded davy and manyothers.
minister (dramatization): as we celebratethe marriage of michael and sarah... narrator: for faraday, however, the problembecame an obsession. it was a fascination inspired by his religion. for him the problemwas a way to understand god's hidden mysteries. david bodanis: there is a small, almost persecutedgroup in london called the sandemanians. they were religious...not really a sect, they werejust a small sub-sect, sort of like quakers. faraday was a member of that group. it wasa very gentle, decent group. they believed that underneath the whole surface of reality,everything was created by god in a unified way—that if you opened up one little partof it you could see how everything was connected. s. james gates, jr.: michael faraday was someonewho, like einstein, thought in terms of pictures.
david bodanis: faraday was different fromanybody else. he had a flair for understanding his experiments, for understanding what wasreally going on inside them. narrator: by methodically placing a compassall around an electrified wire, faraday started to notice a pattern. david bodanis: what everyone else at the timehad been taught was that forces travel in straight lines. faraday was different. faradayimagined that invisible lines of force flowed around an electric wire. and then he imaginedthat a magnet had similar lines emerging from it and that those lines would get caught upin this flow. it was a bit like a flag in a wind.
narrator: but faraday's great leap of imaginationwas to turn this experiment on its head. instead of an electrified wire moving a compass needle,he wondered if he could get a static magnet to move a wire. john newman: i've never seen you like this,faraday. you look like a happy child. michael faraday: i'm shaking, newman. underneathi'm shaking. you see, john, you see? john newman: yes. s. james gates, jr.: this is the experimentof the century. it's the invention of the electric motor. scale up the magnets and thewires; make them really big. attach heavy weights to them and they'll be dragged along.but almost more importantly, he's inventing
a new kind of physics here. narrator: although he didn't realize it atthe time, faraday had also just demonstrated an overarching principle. the chemicals inthe battery had been transformed into electricity in the wire, which had combined with the magnetto produce motion. behind all these various forces there was a common energy. david bodanis: a couple of months earlier,davy had been elected president of the royal society, which was the elite body of englishscience. but then he saw this great discovery published in the quarterly journal of science.i don't know if he was envious, but he certainly saw that this young man who had been his assistant,this mere blacksmith's son, had come up with
one of the greatest discoveries of the victorianera. s. james gates, jr: davy accuses faraday ofplagiarizing similar work from another eminent british scientist, william wollaston. william thomas brande: so faraday, what doeswollaston make of all this? michael faraday: he's written to me and assuresme that he's taken no offense, and he acknowledges that what i published was entirely my ownwork. chater: quite, quite. davy is just being anass. michael faraday: but will davy now retracthis allegation? william thomas brande: sadly, no. in fact,he is still vehemently opposed to you being
elected a member of the society. michael faraday: really? and what do you think? william thomas brande: faraday, my dear boy,you have my vote. chater: and mine. and i believe you even havewollaston's. michael faraday: oh, what a mess. william thomas brande: well, no matter, nomatter. it's the science that counts. so, tell me, how does this wire of yours spinround its magnet? what mysterious forces are at play? michael faraday: there seems to be an electro-magneticinteraction. in my mind, i see a swirling
array of lines of force spinning out of theelectrified wire, like a spiraling web. william thomas brande: but invisible linesof force? it's all a bit vague, isn't it? humphry davy: faraday, might i have a wordin private? michael faraday: certainly. humphry davy: listen, faraday, let's stopthis nonsense. i want you to take down your ballot paper from the notice board. michael faraday: sir humphry, i see no reasonto take it down. my friends have proposed me. it is they who put the paper up. i willnot take it down. good day. narrator: faraday was elected to the royalsociety. davy died five years later, a victim
of his many gaseous inhalations. in time,faraday's world of invisible forces would lead to a whole new understanding of energy.he'd started what einstein would call "the great revolution." it was in the very heart of this excitingnew world of energy that einstein grew up. albert einstein: my father and uncle wantedto make their fortune by bringing electric light to the streets of germany. from an earlyage i loved to look at machines, understand how things work. hermann einstein (dramatization): he's goingto kill himself. albert, stay there. albert einstein: i experienced a miracle whenmy father showed me a compass. i trembled
and grew cold. there had to be something behindobjects that lay deeply hidden. at high school, they had their ideas aboutwhat i should learn, i had my own. i was merely interested in physics, maths, philosophy andplaying the violin. everything else was a bore. professor fritz muhlberg (dramatization):einstein, on your feet. as you obviously know everything about geology, tell me how do therock strata run here? albert einstein: it's pretty much the sameto me whichever way they run, herr professor. narrator: einstein's teachers tried to druminto him, as faraday had shown, that energy could be converted from one form into another.they also believed that all forms of energy
had already been discovered. einstein wasgoing to prove them wrong. he would discover a new, vast reservoir of energy, hidden whereno other scientist had ever thought of looking, deep in the heart of matter. a hundred years before einstein's birth, kinglouis the xv was on the throne of france, but the ancient, absolute power of the monarchyover the people was starting to be challenged. monsieur paulze (dramatization): jacques,leave the windows, forget the rain, we need air. narrator: the french revolution was just aroundthe corner. patricia fara (historian, university of cambridge):this was the era of the enlightenment, when
intellectuals believed very firmly that theway forward lay in science. and they felt that one of the first tasks that lay aheadof them was to rationalize and to classify every single kind of matter so they couldsee how it all interacted together. narrator: antoine lavoisier, a wealthy, aristocraticyoung man decided to take up this task to see if there was some basic connection betweenall the stuff of everyday life, all the different substances in the world. but what worked forlavoisier as a scientist—his meticulous, even obsessive attention to detail—was alsoto be his downfall. marie anne paulze (dramatization):monsieurlavoisier, you are, if my eyes do not deceive me, consuming only milk this evening. firstyou had a glass of milk, now you are "eating"
a bowl of milk. will you move on to a plateof milk? antoine lavoisier: your precise observationscommend you as a lady of scientific curiosity, mademoiselle, most unusual. as you seek knowledge,so i shall dispense it. for the last five weeks i have taken nothing but milk. count de amerval (dramatization): good god,man, i would rather die than fast on milk for five weeks. are you in the grip of somehorrendous ailment? antoine lavoisier: on the contrary. i am investigatingthe effects of diet on health. count de amerval: monsieur, with the greatestof respect to a member of the royal academy of sciences, your gut must think your throathas been slit.
marie anne paulze: whereas your gut, count,is, no doubt, petitioning the academy for a widening of your throat. baroness de la garde (dramatization): marieanne, how dare you insult the count? don't forget what the count offers. not just marriage,but think of how you will be introduced to all the salons. you will be the toast of paris. antoine lavoisier: would it not be a shame,madame, to burden you with the duties of matrimony before you have had a chance to experienceyour curiosity for nature? baroness de la garde: shall we all go through?it's getting rather hot in here. antoine lavoisier: do you really plan to marryde amerval?
marie anne paulze: there is a plan, but itis not mine. antoine lavoisier: then i must contrive tosave you. narrator: lavoisier wasn't a scientist byprofession. he was the head of tax enforcement in paris. his great idea was to build a hugewall around the city and to tax everything that came and went. but his taxes on the simplethings in life—bread, wine and cheese—did not endear him to the average parisian. thisscrupulous, fastidious young man did still allow himself the occasional act of passion. in 1771, lavoisier married marie anne paulze,the daughter of his colleague in the tax office. thus he saved her, as he had promised, froman arranged marriage to a count 40 years her
elder. antoine lavoisier: allow me to show you something. patricia fara: lavoisier, i think, found hisjob as a tax collector really rather tedious, and the times he looked forward to were theevenings and the weekends when he could indulge his passion for chemical experimentation.and he called those times his "jours de bonheur," his "days of happiness." antoine lavoisier: madame. what will happenif i take a bar of copper or iron and leave it outside in the rain for months on end,madame lavoisier? marie anne paulze: mmmm, monsieur lavoisier?
antoine lavoisier: the metals what will becomeof them? marie anne paulze: is this a verbal examinationprior to an examination proper, sir? antoine lavoisier: i merely seek the truth. marie anne paulze: then you toy with me, monsieur,for you know the truth. the copper will become covered in a green verdigris and the ironwill rust. i believe the term is "calcined." antoine lavoisier: most impressive, my charmingwife. but let me press you further. marie anne paulze: mmmm. antoine lavoisier: when the metal rusts, doesit get heavier or lighter? marie anne paulze: why, sir, i think you meanto trap me.
antoine lavoisier: then perhaps this littlebutterfly should land and allow me take a closer look. marie anne paulze: every last citizen in franceof sensible age knows that when a metal rusts it wastes away, it gets lighter and eventuallydisappears. antoine lavoisier: ah, but... marie anne paulze: huh? stop. i have not finished.contain yourself, sir. there is more. in a recently published pamphlet by a brilliantyoung chemist, antoine lavoisier demonstrates that the iron combines with the air. it, infact, becomes heavier. antoine lavoisier: most impressive. i intend...
marie anne paulze: now whatever you intend,monsieur, i intend to be by your side. i will learn all i can about your science and becomeyour worthy colleague. antoine lavoisier: then let me show you howthe iron combines with the air to form such a delicate union. marie anne paulze: tomorrow, monsieur, tomorrow. narrator: marie anne learned chemistry ather husband's side, but soon sought other ways to contribute to his work. she learnedenglish so that she could translate contemporary scientific works. she took drawing lessonsso that she could record in forensic detail the minutiae of their work together. she rantheir laboratory and was the public face of
"lavoisier, inc." she was central to the wholeresearch effort. marie anne paulze: monsieur, that is a terriblething to say. you are a cheeky man. antoine lavoisier: this way please, gentlemen. messieurs, it is my great ambition to demonstratethat nature is a closed system, that in any transformation, no amount of matter, no mass,is ever lost, and none is gained. over here, please. this precise amount of water is heated tosteam. this steam is brought into contact with a red hot iron barrel embedded in thecoals. from this end, we cool the steam, but, interestingly, we collect less water thanwe started with. so clearly we lose a certain
amount of water. however, we also collecta gas, and the weight of the iron barrel increases. now, when we combine these two increases,the new weight of the iron barrel and the gas we have collected, they are exactly equalto the weight of the lost water. member of academy: aha! but is it atmosphericair, monsieur lavoisier? antoine lavoisier: no, no because i am measuringit, to the very last grain, i can see that it is lighter than the air around us, andmoreover, it is flammable. voila. david bodanis: water is made out of hydrogenand oxygen. so what he had done is get the oxygen to stick to the inside of a red hotiron rifle barrel. he was basically just making rust, which is oxygen iron, but he was makingthe rust really quickly. now that left the
hydrogen—what he called combustible "air"—andthat was just floating around as a gas. no mass had been lost, it had merely beentransformed, and now he wanted to transform it all back into water. antoine lavoisier: this is only the beginning.in the next few months, i hope to demonstrate that i can recombine this combustible airwith vital air and transform them both back into water. i will recreate exactly the sameamount of water that was lost here in this process. it is my hope to complete the cycle,water into gas into water, and not a drop lost. david bodanis: for a long time, lavoisierhad suspected that the exact amount of matter,
the mass, involved in any transformation wasalways conserved. but to prove this he had to perform thousands of experiments, and hehad to do the measurements with incredible accuracy. that's where his great wealth frombeing a tax collector came in. he could afford to commission the most sensitive instrumentsever built. he became obsessed with accuracy. narrator: but lavoisier's exacting methodswere also starting to anger the growing mob of hungry, disenchanted parisians. marie anne paulze: antoine, antoine. oh, wakeup, antoine. antoine lavoisier: i'm sorry. what time isit? marie anne paulze: it is almost time to receivemonsieur marat. the academy asked you to assess
his designs. he claims to have made a greatdiscovery. oh antoine, have you forgotten? antoine lavoisier: what? my god, another charletanwith an idea to peddle! god give me patience. well, monsieur marat. jean-paul marat: monsieur, i have inventeda device which projects an image of the substance of fire onto a screen. you see, when a lanternis shone through a flame we see a shimmering pattern above the flame. my device rendersthe substance of fire visible. antoine lavoisier: have you collected it,this substance of fire? have you trapped it and measured it? jean-paul marat: well, no, but, but one cansee it.
antoine lavoisier: i'm sorry, in the absenceof exact measurements, of precise observations, without rigorous reasoning, one can only beengaging in conjecture. so this is not science. jean-paul marat: i am not given to conjecture,monsieur. antoine lavoisier: no. if you will you excuseme, i am extremely busy today. thank you. thank you. jean-paul marat: so that is all? then, goodday, monsieur. jeane manson (dramatization): let me guess,marat. the king's scientific despot has decreed that your invention does not conform to theversion of the truth as laid down by the academy. jean-paul marat: lavoisier, he talks aboutfacts; he worships the truth.
jeane manson: listen to me, my friend. theyare all the same, the royal academies. they insult the liberty of the mind. jean-paul marat: they think they are the solearbiters of genius. they are rotten to the core, just like every other tentacle of theking. the people, it is they who will determine right and wrong. jeane manson: don't worry. in my next pamphlet,i will expose this persecutor of yours. narrator: for years the lavoisier's burned,chopped, melted and boiled every conceivable substance. they'd shown that as long as oneis scrupulous about collecting all the vapors, liquids and powders created in a transformationthen mass is not decreased. liquids might
become gases, metals may rust, wood may becomeash and smoke, but matter, the tiny atoms that make up all substances, none of it isever lost. the crowning glory of this opus was their remarkable use of static electricityto cause oxygen and hydrogen to recombine back into water. marie anne paulze: what is happening? narrator: as the french revolution exploded,the royal family and whole swathes of aristocrats lost their heads on the guillotine. patricia fara: to the french revolutionariesof 1790, lavoisier meant one thing and one thing only: he was the despised tax collectorwho'd built the wall around paris.
narrator: lavoisier's job as a tax collectorbrought him under suspicion. he was denounced by a failed scientist turned radical journalist,jean-paul marat. david bodanis: what lavoisier did was absolutelycentral to science and especially to e = mc2, because what he said is if you take a bunchof matter, you can break it apart, you can recombine it, you can do anything to it, andthe stuff of the matter won't go away. if the mob burned paris to the ground, utterlyraised it, shattered the bricks into rubble and dust, and burned the buildings into ashesand smoke, it turns out if you put a huge dome over paris and weighed all the smokeand all the ashes and all the rubble, it would add up to the exact same weight of the originalcity and the air around it before. nothing
disappears. narrator: a century later, all of nature hadbeen classified into two great domains. there was energy—he forces that animated objects—andthere was mass—the physical stuff that made up those objects. the whole of 19th centuryscience rested on these two mighty pillars. the laws that governed one did not apply tothe other. but young, newly enrolled physics student albert einstein didn't like laws. michele besso (dramatization): good grief,einstein, what happened to you? albert einstein: it is more than a littleironic, having been reprimanded yesterday by that idiot professor pernet for poor attendance,that i should, in fact, attend a practical
lesson which was as long as it was boring,and utterly pointless by the way, only to be the victim of an explosion of my own apparatus. michele besso: and so it was your own faultthen? albert einstein: thank you. and how are youtoday, fraulein maric? mileva maric: extremely well, herr einstein.all the better for seeing you have escaped the physics laboratory with your life. albert einstein: well, in order not to alarmyou any further, i pledge to forever continue my studies here at the cafe bahnhof, readingonly the great masters of theoretical physics and eschewing the babbling nonsense of thepolytechnicians.
michele besso: hah. that's about all you everdo. albert einstein: it's getting a little stuffyin here, fraulein maric. would you care to take a walk with me? there's something i'dlike to discuss with you. mileva maric: why, herr einstein, of course.perhaps, you'd like me to tell you what you have missed in lectures this week? david kaiser (physicist and historian, massachusettsinstitute of technology): einstein wasn't exactly a model student. he excelled in certainsubjects, especially physics and math, but he wasn't very diligent in a lot of his otherclasses. he was undoubtedly very questioning, which seems to have annoyed most of his professorsthroughout his life. he would pursue his fascinations
with just incredible determination. michio kaku (physicist, city university ofnew york): we know from his letters that einstein, even from the age of 16, was literally obsessedwith the nature of light. everyone he could speak to, his friends, his colleagues, evenhis then girlfriend, mileva maric—who would become his wife—everyone he badgered withthe question, "what is light?" mileva maric: what? a beam of light? by whatmethod do you propose to ride on this beam of light? albert einstein: the method is not important.let us just imagine we two are young, radical, bohemian experimenters, hand in hand, on ajourney to the outer reaches of the universe,
and we are riding on the front of a wave oflight. mileva maric: i really don't know what youare suggesting, herr einstein. do you wish to hold my hand or ridicule me? albert einstein: ridicule you? no, never.i merely want you to help me to understand. what would we see, do you think, if we weretogether, and we sped up and up until we caught up to the front of a beam of light? what wouldwe see? narrator: it was einstein's relentless pursuitof light, which would bring about a revolution in science. with light he would reinvent theuniverse and find a hidden pathway that would unite energy and mass.
light moves incredibly fast: 670 million milesper hour. that's why scientists use the term "c." it stands for celeritas, latin for "swiftness."long before the 19th century, scientists had computed the speed of light, but no one knewwhat light actually was. back in england, a man we've already met was willing to makean educated guess. after sir humphry davy's death, michael faradaybecame professor faraday, one of the most important experimenters in the world. thescientific establishment still found it hard to accept that electricity and magnetism werejust two aspects of the same phenomenon, which faraday called "electromagnetism." but nowhe has an even more outrageous proposal for his audience.
michael faraday: ...invisible lines that canemanate from electricity in a wire, from a magnet, or even from the sun. for it is mycontention that light itself is just one form of these vibrating lines of electromagnetism. narrator: for 15 years, faraday struggledto convince the skeptics that light was an electromagnetic wave, but he lacked the advancedmathematics to back up his idea. eventually, someone came to his rescue. professor jamesclark maxwell believed in faraday's farsighted vision, and he had the mathematical skillto prove it. maxwell and the aging faraday became close friends. michael faraday: james, james, forgive me.a word of advice: don't get old.
james clark maxwell (dramatization): michael,how are you? michael faraday: oh, i'm fine. memory isn'ttoo good though. james clark maxwell: well, i thought you mightlike to see what i've just published. michael faraday: oh, yes, yes, splendid. james clark maxwell: so your results showthat when electricity flows along a wire what it actually does is create a little bit ofmagnetism. as that magnetic charge moves it creates a little piece of electricity. michael faraday: electricity? james clark maxwell: electricity and magnetismare interwoven, like a never-ending braid,
so it is always pulsing forward. michael faraday: that's wonderful. james clark maxwell: michael, michael. there'ssomething very crucial in the math. this electricity producing magnetism and magnetism producingelectricity, it can only ever happen at a very particular speed. the equations are veryclear about it. they come up with just one number, 670 million miles per hour. michael faraday: i'm not sure i... james clark maxwell: it's the speed of light.that is the speed of light. you were right all along, light is an electromagnetic wave.
narrator: maxwell had proven faraday right.electricity and magnetism are just two aspects of a deeper unity, a force, now called electromagnetism,which travels at 670 million miles per hour. in its visible form it is nothing other thanlight itself. and nothing fascinated the young einsteinmore than light. mileva maric einstein: we have lectures inhalf an hour. albert einstein: oh, let me think: professorweber and his life-draining monologue or you, mozart and james clark maxwell? mileva maric einstein: we can't. we'll geta warning. albert einstein: our project is too preciousto waste time listening to those dullards.
come with me. we'll read maxwell and thinkabout the electromagnetic theory of light. mileva maric einstein: oh, why, my dear littlejohnnie, how you enchant a lady. she's very pretty. albert einstein: yes, but can she soar anddance like our dark souls do? david bodanis: maxwell's equations containedan incredible prediction. they said you could never catch up to a beam of light. even ifyou were traveling at 670 million miles an hour, you would still see light squiggle awayfrom you at 670 million miles an hour. albert einstein: do you see how she staresat that wave? mileva maric einstein: yes.
albert einstein: you see how, for her, itis static? she and the wave are traveling at the same speed. we see the moving throughthe water. but relative to her it just sits there. so is light like that? mileva maric einstein: common sense wouldsay that if you caught up to a light beam, there would be a wave of light, just sittingthere. maybe it would be shimmering, a bit of electricity and a bit of magnetism. albert einstein: so, if she was travelingalongside the light wave it wouldn't be moving. it would be static. but maxwell says you can'thave static light. mileva maric einstein: maybe maxwell is wrong.maybe if you catch up to light it is static,
albert, like a wave next to a boat. albert einstein: imagine if i were sittingstill and holding a mirror to my face. and the light travels from my face to the mirror,and i see my face. however, if i and the mirror were traveling at the speed of light? mileva maric einstein: you're going at thesame speed as the light leaving your face? albert einstein: exactly. mileva maric einstein: the light never reachesthe mirror? albert einstein: so would i be invisible? mileva maric einstein: that doesn't make sense.
narrator: young einstein was starting to realizethat light was unlike any other kind of wave. einstein was about to enter a surreal universewhere energy, mass and the speed of light intermingled in a way no one had ever suspected.but there was one last mathematical ingredient that einstein would need, the everyday processof squaring. long before the french revolution, scientistswere not sure how to quantify motion. equations that explained how objects moved and collidedwere in their infancy. a crucial contribution to this subject would come from an unusualsource. meet the aristocratic, 16-year old daughter of one of king louis the xiv courtiers,emilie du chãâ¢telet. charles (dramatization): quickly, father'scoming.
narrator: emilie du chãâ¢telet would havea huge effect on physics in her tragically short lifetime. unheard of, for a woman ofher time, she would publish many scientific works, including a translation of sir isaacnewton's principia, the greatest treatise on motion ever written. du chãâ¢telet's translationis still the standard text in france today. tutor (dramatization): musa, mihi causas memora? charles: muse, my memory causes...? emilie du chã‚telet: "o muse. the causesand the crimes relate; what goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate; for what offence thequeen of heav'n began to persecute so brave, so just a man."
emilie's father (dramatization): do not becross with your sister because she persecutes many a just man. only the other night emiliesilenced the duc du luynes when she divided a ridiculously long number in her head ina matter of seconds. you should have seen the incredulity on their faces when they realizedemilie was correct. charles: was it my sister's astounding intelligenceor her boundless beauty that made their mouths gape, i wonder? emilie's father: ah well, yes, you have apoint, monsieur. emilie du chã‚telet: messieurs, i thankyou for your kindness. i fear, however, that my wit is only a curiosity to others. if onlymy mind was permitted opportunity.
emilie's father: my dearest, emilie. you areblessed with intellect and courage. use them both and the world will fall at your feet. judith zinsser (du chãâ¢telet biographer):in one sense, she is a woman utterly out of her true time and place. she is a philosopher,a scientist, a mathematician, a linguist. she demands a freedom that women didn't beginto enjoy until over 150 years later, a freedom to study science, to write about it and tobe published. narrator: du chãâ¢telet married a generalin the french army at age nineteen and had three children. she ran a busy household,all the while pursuing her passion for science. she was 23 when she discovered advanced mathematics.she enthusiastically took lessons from one
of the greatest mathematicians of the day,pierre de maupertuis. he was an expert on newton, and she was his eager young student.it seems they had a brief affair. but then he set off on a polar expedition. du chãâ¢telet then fell passionately in lovewith voltaire, france's greatest poet. a fierce critic of the king and the catholic church,voltaire had been in prison twice and exiled to england, where he became enthralled bythe ideas of newton. back in france, it wasn't long before he again insulted the king. duchãâ¢telet hid him in her country home. character (dramatization): the poor littlecreature is devoted to him. narrator: isolated far from paris, du chãâ¢teletand voltaire turned her chateau into a palace
of learning and culture—complete with itsown tiny theatre—and all with the apparent blessing of her husband. patricia fara: there is a great deal of mythsurrounding du chãâ¢telet and her love life. and most of it is very exaggerated. but herhusband did accept voltaire into his household, and he often went to paris on behalf of voltaire.he went to his publisher to plead voltaires' case, to keep voltaire out of jail. and itis also true that emilie du chãâ¢telet did have several affairs of a fleeting nature. judith zinsser: she created an institutionto rival that of france's royal academy of sciences. many of the great philosophers,poets and scientists of the day visited.
emilie du chã‚telet: ah, monsieur you areyoung. i hope that soon you will judge me for my own merits or lack of them, but donot look upon me as an appendage to this great general or that renowned scholar. i am, inmy own right, a whole person, responsible to myself alone for all that i am, all thati say, all that i do. narrator: du chãâ¢telet learned from thebrilliant men around her, but she quickly developed ideas of her own. much to the horrorof her mentors, she even dared to suspect that there was a flaw in the great sir isaacnewton's thinking. newton stated that the energy of an object,the force with which it collided with another object, could very simply be accounted forby its mass times its velocity. in correspondence
with scientists in germany, du chãâ¢teletlearned of another view, that of gottfried leibniz. he proposed that moving objects hada kind of inner spirit. he called it "vis viva," latin for "living force." many discountedhis ideas, but leibniz was convinced that the energy of an object was made up of itsmass times its velocity, squared. david bodanis: taking the square of somethingis an ancient procedure. if you say a garden is "four square," you mean that it might bebuilt up by four slabs along one edge and four along the other so the total number ofpaving slabs is four times four, is 16. if the garden is eight square, eight by eight,well eight squared is 64, it'll have 64 slabs in it. this huge multiplication, this buildingup by squares is something you'd find in nature
all the time. francois-marie arouet de voltaire: emilie,emilie, you are being absurd. why ascribe it is the occult. emilie du chã‚telet: when movement commences,you say it is true that a force is produced which did not exist until now. think of ourbodies, to have free will we must be free to initiate motion. so, all leibniz is askingis, "where does all this force come from?" francois-marie arouet de voltaire: in yourcase, my dear, the force, i'm sure, is primeval. emilie du chã‚telet: aaah, you're infuriating.you hide behind wit and sarcasm. you only think you understand newton. you are incapableof understanding leibniz. you are a provocateur.
everything you do is about something elseand makes trouble for you. criticize this, denounce that. are you capable of discoveringsomething of your own? narrator: despite the overwhelming supportfor newton, du chãâ¢telet did not waver in her belief. eventually, she came across anexperiment performed by a dutch scientist, willem 'sgravesande that would prove her point. emilie du chã‚telet: 'sgravesande, in leiden,has been dropping lead balls into a pan of clay. francois-marie arouet de voltaire: droppinglead balls into clay? how very imaginative. emilie du chã‚telet: using newton's formulas,monsieur voltaire, he then drops a second
ball from a higher height, calculated to exactlydouble the speed of the first ball on impact. so, messieurs, care for a little wager? newtontells us that by doubling the speed of the ball, we will double the distance it travelsinto the clay. leibniz asks us to square that speed. if he is correct the ball will travelnot two, but four times as far. so who is correct? pierre louis de maupertuis (dramatization):messieurs, i feel mister newton's reputation dwindling, ever so slightly. francois-marie arouet de voltaire: oh, maupertuis,do not succumb to her. there is no earthly reason to ascribe hidden forces to this dutchman'slead balls.
emilie du chã‚telet: well, the ball travelsfour times further. david bodanis: turns out leibniz is the onewho is right. it's the best way to express the energy of a moving object. if you drivea car at twenty miles an hour, it takes a certain distance to stop if you slam on thebreaks. if you're going three times as fast, your going sixty miles an hour, it won't takeyou three times as long to stop, it'll take you nine times as long to stop. pierre louis de maupertuis: oh. well, it doesseem worth consideration. francesco algarotti (dramatization): perhapswe might look over his calculations? emilie du chã‚telet: i have already checkedhis figures. i am sure leibniz is correct
on this point. i intend to include a sectionon this matter in my book. pierre louis de maupertuis: really? do becareful, madame. do you think the academy is ready for such an opinion? francois-marie arouet de voltaire: quite,quite. we really should be careful... emilie du chã‚telet: "we?" i see no reason to delay. there is no righttime for the truth. judith zinsser: emilie du chãâ¢telet publishedher institutions of physics in 1740, and it provoked great controversy. voltaire wrotethat "she was a great man whose only fault was being a woman." in her day that was agreat compliment.
emilie du chã‚telet: i am with child. francois-marie arouet de voltaire: you aresure? emilie du chã‚telet: undoubtedly. two tothree months. i'm afraid... francois-marie arouet de voltaire: you areafraid? well you should have...oh, well, this child is obviously not mine, nor is it yourhusband's. oh, emilie, emilie. patricia fara: emilie du chãâ¢telet knewthat in the 18th century, for a woman to become pregnant at the age of forty-three was reallyvery dangerous, and all the while she was pregnant she had terrible premonitions aboutwhat was going to happen. narrator: all her life du chãâ¢telet hadtried to rise above the limitations placed
on her gender. in the end it was an affairwith a young soldier that led to her demise. six days after giving birth to her fourthchild she suffered an embolism and died. emilie du chãâ¢telet's conviction, that theenergy of an object is a function of the square of its speed, sparked a fierce debate. afterher death it took a hundred years for the idea to be accepted—just in time for einsteinto use this brilliant insight to finally bring energy and mass together with light. einstein pursued light right through universityand beyond. unfortunately, he'd upset so many professors that no one would write him a reference.he accepted a low paying job in the swiss patent office. he and mileva married and hada child. the young family struggled, but none
of it seems to bother albert. dr. haller (dramatization): einstein, i seeyou are busy as usual. look, einstein, you have shown some quitegood achievements. but listen, about your promotion, i really think it would be betterto wait until you have become fully familiar with mechanical engineering. i'm sorry, perhapsnext time. mileva maric einstein: but i wanted to hirea maid so i can get back and finish my degree. now i'll never pass my dissertation. albert einstein: oh, come, come, my prettylittle duck. all will be fine, you'll see. mileva maric einstein: but how will it befine albert? do i have to just wait another
year, until you are promoted? albert einstein: all will be fine. all willbe fine. you'll see. david bodanis: there really is a very charming,but kind of a self-centered streak to einstein. he focuses only on his particular obsessions.if the rest of the world fits in around him, that's fine, if they can't, it doesn't botherhim. michele besso: albert, albert, albert. a prettyneck and your head spins. albert einstein: besso, we must behold andcomprehend the mysterious. michele besso: well, that kind of mysteriousis going to get you into trouble. albert einstein: i'll tell you what is trulymysterious, the secret of a long and happy
marriage. ha, ha. conrad habicht (dramatization): the mathematicsare fine, if a little unconventional. but this only works for big systems. it'll falldown when you apply it to small systems. albert einstein: i disagree. michele besso: oh, no, here we go: anothergrand theory by herr albert einstein, patent clerk, third class. albert einstein: what would happen if oneapplied those formulas to electromagnetic radiation? conrad habicht: albert, you can't just borrowone bit of physics and apply it, without proper
regard, to a completely different area. albert einstein: why not? michele besso: albert, i know you like thegrand linkages, the big theories, but wouldn't things be better all'round if you just gotgoing in some small area, got a university post. get a decent wage, for god's sake. atleast mileva could study again. then she'd be happy and you'd be happy. albert einstein: ah, the vulgar struggle forsurvival, food and sex: spoken like a true bourgeois, besso. i want to know how god createdthis world. i am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this orthat element. i want to know his thoughts.
the rest are details. michele besso: yes, but you can't feed yourchildren on his thoughts, bertie. david kaiser: so it turns out einstein wasgoing for walk with his very close friend michele besso. they'd studied physics togetherand talked about physics and philosophy for years and years. they were very close. theyhad cornered the question of light from every possible angle. narrator: as einstein and besso were ruminatingon how much time it would take light to reach them from clocks at different distances, einsteinhad a monumental insight. albert einstein: thank you, thank you! i'vecompletely solved the problem.
michele besso: albert? david bodanis: what einstein did was completelyturn the problem on its head. other scientists had found it impossible to accept maxwell'sidea that light would always move away from you at 670 million miles an hour, even ifyou, too, were traveling really fast. but einstein just accepted that as a fact: light'sspeed never ever changes. then what he did was bend everything we know about the universeto fit light's fixed speed. what he discovered was that to do that you have to slow downtime. lisa randall (physicist, harvard university):his extraordinary insight is that time...as you approach the speed of light, time itselfwill slow down. it's a monumental shift in
how we see the world. michio kaku: the instant, the very instantwhen einstein had this brilliant insight that time could slow down, well the floodgatesbegan to open. you see, before then people had assumed that time was like a wristwatchon god's hand, that it beat at a steady rate throughout the universe no matter where youwere. einstein said no, that the tick, tick, tick of this wristwatch was actually the click,click, click of electricity turning into magnetism turning into electricity—in other words,the steady pace of light itself. david bodanis: 1905 was a miraculous yearfor einstein and for physics. he had an unbelievable outpouring of creativity. it starts with hispublication of a paper on how to work out
the true size of atoms. two months later isthe publication of his paper on the nature of light. that's what will earn him the nobelprize. the third paper, only a month later is on how molecules move when heated, andthat finally ends the debate on whether atoms really exist. the fourth paper is publishedat the end of this half-year period. in it einstein sets out his theory of light, timeand space. it was the "theory of special relativity" that changed the way we see the world. narrator: in einstein's new world, the onetrue constant was not time or even space, but light. but einstein's miracle year was not over;in one last great 1905 paper, he would propose
an even deeper unity. as he computed all theimplications of his new theory he noticed another strange connection, this one betweenenergy, mass and light. david bodanis: einstein realizes that thespeed of light is kind of like a cosmic speed limit, nothing can go faster. so imagine wehave a train charging along. and let's say it's getting up to the speed of light, andwe're stuffing more and more energy in trying to get it to go faster and faster, but it'sstill bumping up against the speed of light. so all this energy, where does it go? it hasto go somewhere. amazingly it goes into the object's mass. from our point of view, thetrain actually gets heavier. the energy becomes mass. it's an incredible idea. even einsteinis amazed by it.
albert einstein: look. i think i have founda connection between energy and mass. if i am right then energy and mass are not absolute.they are not distinct. they can be converted into one another. energy can become mass,and mass can become energy, and not just energy equaling mass. energy equals mass times thesquare of the speed of light. mileva maric einstein: would you like me tocheck your mathematics? narrator: einstein sent his fifth great 1905paper for publication. in three pages he simply stated that energy and mass were connectedby the square of the speed of light: e=mc2. with four familiar notes in the scale of nature,this patent officer had composed a totally fresh melody, the culmination of his 10 yearjourney into light.
david bodanis: here we are, for thousandsof years, thinking that over here is a world of objects, of matter, and over there is anentirely separate world of movement, of forces, of energy. and einstein says "no. they arenot separate. energy can become mass. and crucially, mass can also become energy." thereis a deep unity between energy, matter and light. michio kaku: "e = mc2." that equation showsthat every piece of matter in our universe has stored within it a fantastic amount ofenergy. the speed of light for example is about 300 million meters per second, you multiplythat by itself and you get 90 quadrillion. so, in other words, what is matter? in somesense, matter is nothing but the condensation
of vast amounts of energy. so, in other words,if you could unlock, somehow unlock, all the energy stored within my pen, that would eruptwith a force comparable to an atomic bomb. lisa randall: after einstein's fifth great1905 paper, physicists no longer spoke of mass or energy. they are now the same thingto us. narrator: probably the most miraculous yearin human science ends in silence. the articles are published to resounding...nothing. albert einstein: i think the gods are laughingat me. narrator: then slowly it starts: a letterhere, a letter there. for four years einstein answered each inquiry dutifully, trying toexplain his difficult, complex ideas to a
confused physics community. s. james gates, jr.: i love the idea thatlife just went on as normal. here are these universe-changing papers circling around,and the world is struggling to come to terms with them. michio kaku: einstein had a fan club of justone. luckily, it happened to be the most important living physicist. dr. haller: einstein, einstein. max planckhas sent someone to see you. albert einstein: max planck? dr. haller: yes, he has sent his assistant.he's here to see you.
narrator: max planck encourages the world'smost eminent physicists to take einstein seriously. after four years of waiting he is appointedprofessor of physics at zurich university. from there his career is meteoric. he is madeprofessor of physics in berlin, achieves world renown and becomes a household name. he isthe undisputed father of modern physics. but einstein's success was the downfall ofhis marriage. in 1919, he divorced mileva and married his cousin. his fame led to numerousaffairs. e = mc2 became the holy grail of science.it held out the promise of vast reserves of energy locked deep inside the atom. einsteinsuspected that it would take a hundred years of research to unlock it. but he hadn't bankedon the second world war and the genius of
a jewish woman in hitler's germany. twenty-eight year old austrian lise meitnerwas painfully shy. despite her anxiety, the young doctor of physics arrived in berlindetermined to pursue a career in the exciting, new field of radioactivity. unfortunately,in 1907, german universities did not employ female graduates. luckily, one man came toher aid. otto hahn: fraulein meitner? lise meitner: yes? otto hahn: otto hahn. i'm a researcher inthe chemistry institute. professor planck suggested i...
lise meitner: ah yes, herr hahn. i have readboth your papers on thorium and mesothorium. dr. planck suggested that i... otto hahn: yes, he suggested i speak to you.i need someone to collaborate with. lise meitner: i think i could really helpwith the physical analysis. otto hahn: and the mathematics? lise meitner: yes, yes, and the mathematics. otto hahn: studying radioactive atoms hasbecome so much a collaboration between chemistry and physics these days. lise meitner: yes, yes.
otto hahn: i'll ask fischer for a laboratorythen. lise meitner: excellent. otto hahn: i'll speak to you soon. narrator: lise meitner had just taken thefirst step on a journey that would irrevocably change world history. for her, it would bea road marked with success and renown, but also with terror and betrayal. david bodanis: at this time, not a lot wasknown about the atom. at first people thought it was like a miniature cellular system, there'sa solid nucleus of the center and electrons would spin around it, sort of like planetsaround our sun. a little later, some researchers
proposed that the nucleus itself wasn't asolid chunk but was made up of separate particles, of protons and neutrons. but then, in whatare called radioactive metals, things like radium and uranium, the nucleus itself seemedto be unstable, leaking out energy and particles. perhaps this was an example of e = mc2, themass of a nucleus turning into energy? narrator: meitner and hahn's collaborationto unlock the secrets of the atom, started out on an extremely unequal footing. he wasgiven a laboratory. she was forced to work in a woodshop. otto hahn: i see you haven't set your hairon fire? lise meitner: herr hahn?
otto hahn: the boss. he thinks that if helets women into the chemistry institute they'll set their hair on fire. lise meitner: ah, so his beard must be fireproof. staff member (dramatization): good day, herrhahn. otto hahn: good day. lise meitner: you see. i am nonexistent tothis place. at least physicists recognize me for my abilities. otto hahn: ah, yes, where would we chemistsbe without the steadying hand of the physicist? ruth lewin sime (meitner biographer): it tookyears, but lise lost her shyness eventually.
in 1912, she and hahn moved to the brand newkaiser wilhelm institute for chemistry where their status was really that of equals. lisebecame the first woman in germany to have the title of professor. otto hahn: lise, i have news. you rememberthe art student i told you of? lise meitner: yes. edith. otto hahn: yes, well, i have asked her tomarry me, and she has accepted. lise meitner: ah. doctor hahn, congratulations. otto hahn: yes, well, i wanted you to be thefirst to know. lise meitner: i'm very pleased for you, verypleased.
ruth lewin sime: lise meitner was warm heartedby nature, she had many friends, and she may have wanted to have a closer relationshipwith otto. but it really does seem that physics was lise's first love, maybe even her passion. narrator: the 1920s and '30s were the goldenage of nuclear research. the largest known nucleus at the time was that of the uraniumatom containing 238 protons and neutrons. meitner and hahn were leading the race tosee if even bigger nuclei could be created by adding more neutrons. lise meitner: so, the atom—pretty familiar,nucleus in the center, electrons orbiting around. the nucleus is our focus: the nucleus,made up of protons and neutrons. now, the
largest nucleus we know is that of the uraniumatom. its nucleus is a tightly packed structure of 238 protons and neutrons. the thrust ofour work is to try to fire neutrons into this huge structure, and if we can get a neutronto stick in here, it will be a breakthrough. narrator: meitner may have been on the brinkof a major discovery, but germany in the 1930s was a dangerous place to be, even for a world-classscientist. kurt hess: the jewess endangers our institute. ruth lewin sime: when the nazis came to power,one of the first things they did was to drive out jewish academics from the universities.einstein was very prominent, and for that reason he was one of the first to go. he washounded out of germany in 1933. lise was not
dismissed at that time. she was able to staybecause she was austrian. but in march 1938, austria was annexed into germany, and at thatpoint her situation became untenable. otto hahn: what is it? lise meitner: frightening news. fritz strassman (dramatization): what's happened? lise meitner: kurt hess is going around sayingthat i should be got rid of. otto hahn: i, i actually knew. i heard today.i was going to speak to the treasurer of the institute before i told you. we'll speak tohim tomorrow. come on, let's get you home. it's late. we'llfinish up.
narrator: the pressure on meitner was unbearable.hahn, who was known for his anti-nazi views, did his best to protect her, at least initially. otto hahn: i need to talk to you about lise. heinrich horlein (dramatization): not now,i'm too busy. otto hahn: we have to protect her. heinrich horlein: how? what can we do? thesituation is the way it is. who knows what could happen next? she can't stay. it's justnot tenable. otto hahn: but she hasn't got a visa or evena valid passport, and she may soon be forbidden to leave germany.
heinrich horlein: we can't harbor a jew. ifshe stays the regime will shut us all down. otto hahn: lise, horlein demands that youleave. fritz strassman: you can't throw her out. otto hahn: horlein says you should not comeinto the institute any more. lise meitner: well, i have to write up thethorium irradiation tomorrow, so i have to come in. fritz strassman: you've given up. narrator: when it became clear that meitnerwould be dismissed and probably arrested, physicists all around europe wrote lettersinviting her to conferences, giving her an
excuse to leave germany. the nazis refusedto let her go. in july of 1938, a dutch colleague traveled to berlin and illegally took liseback with him on a train to holland. the trip was so frightening that at one point she beggedto go back. despite the great danger, she got through. ruth lewin sime: she had lost everything:her home, her position, her books, her salary, her pension, even her native language. shehad been cut off from her work just at the time when she was leading the field and wason the brink of a major scientific discovery. narrator: no matter what privations she suffered,lise was still thinking of physics. amazingly she and hahn were able to collaborate by letter.
lise meitner: i hope, my dear otto, that after30 years of work together and friendship in the institute, that at least the possibilityremains that you tell me as much as you can about what is happening back there. ruth lewin sime: lise was invited by an oldstudent friend to spend christmas on the west coast of sweden. her nephew, otto robert frisch,who was also a physicist, came to join her there. otto robert frisch: aunt? aunt? aunt lise?how are you, my dear? merry christmas? aunt? lise meitner: i need your help, come on let'sgo out.
otto robert frisch: but, i was hoping you'dhelp me. narrator: back in berlin, hahn was gettingstrange results. he found no evidence to suggest that bombarding the uranium nucleus with neutronshad caused it to increase in size. in fact, his experiments seemed to be contaminatedwith radium, a smaller atom. he desperately needed meitner's expert analysis. from afar,she was starting to suspect that something very different was happening in their experiment. lise meitner: hahn and strassman are gettingsome strange results with the uranium work. otto robert frisch: really? lise meitner: a couple of months ago hahntold me that they were finding radium amongst
the uranium products. we are looking for amuch bigger element, and here we are finding something much smaller. i urged hahn to checkagain, it couldn't be radium. and now he writes to me and tells me that it's not radium, it'sbarium. otto robert frisch: but that's even smaller. lise meitner: exactly. hahn is sure that it'sanother error, but i don't know any more. it is at least possible that barium is beingproduced. otto robert frisch: so hahn still needs youto interpret the data. lise meitner: it is my work too, you know. otto robert frisch: exactly.
lise meitner: well, i can't be there, cani? come on, let's walk. otto robert frisch: surely, he's made a mistake,hasn't he? he hasn't done what you told him to. lise meitner: my darling, robert, he may notbe a brilliant theorist, but he's too good a chemist to get this wrong. ruth lewin sime: if you imagine a drop ofwater, a big drop, it's unstable, on the verge of breaking apart. it turns out that a bignucleus like uranium is just like that. now for four years meitner and hahn and all otherphysicists had thought that if you pump more neutrons into this nucleus, it'll just getbigger and heavier. but suddenly meitner and
frisch, out in the midday snow, realized thatthis nucleus might just get so big that it would split in two. lise meitner: if the nucleus is so big thatit has trouble staying together, then couldn't just a little tiny jog from a neutron and... otto robert frisch: yes, but if the nucleusdid split, the two halves would fly apart with a huge amount of energy. where's thatenergy going to come from? lise meitner: how much energy? otto robert frisch: well, we worked out thatthe mutual repulsion between two nuclei would generate about 200 million electron volts.but something has to supply that energy.
lise meitner: wait, let me do a packing fractioncalculation. the two nuclei are lighter than the original uranium nucleus by about one-fifthof a proton in mass. otto robert frisch: what? so some mass hasbeen lost? einstein's e = mc2? lise meitner: if we multiply the lost massby the speed of light squared we get...200 million electron volts. he's split the atom. otto robert frisch: no, no, no. you've splitthe atom. ruth lewin sime: it was an amazing discovery.of course in the laboratory we are talking about tiny amounts of uranium and correspondinglytiny amounts of energy. but the point is that the amount of energy released was relativelylarge and that came from the mass of the uranium
itself. the energy released was entirely consistentwith einstein's equation, e=mc2. narrator: meitner and frisch published thediscovery of what they called nuclear fission to great acclaim. but betrayal awaited them.otto hahn was under pressure from the nazi regime to write his jewish colleague out ofthe story. he alone was awarded the 1944 nobel prize for the discovery. in his speech hebarely mentioned the leading role of meitner. bizarrely even after the war, hahn maintainedit was he and not meitner who had discovered nuclear fission. lise meitner: now i want to write somethingpersonal, which disturbs me and which i ask you to read with more than 40-year friendshipin mind, and with the desire to understand
me. i am [now] referred to as "hahn's longtime co-worker." how would you feel if you were only characterized as the longtime co-workerof me? after the last 15 years, which i wouldn't wish on any good friend, shall my scientificpast also be taken from me? is that fair? and why is it happening? david bodanis: lise meitner had been workingon this for 30 years. she'd only broken apart a handful of atoms, but that was enough, onceshe had broken even one, the genie was out of the bottle. what meitner had started...after that physicistsaround the world began to realize they could take it a lot further.
narrator: in 1942, an intense effort to buildan atom bomb was begun. all over america, secret installations sprang up under the codename "the manhattan project." david bodanis: meitner was asked to join themanhattan project, and she refused. she refused to have anything to do with the atomic bomb.but robert frisch was different. he was an important member of the team, because he wasconvinced of the need to beat the nazis in a nuclear arms race. narrator: a nuclear bomb was never used ongermany, but the atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki demonstrated the terrible destructivepower of e = mc2. vast amounts of energy, in the form of electromagnetic radiation,were released from a few pounds of uranium
and plutonium. while the pure inquisitiveness of the world'smost gifted scientists ironically had brought humanity a weapon of mass destruction, theequation's life has a parallel story of creation and beauty. today, young physicists carryon einstein's quest. ever since its birth, e = mc2 has been used to delve into the depthsof time, to answer the biggest question of all, "where did we come from?" at particle accelerators, researchers propelatomic particles to the speed of light and smash them together, creating conditions likethose in the big bang. david kaiser: e = mc2 actually tells us howthe big bang itself happened. in the first
moments of creation, the universe was thisimmensely dense, immensely concentrated eruption of energy. as it rushed apart and expanded,huge amounts of energy or "e" were converted into mass or "m." pure energy became matter,it became the particles and atoms, and it eventually formed the first stars. david bodanis: our sun is a huge furnace,floating in space, and it's powered by e = mc2. now it turns out, every second, four milliontons of solid mass of the sun, disappears. it comes out as energy. not just a littlebit of energy, it's enough to light up our entire solar system, make the solar systemglow with heat and light. michio kaku: and not only do stars emit energy,in accordance with e = mc2, the whole process
actually creates life itself. eventually,a massive star dies, the debris floats around, clusters together, gets pulled into the orbitsof another star and becomes a planet. we humans and the earth we stand on are made of stardust;we are a direct product of e = mc2. narrator: building on the work of scientiststhrough the ages, new generations are searching for answers. using bold new tools that reachalmost to the speed of light, they can now ask questions that their predecessors couldnever have even imagined. as einstein himself knew, the journey of discoveryis sometimes painful, sometimes joyful. it is as old as human curiosity itself and never,ever ends.
0 komentar :
Posting Komentar