WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.400 Welcome everybody to the session, Einstein's Big Year Out. 2 00:00:06.220 --> 00:00:13.140 I guess this session is reflecting the fact that 2005 is actually the year of Einstein, 3 00:00:13.420 --> 00:00:18.820 as you probably know, and so we thought it would be a good idea to talk a little bit 4 00:00:18.820 --> 00:00:20.300 about the life and work of Einstein. 5 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:26.640 My name is Derek Abbott, I'm from the Adelaide University, and it's my job to introduce the 6 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:28.020 speakers this evening. 7 00:00:28.020 --> 00:00:36.580 So, Einstein, we, Einstein's Big Year Out, 1905, is quite remarkable because he produced 8 00:00:36.580 --> 00:00:44.080 three papers, one on special relativity, which gave rise to E equals MC squared, and we use 9 00:00:44.080 --> 00:00:48.580 that in today's life, say in nuclear power stations. 10 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:56.060 Also in 1905, he produced a paper on the photoelectric effect, which is used every day in your digital 11 00:00:56.060 --> 00:00:56.540 camera. 12 00:00:56.540 --> 00:01:00.760 So, that's another remarkable application of Einstein's work. 13 00:01:01.640 --> 00:01:08.880 And also in 1905, he wrote a landmark paper on Brownian motion, and the mathematics of 14 00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:13.940 Brownian motion is used by engineers today when they're designing electronic circuits, 15 00:01:14.140 --> 00:01:18.560 and used by mathematicians studying fluctuations on the stock market, for instance. 16 00:01:18.960 --> 00:01:24.340 So, there again, another paper with very powerful applications. 17 00:01:24.940 --> 00:01:26.360 So, this all happened. 18 00:01:26.540 --> 00:01:34.940 And then, he was able to produce a paper on the 19 00:01:34.940 --> 00:01:35.900 theory of relativity. 20 00:01:36.760 --> 00:01:38.480 And that's what we're going to talk about today. 21 00:01:39.940 --> 00:01:54.640 And you need a correction factor for that. 22 00:01:54.640 --> 00:01:56.420 That comes out of the general theory of relativity. 23 00:01:56.540 --> 00:01:59.000 It doesn't sound like a lot of few nanoseconds. 24 00:01:59.020 --> 00:02:04.100 That's a few millionths, a thousand millionths of a second. 25 00:02:04.480 --> 00:02:09.340 But it turns out that in your global positioning systems that guide your taxis and stuff like 26 00:02:09.340 --> 00:02:12.780 that, it corresponds to maybe 20 meters or something like that. 27 00:02:12.860 --> 00:02:14.060 So, it's fairly significant. 28 00:02:14.720 --> 00:02:20.680 So, the questions we're going to analyze today in the tradition of the Festival of Ideas, 29 00:02:20.740 --> 00:02:25.220 we're going to take a critical look at things, is we're going to ask, does Einstein really 30 00:02:25.220 --> 00:02:26.360 deserve this? 31 00:02:26.540 --> 00:02:29.280 Is he a genius? 32 00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:31.080 Is he maybe a giant among other giants? 33 00:02:31.260 --> 00:02:34.640 And these other giants maybe haven't been recognized so much. 34 00:02:35.080 --> 00:02:44.820 And does isolating geniuses reflect the celebrity culture that in fact masks the real incremental 35 00:02:44.820 --> 00:02:45.880 work of science? 36 00:02:46.260 --> 00:02:50.580 So is it doing us an injustice to isolate these geniuses? 37 00:02:50.940 --> 00:02:53.980 Also does Einstein remain our contemporary? 38 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:56.520 Or are we entering a post-modern world? 39 00:02:56.520 --> 00:03:03.180 Or are we entering a post-Einsteinian age where his ideas will end up consigned to a chapter of history? 40 00:03:03.680 --> 00:03:07.400 So, to tackle these questions, I want to introduce the panel here. 41 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:14.860 And we're very privileged to have three very talented speakers, all theoretical physicists. 42 00:03:15.280 --> 00:03:19.900 So, maybe they might actually be a little biased on the side of Einstein, but I'm hoping 43 00:03:19.900 --> 00:03:23.020 there'll be some disagreement between them to make it more fun. 44 00:03:23.320 --> 00:03:26.500 But the first speaker at the end, I'd like to introduce. 45 00:03:26.500 --> 00:03:28.120 John Polkinghorne. 46 00:03:28.800 --> 00:03:34.380 For 25 years, he was a professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University in the UK. 47 00:03:34.840 --> 00:03:36.840 He's a fellow of the Royal Society. 48 00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:42.700 In 1982, he became an ordained priest with the Church of England. 49 00:03:43.780 --> 00:03:48.400 He has written 15 books on the relationship between science and religion. 50 00:03:48.920 --> 00:03:52.920 And you'll probably find some of his books out there in the tent outside. 51 00:03:53.900 --> 00:03:56.480 In 1997, he was made an honorary professor of the University of Cambridge. 52 00:03:56.480 --> 00:03:57.840 He was a knight of the British Empire. 53 00:03:59.100 --> 00:04:03.760 I asked him whether I should call him sir or not, and he says, no, you don't call him sir. 54 00:04:05.160 --> 00:04:09.940 But in 2002, he won the Templeton Prize. 55 00:04:10.440 --> 00:04:13.720 And he's currently fellow of Queen's College in Cambridge. 56 00:04:13.800 --> 00:04:16.620 And he's also a canon theologian of Liverpool. 57 00:04:17.100 --> 00:04:19.520 So, could we give John Polkinghorne a hand? 58 00:04:29.740 --> 00:04:30.800 Well, thank you, Derek. 59 00:04:30.860 --> 00:04:34.680 We're remembering and celebrating this amazing year, 1905, 60 00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:39.680 when a third-class examiner in the patent office in Bern 61 00:04:40.320 --> 00:04:43.520 made three discoveries, each of which, in the course of time, 62 00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:46.660 would have been sufficient to win him a Nobel Prize. 63 00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:48.380 It's an extraordinary achievement. 64 00:04:49.300 --> 00:04:52.020 Just to remind you of what those discoveries were, 65 00:04:53.420 --> 00:04:56.460 Einstein was able to analyze Brownian motion, 66 00:04:56.480 --> 00:05:00.820 and Brownian motion is the jiggling around of small grains of pollen 67 00:05:00.820 --> 00:05:04.480 suspended in a liquid that had been discovered by a Dr. Brown, 68 00:05:04.580 --> 00:05:06.460 I think, 50 or 60 years before. 69 00:05:06.860 --> 00:05:11.140 And Einstein was able to show that this was due to the pollen grains 70 00:05:11.140 --> 00:05:15.560 being jostled by the motion of molecules in the fluid. 71 00:05:15.840 --> 00:05:20.600 And it was the first manifestation of a molecular structure. 72 00:05:22.340 --> 00:05:25.580 Many of the physicists of the day thought that molecules 73 00:05:25.580 --> 00:05:28.780 were just figments of the chemists' imagination. 74 00:05:29.540 --> 00:05:33.460 But Einstein was able to show that the molecular structure really is there. 75 00:05:33.580 --> 00:05:35.160 So that was a pretty important achievement. 76 00:05:35.560 --> 00:05:37.260 The second one was the photoelectric effect. 77 00:05:37.760 --> 00:05:40.440 Max Planck, in 1900, had shown that radiation 78 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:45.460 doesn't flow smoothly out of hot bodies and so on. 79 00:05:45.540 --> 00:05:49.100 It comes in drops, in quanta, in fact. 80 00:05:49.700 --> 00:05:53.400 But people didn't know whether those quanta really persisted. 81 00:05:53.460 --> 00:05:55.560 I mean, was it like, say, drips coming from a fire? 82 00:05:55.580 --> 00:05:55.700 Or was it like a tap? 83 00:05:56.660 --> 00:06:00.920 The drips come one by one, but of course once they fall into the basin, 84 00:06:01.140 --> 00:06:03.360 they all merge together in a single fluid. 85 00:06:03.940 --> 00:06:06.360 Einstein, by analyzing this photoelectric effect, 86 00:06:06.500 --> 00:06:08.400 was able to show that there is a persistent 87 00:06:09.980 --> 00:06:12.220 drop-like character to radiation, 88 00:06:12.520 --> 00:06:14.160 that these quanta really persist. 89 00:06:14.720 --> 00:06:20.540 It was a very important step in the very early history of quantum theory. 90 00:06:20.760 --> 00:06:23.840 And of course the third thing he discovered was special relativity, 91 00:06:24.840 --> 00:06:25.560 which I think is very important. 92 00:06:25.580 --> 00:06:27.520 I suppose it's what we all associate with Einstein. 93 00:06:27.940 --> 00:06:30.060 And that's interesting because he discovered that 94 00:06:30.580 --> 00:06:32.580 essentially by conceptual analysis, 95 00:06:32.760 --> 00:06:35.780 by asking the question of how do you measure time, 96 00:06:36.080 --> 00:06:38.440 how do you measure space, how do they relate to each other. 97 00:06:38.800 --> 00:06:41.340 He recognized the fundamental role of light, 98 00:06:41.580 --> 00:06:44.820 whose velocity is a constant of nature. 99 00:06:45.180 --> 00:06:48.440 The equations that were relevant to that had already been written down. 100 00:06:48.640 --> 00:06:51.260 They had been written down by very clever people, 101 00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:54.880 Henri Poincaré and Lorentz, Lorentz equations. 102 00:06:54.880 --> 00:06:58.440 But they didn't have the proper interpretation and understanding of them. 103 00:06:58.700 --> 00:07:03.340 And I think actually both of them didn't entirely take on board 104 00:07:03.340 --> 00:07:05.080 Einstein's interpretation of it. 105 00:07:05.140 --> 00:07:08.760 There is a certain resistance to change in the scientific community 106 00:07:08.760 --> 00:07:10.720 as there is in the other communities. 107 00:07:10.920 --> 00:07:12.420 So that was an amazingly clever year. 108 00:07:13.780 --> 00:07:16.220 But a couple of years later, about 1907, 1908, 109 00:07:16.340 --> 00:07:20.400 he had what he described as being the happiest idea of his life. 110 00:07:20.980 --> 00:07:23.020 And that happy idea came from the realization 111 00:07:23.020 --> 00:07:24.860 that if you were in a free land, 112 00:07:24.880 --> 00:07:25.680 in a really falling lift, 113 00:07:26.400 --> 00:07:29.460 you wouldn't be aware of the existence of gravity. 114 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:32.840 Now you might think that's not terribly interesting thing, is it really? 115 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:35.900 But it was connected with a principle 116 00:07:35.900 --> 00:07:38.520 which we now call the principle of equivalence. 117 00:07:38.620 --> 00:07:40.560 And it's concerned with the nature of mass. 118 00:07:40.840 --> 00:07:43.360 There are truly two different sorts of mass in the world. 119 00:07:43.500 --> 00:07:44.960 One is inertial mass, 120 00:07:45.260 --> 00:07:48.840 the resistance that things have to having their motion change. 121 00:07:49.220 --> 00:07:53.480 The more massive it is, the greater push you have to give it to get it moving. 122 00:07:53.580 --> 00:07:54.440 That's inertial mass. 123 00:07:54.880 --> 00:07:56.780 But there's a second sort of mass in the world, 124 00:07:56.800 --> 00:07:59.420 which is the mass that interacts and generates gravity. 125 00:07:59.580 --> 00:08:02.160 The mass that Newton had thought of in that respect. 126 00:08:02.500 --> 00:08:04.960 Now those two concepts of mass, 127 00:08:05.060 --> 00:08:06.660 inertial mass and gravitational mass, 128 00:08:06.920 --> 00:08:09.420 are conceptually quite distinct. 129 00:08:09.880 --> 00:08:13.960 But it turns out that for all bodies in the world, 130 00:08:14.040 --> 00:08:16.380 they are measured by the same number. 131 00:08:16.420 --> 00:08:20.920 There is an equivalence between inertial mass and gravitational mass. 132 00:08:21.260 --> 00:08:23.000 And Einstein saw that that meant 133 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:27.180 that all bodies, whether they are massive or light, 134 00:08:27.380 --> 00:08:30.400 move in the same way in a gravitational field. 135 00:08:31.280 --> 00:08:34.500 If you have a body that's twice as massive as another body, 136 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:37.900 it requires twice as much force to get it moving, 137 00:08:38.100 --> 00:08:39.300 that's the inertial side of it, 138 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:41.980 but it's got twice as much gravitational mass, 139 00:08:42.060 --> 00:08:44.120 so it experiences twice as much force. 140 00:08:44.620 --> 00:08:48.560 So all bodies move in the same way in a gravitational field. 141 00:08:49.760 --> 00:08:51.540 And that means that instead of thinking 142 00:08:51.540 --> 00:08:52.980 that the body is being pushed around by gravity, 143 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:55.600 you could think that they are being, 144 00:08:55.780 --> 00:08:58.640 their motion is being distorted or shaped 145 00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:02.000 by the shape of space and space-time itself. 146 00:09:03.220 --> 00:09:06.180 In other words, you could turn physics into geometry. 147 00:09:06.780 --> 00:09:08.780 Now you might not think that was a wonderful exchange, 148 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:10.960 but it was a very important idea. 149 00:09:11.260 --> 00:09:13.320 And Einstein brooded about this idea, 150 00:09:13.660 --> 00:09:16.380 trying to see, he had the notion of it, 151 00:09:16.500 --> 00:09:18.960 but he then had to try and find 152 00:09:18.960 --> 00:09:21.960 the full articulated expression of that idea, 153 00:09:21.960 --> 00:09:23.780 the equations that would describe that. 154 00:09:24.200 --> 00:09:26.240 And it took a long time to find those equations. 155 00:09:26.300 --> 00:09:29.080 It wasn't until November 1915 156 00:09:29.080 --> 00:09:31.500 that he found the equations 157 00:09:31.500 --> 00:09:33.820 of what we could now call general relativity, 158 00:09:34.140 --> 00:09:36.720 that's the theory of space and time and gravity, 159 00:09:36.780 --> 00:09:38.880 all in a single package deal, 160 00:09:39.100 --> 00:09:40.720 and which most of us would consider 161 00:09:40.720 --> 00:09:43.740 to have been Einstein's greatest intellectual achievement. 162 00:09:45.280 --> 00:09:47.160 And I'm sure that when he wrote down those equations, 163 00:09:47.320 --> 00:09:48.680 they're very beautiful equations, 164 00:09:48.780 --> 00:09:51.440 if you have the sort of eye to discern mathematical beauty, 165 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:53.040 and I'm sure that when he wrote them down, 166 00:09:53.100 --> 00:09:54.220 he felt sure they were right. 167 00:09:54.440 --> 00:09:55.780 But the next thing he had to do 168 00:09:55.780 --> 00:09:57.180 was to calculate their consequences, 169 00:09:57.340 --> 00:09:59.460 and he was able, within a day or so, 170 00:09:59.580 --> 00:10:02.020 to show that the consequence of these new equations 171 00:10:02.020 --> 00:10:04.260 was to explain a discrepancy 172 00:10:04.680 --> 00:10:06.220 in the motion of the planet Mercury, 173 00:10:06.480 --> 00:10:08.500 which had been known, again, for about 50 or 60 years. 174 00:10:09.280 --> 00:10:11.620 It didn't quite fulfill Newton's predictions, 175 00:10:12.260 --> 00:10:14.880 but it exactly fulfilled the predictions 176 00:10:15.440 --> 00:10:16.500 of Einstein's new theory. 177 00:10:16.600 --> 00:10:18.160 A fantastic achievement. 178 00:10:19.500 --> 00:10:21.220 So I think we can say that 179 00:10:21.220 --> 00:10:23.240 Einstein was a very great man indeed. 180 00:10:23.760 --> 00:10:25.320 I myself rather subscribe 181 00:10:25.320 --> 00:10:29.580 to the great person view of the history of science. 182 00:10:29.700 --> 00:10:32.360 I don't mean that all discoveries are made by geniuses. 183 00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:34.680 There is a role for the army of honest toilers 184 00:10:34.680 --> 00:10:36.820 to which those of us on the platform here belong. 185 00:10:38.420 --> 00:10:40.980 But nevertheless, the advance of science 186 00:10:40.980 --> 00:10:45.300 is accelerated by the deep insights 187 00:10:45.300 --> 00:10:47.920 of people of real genius. 188 00:10:48.420 --> 00:10:51.200 And what they do is they see very, very, 189 00:10:51.220 --> 00:10:54.340 very clearly the necessary idea 190 00:10:54.340 --> 00:10:57.220 at this particular time in the development of physics. 191 00:10:57.520 --> 00:11:00.320 They have that deep insight and clarity of vision 192 00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:02.840 to see that, and that's great. 193 00:11:03.480 --> 00:11:05.920 But also it tends to fix them 194 00:11:05.920 --> 00:11:07.960 in that way of looking at things. 195 00:11:08.540 --> 00:11:10.520 Einstein had this wonderful period 196 00:11:10.520 --> 00:11:12.060 from 1905 to 1915, 197 00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:14.300 and we could extend it to about 1920 or so, 198 00:11:14.420 --> 00:11:15.980 where he was really creative, 199 00:11:16.100 --> 00:11:17.900 really having all the right ideas. 200 00:11:18.760 --> 00:11:21.200 And then he tried to use the same ideas, 201 00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:23.660 again, to stir in. 202 00:11:23.740 --> 00:11:24.880 He'd got gravity, 203 00:11:24.960 --> 00:11:27.260 he wanted to stir in electromagnetic things as well, 204 00:11:27.380 --> 00:11:30.480 and he wanted to do that by using geometry. 205 00:11:30.820 --> 00:11:33.240 He wanted to stick with that great idea that he had. 206 00:11:33.760 --> 00:11:34.940 And it worked for gravity, 207 00:11:35.220 --> 00:11:37.040 but it doesn't work for electromagnetism. 208 00:11:37.480 --> 00:11:41.480 And the last 25 years or so of Einstein's life 209 00:11:42.920 --> 00:11:44.100 is a sad story. 210 00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:46.720 He spent an enormous amount of effort 211 00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:49.260 plowing a lonely furrow, 212 00:11:49.280 --> 00:11:50.980 a lonely furrow, 213 00:11:50.980 --> 00:11:53.060 that was going in the wrong direction. 214 00:11:53.360 --> 00:11:56.720 The future didn't lie anymore with Einstein's ideas. 215 00:11:57.200 --> 00:11:59.820 So there's a sort of paradox there. 216 00:11:59.900 --> 00:12:01.060 A great creative period, 217 00:12:01.180 --> 00:12:03.240 and then a period in which actually 218 00:12:03.240 --> 00:12:04.460 somebody rather harshly said 219 00:12:04.980 --> 00:12:06.840 he would have been as well employed 220 00:12:06.840 --> 00:12:07.980 if he'd gone fishing 221 00:12:08.780 --> 00:12:10.820 than sitting in Princeton, 222 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:12.220 which he was most of the time, 223 00:12:12.260 --> 00:12:13.280 doing those things. 224 00:12:14.720 --> 00:12:16.020 So Einstein's a great man. 225 00:12:16.180 --> 00:12:17.180 I mean, I think he, myself, 226 00:12:17.300 --> 00:12:20.320 he's worthy of being mentioned 227 00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:21.800 in the same breath as Isaac Newton 228 00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:23.320 and James Clark Maxwell, 229 00:12:23.500 --> 00:12:25.680 who was the great discovery of electromagnetic theory 230 00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:27.980 in the 19th century. 231 00:12:30.200 --> 00:12:32.840 He was also a man who was driven 232 00:12:34.860 --> 00:12:36.380 by philosophical convictions. 233 00:12:36.720 --> 00:12:38.000 And one of his philosophical convictions 234 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:40.760 was very much that physics is about the real world 235 00:12:40.760 --> 00:12:41.440 that's out there. 236 00:12:41.500 --> 00:12:43.280 Well, I suppose most physical scientists feel that. 237 00:12:43.420 --> 00:12:44.520 I mean, what would be the point 238 00:12:44.520 --> 00:12:46.900 of all the labor and frustration and routine 239 00:12:46.900 --> 00:12:49.620 and struggle involved in scientific research 240 00:12:49.620 --> 00:12:51.520 if we didn't feel we were really learning 241 00:12:51.520 --> 00:12:53.560 the structure of the world in which we live? 242 00:12:53.780 --> 00:12:57.020 So I think most scientists are realists in that sense. 243 00:12:57.160 --> 00:13:00.340 But Einstein was a realist in a very old-fashioned sense. 244 00:13:01.280 --> 00:13:02.940 He thought that realism 245 00:13:03.620 --> 00:13:05.340 was the same thing as objectivity. 246 00:13:05.860 --> 00:13:09.380 He wanted a world that was clear and determinate 247 00:13:09.380 --> 00:13:12.320 and certain and pictureable in its character. 248 00:13:12.540 --> 00:13:14.400 He wanted absolutely the sort of world 249 00:13:14.400 --> 00:13:15.600 that Newton had described. 250 00:13:15.840 --> 00:13:17.180 He wanted to stick with that. 251 00:13:17.800 --> 00:13:19.600 And therefore, though he had been one of the most 252 00:13:19.620 --> 00:13:21.060 powerful grandfathers of quantum theory, 253 00:13:21.200 --> 00:13:23.640 as quantum theory developed and showed that the world 254 00:13:23.640 --> 00:13:25.320 wasn't clear and determinate like that, 255 00:13:25.380 --> 00:13:27.660 it was fuzzy and fitful in various ways, 256 00:13:27.860 --> 00:13:30.880 Einstein came to hate his grandchild. 257 00:13:31.280 --> 00:13:34.620 And he spent a lot of time trying to dispose 258 00:13:34.620 --> 00:13:37.100 of quantum theory because he didn't like 259 00:13:37.100 --> 00:13:38.720 its philosophical character. 260 00:13:39.800 --> 00:13:42.120 And the irony is that in the course of that, 261 00:13:42.240 --> 00:13:45.820 trying to do that, he made his last great discovery 262 00:13:46.420 --> 00:13:47.840 with a couple of young collaborators 263 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:49.160 called Podolsky and Rosen. 264 00:13:49.620 --> 00:13:51.700 He discovered a property of quantum theory 265 00:13:51.700 --> 00:13:53.920 that we now call entanglement. 266 00:13:54.160 --> 00:13:56.520 Once two quantum entities have interacted with each other, 267 00:13:56.580 --> 00:13:59.800 they somehow remain connected with each other 268 00:13:59.800 --> 00:14:01.240 as a sort of togetherness and separation, 269 00:14:01.380 --> 00:14:02.680 even if they go far apart. 270 00:14:03.460 --> 00:14:07.480 They are... they can't atomize. 271 00:14:07.660 --> 00:14:10.980 The subatomic world can't properly be described atomistically. 272 00:14:11.300 --> 00:14:13.180 It's a very, very important discovery. 273 00:14:13.700 --> 00:14:16.260 Einstein thought it was so spooky and strange an idea 274 00:14:16.260 --> 00:14:17.640 that it showed there must be something wrong 275 00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:18.320 with quantum theory. 276 00:14:18.640 --> 00:14:20.340 But long after Einstein's death, 277 00:14:20.520 --> 00:14:23.040 very clever experimentalists were able to show 278 00:14:23.040 --> 00:14:25.060 it's an actual property of nature. 279 00:14:26.120 --> 00:14:27.860 So you see, Einstein... 280 00:14:28.760 --> 00:14:31.220 Einstein, by trying to dispose of quantum theory, 281 00:14:31.380 --> 00:14:34.380 in fact, discovered one of its deepest properties. 282 00:14:35.520 --> 00:14:37.600 I think Einstein is a very great person, 283 00:14:37.660 --> 00:14:41.220 but he was, in a sense, the last of the ancients 284 00:14:41.760 --> 00:14:44.280 rather than the first of the moderns. 285 00:14:44.320 --> 00:14:47.060 He's the last great figure in that tradition 286 00:14:47.060 --> 00:14:48.780 of what we tend to call classical physics, 287 00:14:49.060 --> 00:14:52.000 running from Newton through Maxwell to Einstein. 288 00:14:52.680 --> 00:14:55.400 A lot of the future lay with quantum physics, 289 00:14:55.660 --> 00:14:58.600 with Heisenberg and Schrodinger and Dirac 290 00:14:58.600 --> 00:14:59.680 and people of that nature. 291 00:14:59.940 --> 00:15:02.520 A different way of thinking about the physical world, 292 00:15:02.620 --> 00:15:04.400 a different picture of physical processes. 293 00:15:04.800 --> 00:15:06.220 Einstein was a great person, 294 00:15:06.320 --> 00:15:08.080 but he was the last of the ancients 295 00:15:08.080 --> 00:15:10.100 rather than the first of the moderns. 296 00:15:10.100 --> 00:15:11.020 Thank you very much. 297 00:15:18.180 --> 00:15:18.860 APPLAUSE 298 00:15:20.060 --> 00:15:24.260 Now delighted to call upon our next speaker, Robert Matthews. 299 00:15:24.360 --> 00:15:27.820 Robert read physics at Corpus Christi College in Oxford. 300 00:15:27.960 --> 00:15:30.240 He's a visiting reader in science 301 00:15:30.240 --> 00:15:33.260 at Aston University in Birmingham in the UK. 302 00:15:33.620 --> 00:15:37.100 He is an award-winning science journalist 303 00:15:37.100 --> 00:15:39.140 and writes for many papers, 304 00:15:39.260 --> 00:15:42.640 including The New Scientist and Financial Times, to name a few. 305 00:15:42.940 --> 00:15:46.780 One of his keen interests is in applying science 306 00:15:46.780 --> 00:15:48.620 to question urban myths. 307 00:15:48.700 --> 00:15:50.940 So he is our very own myth-buster. 308 00:15:51.180 --> 00:15:52.520 Please welcome him. 309 00:15:53.800 --> 00:15:54.320 APPLAUSE 310 00:15:59.460 --> 00:16:00.980 Thanks very much, Derek. 311 00:16:02.860 --> 00:16:04.060 Um...yes, and in that spirit, 312 00:16:04.120 --> 00:16:06.360 I'll be attempting to bust a few myths 313 00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:08.660 that I think perpetuated... 314 00:16:08.660 --> 00:16:11.300 or perpetuated about Einstein and his genius. 315 00:16:11.560 --> 00:16:15.060 I mean, can there be a more romantic story of genius, 316 00:16:15.240 --> 00:16:15.780 of the highest... 317 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:18.760 of the highest calibre than the idea of this, 318 00:16:19.780 --> 00:16:21.140 um...as John was saying, 319 00:16:21.840 --> 00:16:25.160 third-class patent clerk working in a garret 320 00:16:25.160 --> 00:16:29.340 with his wife and his young baby, 321 00:16:30.760 --> 00:16:35.160 working during the day on designs for pop guns 322 00:16:35.160 --> 00:16:38.680 and trying to tell if they're actually worthy of a patent or not, 323 00:16:38.820 --> 00:16:40.140 and then going home at night 324 00:16:40.140 --> 00:16:44.660 and solving three or four of the key scientific problems 325 00:16:44.660 --> 00:16:48.900 of the aviation that had defeated all the great minds 326 00:16:48.900 --> 00:16:50.040 up until that point, 327 00:16:50.120 --> 00:16:52.080 and in the process showing that the resolution 328 00:16:52.080 --> 00:16:54.200 of all these disparate phenomena 329 00:16:54.860 --> 00:16:57.740 gave us a profoundly different insight 330 00:16:57.740 --> 00:17:00.280 into the nature of space, time and gravity. 331 00:17:01.460 --> 00:17:04.400 And to do that, you certainly require a certain amount of genius, 332 00:17:04.520 --> 00:17:08.360 but I think we've ended up with an image of Einstein 333 00:17:09.540 --> 00:17:11.340 as an incomprehensible genius, 334 00:17:11.940 --> 00:17:14.640 which has, to a large extent, been perpetuated 335 00:17:14.640 --> 00:17:17.140 by scientists and also by the media. 336 00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:23.060 Einstein is, in many senses, the first media scientist, 337 00:17:23.700 --> 00:17:25.500 as I'll go on to explain in a minute. 338 00:17:26.040 --> 00:17:27.560 So what are the myths of Einstein? 339 00:17:27.780 --> 00:17:30.460 Well, I think the first myth about Einstein 340 00:17:30.460 --> 00:17:35.400 is that he was a person who had unalloyed success 341 00:17:35.400 --> 00:17:37.800 in his scientific work. 342 00:17:38.300 --> 00:17:42.580 His most famous 1905 paper was Special Relativity, 343 00:17:42.660 --> 00:17:43.200 which is... 344 00:17:44.640 --> 00:17:45.940 John mentioned, basically, 345 00:17:46.640 --> 00:17:49.940 is a new way of looking at space and time 346 00:17:50.640 --> 00:17:53.380 that leads to the astonishing revelation 347 00:17:53.380 --> 00:17:59.520 that the very concepts of space and time aren't absolute, 348 00:17:59.620 --> 00:18:03.360 which was an idea so sort of ingrained 349 00:18:03.360 --> 00:18:06.300 that it's almost unquestioned by everyone up until that time. 350 00:18:06.420 --> 00:18:10.780 And he showed that fundamental measures of physical space, 351 00:18:10.920 --> 00:18:12.840 the length and durations of time, 352 00:18:12.960 --> 00:18:14.620 actually depend on how much space is in the air, 353 00:18:14.620 --> 00:18:16.240 and how the observer is moving, 354 00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:17.760 who is measuring these things. 355 00:18:18.260 --> 00:18:21.740 And this led to a prediction in his first paper, 356 00:18:21.860 --> 00:18:23.680 one of his first papers in 1905, 357 00:18:25.080 --> 00:18:26.580 one of the most astounding ones, 358 00:18:26.700 --> 00:18:31.100 which is that the mass of an object depends on its speed. 359 00:18:31.620 --> 00:18:33.280 And this was put... 360 00:18:33.280 --> 00:18:35.100 This was the first of Einstein's predictions 361 00:18:35.620 --> 00:18:37.420 that was put to experimental test 362 00:18:37.420 --> 00:18:39.620 within 12 months of it being published. 363 00:18:39.900 --> 00:18:44.000 So in 1906, the verdict was in on Einstein, 364 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:47.740 on the brilliant Einstein's first scientific breakthrough, 365 00:18:48.040 --> 00:18:51.360 and the results were absolutely unequivocal. 366 00:18:51.900 --> 00:18:52.880 They were wrong. 367 00:18:53.780 --> 00:18:57.000 Einstein's prediction of how the mass of an object 368 00:18:57.000 --> 00:18:58.000 should change with velocity 369 00:18:58.760 --> 00:19:01.740 was investigated by a German experimentalist 370 00:19:01.740 --> 00:19:03.780 using high-speed electrons, 371 00:19:04.080 --> 00:19:05.880 and they just didn't fit the curve. 372 00:19:06.120 --> 00:19:09.820 And it was quite clear that it was a rival theory of space and time, 373 00:19:09.940 --> 00:19:12.440 which everybody's forgotten now, that fitted the bill perfectly. 374 00:19:12.440 --> 00:19:14.600 So what was Einstein's response to this? 375 00:19:14.660 --> 00:19:15.540 And this is quite telling. 376 00:19:17.200 --> 00:19:18.500 Einstein's response to this 377 00:19:18.500 --> 00:19:20.780 was to congratulate the experimentalists 378 00:19:20.780 --> 00:19:21.980 on doing a wonderful job, 379 00:19:22.260 --> 00:19:23.680 and then saying, 380 00:19:23.880 --> 00:19:26.140 I don't believe the result for a moment. 381 00:19:26.260 --> 00:19:27.480 I don't believe it's been disproved, 382 00:19:27.540 --> 00:19:29.180 because I simply cannot believe that God 383 00:19:29.180 --> 00:19:32.220 would have passed up such a wonderful theory of special relativity 384 00:19:33.320 --> 00:19:35.160 in favor of this kludgy argument 385 00:19:35.160 --> 00:19:37.420 that seems to have been supported by 386 00:19:38.300 --> 00:19:40.440 the experiment that you've carried out. 387 00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:42.420 And astonishingly, 388 00:19:42.440 --> 00:19:44.280 despite the idea that Einstein 389 00:19:44.280 --> 00:19:45.800 sort of sprang fully formed 390 00:19:45.800 --> 00:19:47.060 with all the right answers straight away, 391 00:19:47.180 --> 00:19:49.060 it wasn't for another decade 392 00:19:49.060 --> 00:19:52.320 that there was sufficient evidence on special relativity 393 00:19:52.320 --> 00:19:54.520 to convince most physicists 394 00:19:54.520 --> 00:19:57.820 that he'd been vindicated in the laboratory. 395 00:19:58.160 --> 00:19:58.980 Ten years it took. 396 00:19:59.480 --> 00:20:01.600 The second myth about Einstein 397 00:20:01.600 --> 00:20:06.860 is that he had some sort of direct route to God 398 00:20:06.860 --> 00:20:09.000 that gave him incredible confidence in his results. 399 00:20:09.400 --> 00:20:12.420 Perhaps his most famous of the 1990s 400 00:20:12.440 --> 00:20:13.180 and the early 1900s. 401 00:20:13.460 --> 00:20:14.580 The last one, 402 00:20:15.680 --> 00:20:18.340 which was published in October 1905, 403 00:20:18.640 --> 00:20:20.520 contains that iconic equation 404 00:20:20.520 --> 00:20:21.880 E equals mc squared. 405 00:20:22.200 --> 00:20:23.820 It doesn't appear like that in his paper, 406 00:20:23.980 --> 00:20:27.440 but that equation written in a different form 407 00:20:27.440 --> 00:20:30.220 makes its first appearance in that last paper. 408 00:20:31.320 --> 00:20:33.720 And it is without doubt 409 00:20:33.720 --> 00:20:36.700 the most astonishing of all the predictions 410 00:20:36.700 --> 00:20:38.220 that come out of those papers. 411 00:20:38.500 --> 00:20:39.940 It implies, for example, 412 00:20:39.940 --> 00:20:42.700 that a kilogram of matter of any form 413 00:20:42.700 --> 00:20:48.240 contains nine times ten to the 16 joules of energy, 414 00:20:48.420 --> 00:20:49.920 which is equivalent to the output 415 00:20:49.920 --> 00:20:52.920 of a power station for a whole year, 416 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:55.140 all contained in one kilogram, 417 00:20:55.460 --> 00:20:58.620 a bag of sugars worth of matter. 418 00:20:58.920 --> 00:20:59.820 Quite extraordinary. 419 00:21:00.220 --> 00:21:02.160 So Einstein just put this forward 420 00:21:02.160 --> 00:21:03.220 with incredible confidence. 421 00:21:03.440 --> 00:21:04.340 Well, no, he didn't. 422 00:21:04.340 --> 00:21:06.320 In fact, he called the paper, 423 00:21:06.420 --> 00:21:08.100 Does the energy content of bodies 424 00:21:08.100 --> 00:21:09.760 depend on their inertia? 425 00:21:10.580 --> 00:21:11.460 Question mark. 426 00:21:11.640 --> 00:21:13.900 He couldn't believe the consequences 427 00:21:13.900 --> 00:21:15.340 of his own theory on this one. 428 00:21:15.420 --> 00:21:17.180 And in fact, he really struggled to see 429 00:21:18.240 --> 00:21:20.320 the full impact of this, 430 00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:21.960 which we now see in terms of nuclear energy 431 00:21:21.960 --> 00:21:22.640 and nuclear weapons, 432 00:21:22.740 --> 00:21:23.880 for many years afterwards. 433 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:25.300 Even he was flabbergasted, 434 00:21:25.340 --> 00:21:27.320 sometimes by the results of his own genius. 435 00:21:27.760 --> 00:21:29.960 And the third most pernicious, 436 00:21:30.560 --> 00:21:31.860 possibly, myth of Einstein 437 00:21:31.860 --> 00:21:33.480 is that he never made mistakes. 438 00:21:35.740 --> 00:21:36.920 As John was saying, 439 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:39.600 his most impressive scientific work 440 00:21:39.600 --> 00:21:42.180 was his new theory of gravity, 441 00:21:42.400 --> 00:21:43.040 general relativity, 442 00:21:43.300 --> 00:21:46.240 which explains the mystery of gravity, 443 00:21:46.420 --> 00:21:50.720 which we sort of have a common sense feel of 444 00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:52.020 as being some sort of force, 445 00:21:52.600 --> 00:21:55.360 like magnetism that holds the moon in orbit 446 00:21:55.360 --> 00:21:56.980 around the Earth. 447 00:21:57.220 --> 00:22:01.720 He explained it in terms of matter, 448 00:22:01.960 --> 00:22:04.300 the Earth's mass in this particular case, 449 00:22:04.420 --> 00:22:06.600 curving the space and time around it. 450 00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:08.000 A little bit, the standard analogy 451 00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:11.500 is to picture the Earth like a cannonball 452 00:22:11.500 --> 00:22:13.480 sitting in a rubber sheet, 453 00:22:13.740 --> 00:22:15.100 which represents space and time, 454 00:22:15.140 --> 00:22:16.280 curving it in such a way 455 00:22:16.280 --> 00:22:18.480 that the moon goes round it 456 00:22:18.480 --> 00:22:19.580 in a sort of frictionless way, 457 00:22:19.660 --> 00:22:20.480 round and round. 458 00:22:21.780 --> 00:22:24.660 And the reason we think it's a force, 459 00:22:24.700 --> 00:22:25.980 which creates an acceleration, 460 00:22:26.360 --> 00:22:28.540 is because space and time is distorted 461 00:22:28.540 --> 00:22:29.420 in such a way 462 00:22:29.420 --> 00:22:30.840 as it gives the impression 463 00:22:30.840 --> 00:22:32.360 of being an acceleration. 464 00:22:32.400 --> 00:22:33.680 In fact, there is no acceleration. 465 00:22:33.840 --> 00:22:35.420 It's just that space and time 466 00:22:35.420 --> 00:22:37.440 is curved by mass in such a way 467 00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:38.100 that it does that. 468 00:22:38.400 --> 00:22:39.860 So one of the first predictions 469 00:22:39.860 --> 00:22:40.720 of general relativity, 470 00:22:40.940 --> 00:22:42.160 which he got even before 471 00:22:42.160 --> 00:22:43.480 he got the full field equations, 472 00:22:44.300 --> 00:22:45.800 was to show that if there is, 473 00:22:45.820 --> 00:22:49.540 if space and time is curved by matter, 474 00:22:49.760 --> 00:22:53.120 then this means that light passing very close 475 00:22:53.120 --> 00:22:54.300 to very massive objects 476 00:22:54.300 --> 00:22:55.520 would be bent off course. 477 00:22:55.740 --> 00:22:56.660 It would, if you like, 478 00:22:56.700 --> 00:22:58.220 dip into the hollow, 479 00:22:58.460 --> 00:23:01.260 curved out by the cannonball of the mass 480 00:23:01.780 --> 00:23:03.320 in such a way that it would create 481 00:23:03.320 --> 00:23:04.020 a slight distortion. 482 00:23:04.260 --> 00:23:06.000 And he predicted that you could actually see this 483 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:07.420 during a solar eclipse, 484 00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:10.600 when the sun sitting there massively curving 485 00:23:10.600 --> 00:23:11.900 space and time around it 486 00:23:12.440 --> 00:23:15.440 would distort the path of rays of light 487 00:23:15.440 --> 00:23:17.080 coming from distant stars 488 00:23:17.080 --> 00:23:18.940 in such a way as they would appear 489 00:23:18.940 --> 00:23:20.560 in a slightly different place 490 00:23:20.560 --> 00:23:22.020 from where they would appear 491 00:23:22.020 --> 00:23:23.220 when the sun has moved away 492 00:23:23.220 --> 00:23:24.920 and is no longer distorting space and time. 493 00:23:25.040 --> 00:23:25.820 And he did the calculations 494 00:23:25.820 --> 00:23:27.240 and he got an answer, 495 00:23:27.360 --> 00:23:29.620 and it was wrong by 100%. 496 00:23:29.620 --> 00:23:31.220 He got half the correct answer. 497 00:23:31.340 --> 00:23:32.180 And in fact, the answer 498 00:23:32.180 --> 00:23:33.560 was exactly the same 499 00:23:33.560 --> 00:23:35.260 as the one you can get from Newton's theory. 500 00:23:36.120 --> 00:23:37.360 So he put this out, 501 00:23:37.440 --> 00:23:39.060 and he was very keen for astronomers 502 00:23:39.060 --> 00:23:40.700 to go off and go and confirm 503 00:23:40.700 --> 00:23:41.680 this amazing prediction 504 00:23:41.680 --> 00:23:43.520 that space and time 505 00:23:43.520 --> 00:23:45.600 would bend rays of light. 506 00:23:45.900 --> 00:23:47.160 And luckily for Einstein, 507 00:23:47.800 --> 00:23:49.620 the weather was completely rubbish 508 00:23:49.620 --> 00:23:53.020 at the next solar eclipse, 509 00:23:53.380 --> 00:23:55.120 preventing astronomers from doing it. 510 00:23:55.200 --> 00:23:56.400 And also, he also benefited 511 00:23:56.400 --> 00:23:57.480 from the fact that the First World War 512 00:23:57.480 --> 00:23:58.360 had broken out. 513 00:23:58.460 --> 00:23:59.400 So it was very difficult 514 00:23:59.400 --> 00:24:00.480 to get anybody to go off 515 00:24:00.480 --> 00:24:01.840 and look for these things. 516 00:24:02.040 --> 00:24:03.420 So his reputation 517 00:24:03.420 --> 00:24:05.000 was saved by the fact 518 00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:05.820 that it was rubbish weather 519 00:24:05.820 --> 00:24:07.420 and World War I had broken out, 520 00:24:07.440 --> 00:24:08.840 and by the time 521 00:24:08.840 --> 00:24:09.820 all those things had finished, 522 00:24:10.040 --> 00:24:12.440 he was able to fix the mistake 523 00:24:13.140 --> 00:24:13.940 in his calculations 524 00:24:13.940 --> 00:24:15.640 and get the right answer. 525 00:24:16.080 --> 00:24:17.720 He also later made a mistake 526 00:24:17.720 --> 00:24:19.300 with his applying general relativity 527 00:24:19.300 --> 00:24:20.480 to the universe as a whole. 528 00:24:20.740 --> 00:24:25.440 And he took the general concept 529 00:24:25.960 --> 00:24:28.060 that the universe is static, 530 00:24:28.600 --> 00:24:29.120 unchanging, 531 00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:30.100 and has existed forever. 532 00:24:30.460 --> 00:24:31.460 And when he looked 533 00:24:31.460 --> 00:24:32.620 at these field equations 534 00:24:32.620 --> 00:24:33.920 predicting how the universe 535 00:24:33.920 --> 00:24:34.440 should expand, 536 00:24:35.460 --> 00:24:36.500 he discovered that they didn't 537 00:24:36.500 --> 00:24:37.220 give the right answer. 538 00:24:37.240 --> 00:24:37.420 They didn't give 539 00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:37.580 the right answer 540 00:24:37.580 --> 00:24:39.060 to predict a dynamic universe. 541 00:24:39.260 --> 00:24:40.580 So he fiddled the equations 542 00:24:40.580 --> 00:24:41.680 to get the right result, 543 00:24:42.360 --> 00:24:44.020 until he did get a static universe. 544 00:24:44.440 --> 00:24:46.260 And that was in 1917. 545 00:24:47.080 --> 00:24:48.440 And 12 years later, 546 00:24:49.340 --> 00:24:49.940 astronomers showed 547 00:24:49.940 --> 00:24:51.040 that the universe was expanding. 548 00:24:51.280 --> 00:24:52.240 He couldn't believe it. 549 00:24:52.260 --> 00:24:53.220 He fiddled the equations 550 00:24:53.220 --> 00:24:54.400 to get the wrong answer 551 00:24:54.400 --> 00:24:56.020 because these stupid astronomers 552 00:24:56.020 --> 00:24:58.340 had failed to pick up 553 00:24:58.340 --> 00:25:00.480 this expansion effect. 554 00:25:00.940 --> 00:25:02.620 So Einstein did make mistakes. 555 00:25:03.060 --> 00:25:04.320 So how has this happened? 556 00:25:04.400 --> 00:25:05.060 How have we ended up 557 00:25:05.060 --> 00:25:06.940 with this myth of Einstein? 558 00:25:06.940 --> 00:25:08.960 As an infallible genius 559 00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:10.840 with a direct phone line to God? 560 00:25:11.000 --> 00:25:12.560 Well, part of it is a media myth. 561 00:25:12.780 --> 00:25:14.960 Following the 1919 announcement 562 00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:15.780 of the results 563 00:25:15.780 --> 00:25:18.260 of the light bending observations 564 00:25:19.800 --> 00:25:21.300 of the Royal Astronomical Society, 565 00:25:21.560 --> 00:25:22.980 he woke up the following day 566 00:25:22.980 --> 00:25:23.880 to discover his name 567 00:25:23.880 --> 00:25:25.920 all over the national newspapers 568 00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:26.560 of the world. 569 00:25:26.820 --> 00:25:27.940 And after that, 570 00:25:28.120 --> 00:25:30.260 just about anything Einstein said 571 00:25:30.260 --> 00:25:33.080 would end up being copied 572 00:25:33.080 --> 00:25:34.640 and stuck on shop windows 573 00:25:34.640 --> 00:25:35.820 so people could go and see 574 00:25:35.820 --> 00:25:37.800 the latest outpourings of brilliance 575 00:25:37.800 --> 00:25:39.320 from Albert Einstein. 576 00:25:39.640 --> 00:25:40.240 Peculiar phenomenon. 577 00:25:40.620 --> 00:25:41.820 But it's also, I think, 578 00:25:41.860 --> 00:25:44.040 a myth created and propagated 579 00:25:44.040 --> 00:25:45.000 by scientists themselves 580 00:25:45.820 --> 00:25:47.000 who have certain things 581 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:48.700 that they'd like their geniuses to have. 582 00:25:48.980 --> 00:25:49.660 Like, for example, 583 00:25:49.700 --> 00:25:51.140 that thing about special relativity 584 00:25:51.980 --> 00:25:53.760 where it failed the first test. 585 00:25:53.920 --> 00:25:55.400 Well, many scientists believe 586 00:25:55.400 --> 00:25:56.160 that if you come across 587 00:25:56.160 --> 00:25:57.400 just one refutation 588 00:25:57.400 --> 00:25:58.860 of your brilliant theory, 589 00:25:58.960 --> 00:25:59.720 you're supposed to abandon 590 00:25:59.720 --> 00:26:02.160 your brilliant theory. 591 00:26:02.460 --> 00:26:03.660 You're supposed to bow down 592 00:26:03.660 --> 00:26:05.040 before the experimentalists. 593 00:26:05.140 --> 00:26:05.740 And, of course, 594 00:26:05.820 --> 00:26:06.800 scientists don't do that. 595 00:26:07.280 --> 00:26:08.400 And neither did Einstein. 596 00:26:08.540 --> 00:26:09.160 He just said, 597 00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:09.860 yeah, well, very nice, 598 00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:11.040 but I don't believe a word of it. 599 00:26:11.180 --> 00:26:14.280 So that doesn't fit very well 600 00:26:14.280 --> 00:26:14.960 with the scientist's 601 00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:15.780 conception of genius. 602 00:26:16.100 --> 00:26:17.400 They also don't like the idea 603 00:26:17.400 --> 00:26:19.080 of a scientist benefiting from luck, 604 00:26:19.240 --> 00:26:20.580 which he did with the fact 605 00:26:20.580 --> 00:26:21.700 that his reputation 606 00:26:21.700 --> 00:26:22.460 was saved partly 607 00:26:22.460 --> 00:26:24.420 by the dreadful weather 608 00:26:24.420 --> 00:26:25.820 that prevented any observation 609 00:26:26.500 --> 00:26:27.220 of eclipses. 610 00:26:27.640 --> 00:26:29.620 And his basic humanity, 611 00:26:29.720 --> 00:26:31.160 they don't like to address 612 00:26:31.160 --> 00:26:31.860 too much either. 613 00:26:31.900 --> 00:26:32.920 Books have been brought out 614 00:26:32.920 --> 00:26:35.100 on the, how can we put it generously, 615 00:26:35.280 --> 00:26:35.800 his turbulent journey 616 00:26:35.820 --> 00:26:36.620 into private life 617 00:26:36.620 --> 00:26:38.480 with a string of affairs. 618 00:26:39.800 --> 00:26:41.780 Those typically get howled down. 619 00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:43.180 So in conclusion, 620 00:26:43.340 --> 00:26:44.560 I'd say that, well, 621 00:26:44.660 --> 00:26:46.700 Einstein once said 622 00:26:46.700 --> 00:26:48.600 about his work on cosmology 623 00:26:48.600 --> 00:26:50.400 that the most incomprehensible thing 624 00:26:50.400 --> 00:26:51.080 about the universe 625 00:26:51.820 --> 00:26:53.040 is that it is comprehensible. 626 00:26:54.700 --> 00:26:55.580 But to me, 627 00:26:56.200 --> 00:26:57.840 the most incomprehensible thing 628 00:26:57.840 --> 00:27:00.300 about the way we approach Einstein 629 00:27:00.300 --> 00:27:02.340 is the desire to make him 630 00:27:02.340 --> 00:27:04.580 and his genius incomprehensible. 631 00:27:04.580 --> 00:27:05.780 Thanks very much. 632 00:27:14.540 --> 00:27:16.660 But Anas can't make it today. 633 00:27:16.760 --> 00:27:17.960 I believe he will be making 634 00:27:17.960 --> 00:27:19.240 his speeches tomorrow. 635 00:27:19.640 --> 00:27:22.040 But I have great pleasure 636 00:27:22.040 --> 00:27:23.620 in introducing our next speaker, 637 00:27:23.880 --> 00:27:25.080 Duncan Steele. 638 00:27:25.460 --> 00:27:27.020 He read physics 639 00:27:27.020 --> 00:27:28.660 at Imperial College in London 640 00:27:28.660 --> 00:27:30.480 and University of Canterbury 641 00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:31.060 in New Zealand. 642 00:27:31.260 --> 00:27:32.400 He's a physicist 643 00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:33.560 and space researcher. 644 00:27:33.560 --> 00:27:35.720 He's worked both 645 00:27:35.720 --> 00:27:37.420 at the University of Adelaide here 646 00:27:37.420 --> 00:27:39.100 and the European Space Agency 647 00:27:39.100 --> 00:27:41.620 and the Anglo-Australian Observatory. 648 00:27:42.020 --> 00:27:45.500 He's now at Ball Aerospace in Canberra. 649 00:27:46.040 --> 00:27:48.880 He's written four popular science books 650 00:27:48.880 --> 00:27:50.900 in the areas of space and time. 651 00:27:52.340 --> 00:27:54.980 There's a robot named after him 652 00:27:54.980 --> 00:27:56.580 in Arthur C. Clarke's novel 653 00:27:56.580 --> 00:27:57.720 The Hammer of God. 654 00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:02.420 He has an asteroid named after him. 655 00:28:02.420 --> 00:28:06.160 Asteroid 4713 Steele. 656 00:28:08.200 --> 00:28:10.760 And his more dubious honour 657 00:28:10.760 --> 00:28:13.660 is that he introduced the Sex Pistols 658 00:28:13.660 --> 00:28:15.600 in their first ever complete gig 659 00:28:15.600 --> 00:28:16.700 in November 1975. 660 00:28:18.360 --> 00:28:20.960 So I'll let him explain that one. 661 00:28:21.060 --> 00:28:22.700 Can you please give him a big hand? 662 00:28:29.600 --> 00:28:31.140 Thank you, Derek. 663 00:28:31.140 --> 00:28:32.600 And thank you everybody for coming along. 664 00:28:33.620 --> 00:28:34.260 Yes, indeed. 665 00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:35.320 If you discover asteroids, 666 00:28:35.620 --> 00:28:38.180 you get to name them for whoever you like, 667 00:28:38.220 --> 00:28:39.160 as long as it's not yourself. 668 00:28:39.360 --> 00:28:40.860 Somebody else kindly name one for me. 669 00:28:41.300 --> 00:28:43.260 My first son, I named one. 670 00:28:43.600 --> 00:28:45.000 It's actually called Arius. 671 00:28:45.160 --> 00:28:46.220 His real name's Harrison. 672 00:28:46.460 --> 00:28:47.260 I couldn't call it Harrison 673 00:28:47.260 --> 00:28:48.720 because there was already one name 674 00:28:48.720 --> 00:28:50.160 for George Harrison from The Beatles. 675 00:28:50.820 --> 00:28:52.780 Second son is called Elb Steele. 676 00:28:52.860 --> 00:28:53.920 His real name's Elliot, 677 00:28:54.080 --> 00:28:55.700 but couldn't call it Elliot 678 00:28:55.700 --> 00:28:57.140 because there was already one for T.S. Elliot. 679 00:28:58.980 --> 00:29:00.460 So it's called Elb Steele. 680 00:29:00.460 --> 00:29:01.680 His initials were Steele on the end. 681 00:29:01.760 --> 00:29:03.560 My wife then, of course, got very, very upset. 682 00:29:04.280 --> 00:29:05.780 Only one in the family with an asteroid 683 00:29:05.780 --> 00:29:07.820 that's really being a bit spoiled, I think. 684 00:29:10.240 --> 00:29:13.040 So 9038 Helen Steele exists out there. 685 00:29:13.540 --> 00:29:14.540 Robert and I just went along 686 00:29:14.540 --> 00:29:15.520 to the Bradman exhibition, 687 00:29:15.780 --> 00:29:16.540 and he said, oh, 688 00:29:17.520 --> 00:29:18.460 we were talking about Bradman, 689 00:29:18.520 --> 00:29:19.320 and I said, oh, yes, it was me 690 00:29:19.320 --> 00:29:20.820 and two other poms actually named 691 00:29:20.820 --> 00:29:21.900 an asteroid for Don Bradman. 692 00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:24.560 So there is indeed a 2472 Bradman 693 00:29:24.560 --> 00:29:25.900 out there in the cosmos, Steele. 694 00:29:29.100 --> 00:29:29.380 People, 695 00:29:30.460 --> 00:29:31.560 very often as a scientist, 696 00:29:31.680 --> 00:29:33.380 they ask you, who is your hero? 697 00:29:33.500 --> 00:29:34.880 And they're always expecting you to reply 698 00:29:34.880 --> 00:29:36.640 somebody like Einstein or Newton 699 00:29:36.640 --> 00:29:38.800 or some great astronomer and so on. 700 00:29:39.240 --> 00:29:40.960 They're usually surprised when I say, 701 00:29:41.040 --> 00:29:42.040 well, my hero from history, 702 00:29:42.180 --> 00:29:43.940 I'd have to say, would be Beethoven. 703 00:29:45.220 --> 00:29:47.560 That surprises them in various different ways. 704 00:29:47.760 --> 00:29:49.100 Why not a scientist? 705 00:29:49.340 --> 00:29:51.720 My answer basically is along these lines, 706 00:29:51.780 --> 00:29:53.240 that scientists, you know, 707 00:29:53.240 --> 00:29:55.860 all we do is we uncover truths 708 00:29:55.860 --> 00:29:57.680 about nature or the universe. 709 00:29:58.400 --> 00:29:59.880 And that, in essence, 710 00:29:59.880 --> 00:30:01.160 is what Einstein did. 711 00:30:01.340 --> 00:30:01.960 One could say, 712 00:30:02.080 --> 00:30:04.160 cometh the hour, cometh the man. 713 00:30:04.300 --> 00:30:05.920 The time was ripe for Einstein 714 00:30:05.920 --> 00:30:07.800 to unveil these certain truths 715 00:30:07.800 --> 00:30:09.940 about physics and the way in which 716 00:30:09.940 --> 00:30:11.180 the universe behaves. 717 00:30:11.560 --> 00:30:14.380 That is very different to the creative arts 718 00:30:14.380 --> 00:30:16.440 in which new things are produced 719 00:30:16.440 --> 00:30:18.520 which wouldn't have existed otherwise. 720 00:30:18.940 --> 00:30:19.660 So, for example, 721 00:30:19.820 --> 00:30:22.760 the great composers like Beethoven and Bach 722 00:30:22.760 --> 00:30:25.040 produced things which wouldn't have existed 723 00:30:25.040 --> 00:30:26.180 if it were not for them. 724 00:30:26.200 --> 00:30:28.580 Or great writers like Shakespeare and Cervantes 725 00:30:28.580 --> 00:30:31.400 or great artists like da Vinci and Degas. 726 00:30:31.720 --> 00:30:35.160 They produced things which could not have been 727 00:30:35.160 --> 00:30:37.800 just uncovered by either honest toiling 728 00:30:37.800 --> 00:30:39.600 or a work of scientific genius. 729 00:30:39.880 --> 00:30:40.900 So it's very, very different. 730 00:30:41.180 --> 00:30:43.280 However, there is some crossover, obviously, 731 00:30:43.280 --> 00:30:45.120 enough between science and art. 732 00:30:45.780 --> 00:30:48.040 One extreme example, in some ways, 733 00:30:48.100 --> 00:30:49.000 is one of my ambitions. 734 00:30:49.160 --> 00:30:51.960 I was once at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City 735 00:30:51.960 --> 00:30:53.420 and I saw a painting on the wall 736 00:30:53.420 --> 00:30:56.580 which was nothing but little boxes, 737 00:30:57.260 --> 00:30:57.820 little squares, 738 00:30:57.820 --> 00:30:59.380 painted in different colours. 739 00:30:59.480 --> 00:31:00.760 And the title of the painting is 740 00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:02.160 Random Colours. 741 00:31:02.440 --> 00:31:03.880 And so I've always wanted to go back 742 00:31:03.880 --> 00:31:05.600 and get a picture, get a copy of that, 743 00:31:05.640 --> 00:31:07.520 and check to see whether they are indeed random. 744 00:31:11.380 --> 00:31:13.860 There are, of course, only so many permutations. 745 00:31:13.860 --> 00:31:14.740 When you turn to music, 746 00:31:14.860 --> 00:31:17.000 there are only so many permutations 747 00:31:17.000 --> 00:31:17.640 of different notes. 748 00:31:18.080 --> 00:31:19.560 I'm still recovering from the fact 749 00:31:19.560 --> 00:31:21.100 that my children beat me up last week. 750 00:31:21.320 --> 00:31:23.360 They beat me up to try and stop me from singing. 751 00:31:23.420 --> 00:31:25.160 They hate it when I sing various songs 752 00:31:25.160 --> 00:31:27.680 like Ernie, the fastest milkman in the West, 753 00:31:27.820 --> 00:31:28.160 or... 754 00:31:29.440 --> 00:31:31.260 Yeah, I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts. 755 00:31:31.340 --> 00:31:33.340 But my favourite, just at the moment, to sing, 756 00:31:33.480 --> 00:31:36.360 which they've still got some tolerance level of, 757 00:31:36.420 --> 00:31:38.660 is Yes, We Have No Bananas. 758 00:31:38.760 --> 00:31:39.920 We Have No Bananas Today. 759 00:31:40.920 --> 00:31:42.760 That actually is quite an interesting song 760 00:31:42.760 --> 00:31:45.000 in that when it was published in 1923, 761 00:31:45.520 --> 00:31:47.960 the writers of that song were immediately sued 762 00:31:47.960 --> 00:31:50.960 by the estate of Handel, 763 00:31:52.220 --> 00:31:54.140 Handel, who wrote The Messiah, of course, 764 00:31:54.160 --> 00:31:56.580 on the basis that there are four notes in a row 765 00:31:56.580 --> 00:31:57.800 in Yes, We Have No Bananas, 766 00:31:57.820 --> 00:32:00.280 which are actually duplicates of parts of The Messiah. 767 00:32:01.340 --> 00:32:03.820 Because there are only so many ways of combining notes. 768 00:32:06.600 --> 00:32:08.200 Obviously enough, you know, Beethoven's fifth, 769 00:32:08.340 --> 00:32:10.260 dot, dot, dot, dash, you know, as it were, 770 00:32:10.320 --> 00:32:12.320 which flashed on the bottom of the Allied planes 771 00:32:12.320 --> 00:32:13.360 during the Second World War, 772 00:32:13.760 --> 00:32:15.720 Morse code for V, V for victory. 773 00:32:15.900 --> 00:32:17.600 But if you're going to take four notes, 774 00:32:17.800 --> 00:32:20.580 there are only so many ways you can combine those, 775 00:32:20.660 --> 00:32:22.680 and mathematicians can go away and calculate it. 776 00:32:22.780 --> 00:32:25.120 But in doing that, it kind of loses all the fun 777 00:32:25.120 --> 00:32:27.800 and all the special things which are there, 778 00:32:27.800 --> 00:32:29.700 in artistic pursuits. 779 00:32:31.020 --> 00:32:33.120 Previous speakers have alluded to Einstein 780 00:32:33.120 --> 00:32:35.280 as being somewhat of a scientific hero. 781 00:32:35.800 --> 00:32:37.880 I think that's very much overdone. 782 00:32:37.880 --> 00:32:41.320 For example, when Einstein, when he died in April 1955, 783 00:32:41.640 --> 00:32:44.900 was unaccompanied apart from an American nurse, 784 00:32:45.080 --> 00:32:49.200 and his last words were kind of garbled out in German, 785 00:32:49.300 --> 00:32:50.120 his native language. 786 00:32:50.500 --> 00:32:53.520 And I've read at least two science fiction stories 787 00:32:53.520 --> 00:32:57.780 in which authors have mused upon what those words were, 788 00:32:57.800 --> 00:32:58.860 and what those last words might have been. 789 00:32:59.180 --> 00:33:00.560 Given that the nurse was American, 790 00:33:01.700 --> 00:33:04.140 Americans, like Australians, and English, I guess, 791 00:33:04.600 --> 00:33:05.740 are definitely monolingual, 792 00:33:05.860 --> 00:33:08.020 and so those last words were lost, 793 00:33:08.140 --> 00:33:09.900 and these science fiction authors have written about, 794 00:33:10.060 --> 00:33:11.280 you know, what could they have been, 795 00:33:11.360 --> 00:33:12.880 what great work of genius, and so on. 796 00:33:12.940 --> 00:33:14.940 And that is, I think, taking things to extremes. 797 00:33:15.080 --> 00:33:16.440 I mean, he was probably just saying, 798 00:33:16.540 --> 00:33:19.220 well, did I remember to cancel the newspapers for next week, 799 00:33:19.280 --> 00:33:20.620 or whatever else it may be. 800 00:33:21.500 --> 00:33:23.480 When he died again, his brain was taken, 801 00:33:23.560 --> 00:33:25.000 and somebody found it a few years ago, 802 00:33:25.060 --> 00:33:27.640 in a jar of formalin, I believe, in St. Louis. 803 00:33:27.800 --> 00:33:28.920 In the United States. 804 00:33:29.280 --> 00:33:30.800 People wanted to study his brain, 805 00:33:30.900 --> 00:33:32.040 to see if it was anything different. 806 00:33:32.260 --> 00:33:34.000 Well, no, I don't think it was anything different. 807 00:33:34.200 --> 00:33:35.900 I really do think it was a matter of, 808 00:33:35.940 --> 00:33:37.880 cometh the hour, cometh the man. 809 00:33:39.140 --> 00:33:40.340 When we look at science, 810 00:33:41.560 --> 00:33:43.560 all sorts of superlatives get used, 811 00:33:44.160 --> 00:33:48.860 of which Einstein tends to be used as an extreme. 812 00:33:49.360 --> 00:33:52.620 Victor Hugo wrote something along the lines of the question, 813 00:33:52.780 --> 00:33:54.360 which renders the greater view, 814 00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:56.540 the eye at the telescope, 815 00:33:57.800 --> 00:33:58.600 the eye at the microscope. 816 00:33:59.580 --> 00:34:02.620 I can't think that you can really compare and contrast 817 00:34:02.620 --> 00:34:04.940 what you can see through a telescope looking upwards, 818 00:34:05.140 --> 00:34:07.340 or what you can see through a microscope looking downwards. 819 00:34:07.620 --> 00:34:09.360 They're both remarkable things, 820 00:34:09.560 --> 00:34:12.160 that lead to remarkable scientific discoveries. 821 00:34:12.700 --> 00:34:14.200 Getting back to Einstein himself, 822 00:34:14.920 --> 00:34:17.680 I first came across his work when I was age 16. 823 00:34:18.980 --> 00:34:22.040 A fantastic book, which I'd recommend to everybody to read, 824 00:34:22.140 --> 00:34:24.980 by George Gamow, called 30 Years That Shook Physics. 825 00:34:25.660 --> 00:34:27.220 Quite remarkable book, 826 00:34:27.800 --> 00:34:29.100 which tells the story of quantum theory, 827 00:34:29.180 --> 00:34:31.940 tells the story of the age from 1900 to 1930, 828 00:34:32.180 --> 00:34:32.840 in terms of physics. 829 00:34:33.540 --> 00:34:35.820 It takes his name, a lot of people will probably recognise, 830 00:34:36.100 --> 00:34:38.140 from another book called 10 Years That Shook the World, 831 00:34:38.280 --> 00:34:39.560 which was all about the Russian Revolution, 832 00:34:39.780 --> 00:34:42.120 a book made into the film Reds by Warren Beatty, 833 00:34:42.680 --> 00:34:44.060 25 years ago, I guess. 834 00:34:46.560 --> 00:34:49.380 An example, I guess, of non-relativity 835 00:34:49.380 --> 00:34:50.600 is the fact that the Russian Revolution, 836 00:34:50.860 --> 00:34:51.780 which occurred in 1917, 837 00:34:52.260 --> 00:34:54.040 is very often called the October Revolution, 838 00:34:54.260 --> 00:34:56.060 despite the fact that it actually occurred in November. 839 00:34:57.800 --> 00:34:59.080 Things happen at different times, 840 00:34:59.180 --> 00:35:00.400 but that's all to do with calendars. 841 00:35:00.480 --> 00:35:03.380 Einstein himself was often asked to try and explain 842 00:35:03.380 --> 00:35:06.280 relativity to the layman, which is difficult. 843 00:35:07.500 --> 00:35:12.400 I liked his oft-quoted reply to that question, 844 00:35:13.320 --> 00:35:15.520 because it shows that he was indeed a human being, 845 00:35:15.660 --> 00:35:18.340 and tells us again that the pursuit of science, 846 00:35:18.460 --> 00:35:21.580 like the pursuit of the arts, is a human construct. 847 00:35:21.840 --> 00:35:24.220 His reply on what was relativity is, well, 848 00:35:24.300 --> 00:35:26.620 when a young man is doing his homework, 849 00:35:26.620 --> 00:35:28.760 an hour seems to take forever, 850 00:35:29.320 --> 00:35:31.300 whereas if he spends that man, that hour, 851 00:35:31.340 --> 00:35:33.100 talking to a pretty young girl, 852 00:35:33.220 --> 00:35:34.880 it seems like no time at all. 853 00:35:35.560 --> 00:35:37.560 That was his explanation of relativity. 854 00:35:38.900 --> 00:35:40.620 I was astonished, though, at the age of 16, 855 00:35:40.680 --> 00:35:41.340 to read this book. 856 00:35:41.760 --> 00:35:45.700 All sorts of things in there which I still don't fully understand. 857 00:35:45.840 --> 00:35:46.940 Things like the twins paradox, 858 00:35:47.220 --> 00:35:49.560 which you've probably seen talked about in TV documentaries. 859 00:35:49.560 --> 00:35:51.260 The idea that you take identical twins, 860 00:35:51.520 --> 00:35:52.900 you put one on a spacecraft, 861 00:35:53.060 --> 00:35:55.220 which can go at 99% of the speed of light, 862 00:35:55.320 --> 00:35:56.600 and it goes off for, you know, 863 00:35:56.620 --> 00:35:58.140 100 Earth years. 864 00:35:58.380 --> 00:35:59.900 And when it comes back, of course, 865 00:35:59.920 --> 00:36:02.840 the twin left here on the Earth is long since dead, 866 00:36:02.940 --> 00:36:05.240 whereas the twin who went off on this spacecraft 867 00:36:05.240 --> 00:36:07.800 has only aged by whatever it may be, four years. 868 00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:09.100 The sums are quite easy. 869 00:36:09.220 --> 00:36:12.220 But the point is that time slows down when you're going faster. 870 00:36:12.520 --> 00:36:15.460 Equally well, things change length when they're going faster. 871 00:36:15.760 --> 00:36:19.200 I was always astonished by looking back at that section of the book 872 00:36:19.200 --> 00:36:21.740 which describes something called the Fitzgerald contraction. 873 00:36:22.140 --> 00:36:25.700 Basically, it says that the length of this plane actually changes as I turn it. 874 00:36:25.700 --> 00:36:29.680 The reason it changes as I turn it is the Earth is moving at a certain speed, 875 00:36:29.840 --> 00:36:33.280 about 30 kilometers per second in our orbit around the Sun. 876 00:36:33.420 --> 00:36:36.740 At the same time, the Sun is orbiting the center of the Milky Way 877 00:36:36.740 --> 00:36:39.060 at about 250 kilometers per second. 878 00:36:39.280 --> 00:36:42.540 And so this is moving relative to fixed space as such. 879 00:36:42.620 --> 00:36:47.000 And so its orientation compared to our motion will make its length change. 880 00:36:47.280 --> 00:36:51.440 Of course, the ruler with which you try and measure its length is also changing. 881 00:36:53.960 --> 00:36:55.100 In that book, however, 882 00:36:55.100 --> 00:36:57.260 there was a nice little rhyme about the Fitzgerald contraction. 883 00:36:57.560 --> 00:36:59.680 If I remember it correctly, it went like this. 884 00:37:00.140 --> 00:37:04.920 There was a young fencer called Fisk whose fencing was extremely brisk. 885 00:37:05.180 --> 00:37:10.900 So swift was his action, the Fitzgerald contraction reduced his rapier to a disk. 886 00:37:14.500 --> 00:37:18.300 We've already heard about these other papers which Einstein wrote in 1905. 887 00:37:18.400 --> 00:37:20.200 Quite remarkable in their own right. 888 00:37:20.320 --> 00:37:23.260 And again, the average person in the street, if you ask them, 889 00:37:23.260 --> 00:37:25.800 well, what did Einstein get the Nobel Prize for, 890 00:37:25.960 --> 00:37:28.580 they'll think about relativity, whatever that may be. 891 00:37:28.920 --> 00:37:32.520 Of course, it was for the photoelectric effect for which he got the Nobel Prize 892 00:37:33.260 --> 00:37:35.880 about 17 years later, I think it was 1922. 893 00:37:36.460 --> 00:37:40.480 That is a good example of something which is actually practical. 894 00:37:40.900 --> 00:37:44.200 Photoelectric cells, the old types of photoelectric cells at least, 895 00:37:44.220 --> 00:37:49.480 would not work if it were not for the photoelectric effect and our understanding of it. 896 00:37:50.880 --> 00:37:53.240 Previous two speakers very properly have concentrated this, 897 00:37:53.240 --> 00:37:56.320 I think, upon the philosophical side of Einstein's work. 898 00:37:56.580 --> 00:38:01.100 Me, in my everyday work, have to look at relativity in a more practical way. 899 00:38:01.720 --> 00:38:07.460 John mentioned the fact that, sorry, Derek in his introduction introduced the fact that 900 00:38:07.460 --> 00:38:09.160 time goes slower on a satellite. 901 00:38:09.700 --> 00:38:13.280 So if you're in a satellite orbiting the Earth, like on the space station, 902 00:38:13.460 --> 00:38:14.860 time is going slower. 903 00:38:15.140 --> 00:38:18.740 Very, very slightly slower, but indeed by an important amount. 904 00:38:18.980 --> 00:38:22.120 So for example, the GPS, the global positioning satellites. 905 00:38:22.120 --> 00:38:28.920 Those have clocks which were set up to run at the speed which they need to tick off the seconds correctly 906 00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:32.300 at a speed of around about 3 km per second. 907 00:38:32.420 --> 00:38:33.440 That's how fast they're moving. 908 00:38:33.580 --> 00:38:38.040 If that compensation were not made for the speed with which they're moving in orbit, 909 00:38:38.220 --> 00:38:42.420 the GPS system would be not hopelessly inaccurate, but grossly inaccurate. 910 00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:47.180 We wouldn't be able to use it to say, yes, we are indeed in this car at this crossroads. 911 00:38:47.720 --> 00:38:51.620 If we followed the GPS system without using relativity, 912 00:38:52.120 --> 00:38:53.780 as such, what we call time dilation, 913 00:38:53.900 --> 00:38:57.900 then in fact you would be trying to park your car in the middle of the Meyer Center itself, 914 00:38:58.060 --> 00:38:59.400 as opposed to the Meyer Center car park. 915 00:39:00.060 --> 00:39:00.960 So that's important. 916 00:39:01.600 --> 00:39:05.260 It also applies in some of my own work in terms of asteroids and comets. 917 00:39:05.300 --> 00:39:09.580 There's an embarrassing paper written by a colleague of mine called Don Yeomans, 918 00:39:09.620 --> 00:39:11.640 who you would have seen on the TV over the last week. 919 00:39:11.800 --> 00:39:15.920 He was the person who was in charge of the targeting of the Deep Impact spacecraft 920 00:39:15.920 --> 00:39:20.200 when it hit Comet Tempel 1 on Monday. 921 00:39:20.580 --> 00:39:21.960 Don published a paper. 922 00:39:22.120 --> 00:39:23.760 Twenty years ago, I guess now, 923 00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:26.980 in which he claimed that a particular asteroid called Icarus, 924 00:39:27.000 --> 00:39:30.380 it gets its name because it does indeed fly very close to the sun, 925 00:39:30.440 --> 00:39:33.420 like the mythological Icarus, the son of Daedalus. 926 00:39:34.700 --> 00:39:37.920 Icarus, he claimed, must be a comet in disguise 927 00:39:37.920 --> 00:39:41.280 because he saw something which he called a non-gravitational force. 928 00:39:41.460 --> 00:39:44.160 That is, a force due to, he thought, surely, 929 00:39:44.160 --> 00:39:48.040 something evaporating off its surface applying a jetting-type force. 930 00:39:48.540 --> 00:39:49.880 That is what comets do. 931 00:39:49.960 --> 00:39:51.380 Comets misbehave in that way, 932 00:39:52.120 --> 00:39:53.460 and asteroids ordinarily do not. 933 00:39:53.540 --> 00:39:56.100 They follow purely gravitational forces. 934 00:39:57.120 --> 00:40:00.200 What he didn't realize was that he had actually turned off 935 00:40:00.200 --> 00:40:02.300 the subroutine in the computer program 936 00:40:02.300 --> 00:40:05.680 which introduced relativity into the computations. 937 00:40:06.140 --> 00:40:07.240 So he got it wrong. 938 00:40:07.520 --> 00:40:10.400 He got it wrong because he had neglected relativity. 939 00:40:10.980 --> 00:40:12.840 In fact, Icarus, as far as we can make out, 940 00:40:12.900 --> 00:40:16.100 is indeed an asteroid and not a comet as such. 941 00:40:16.340 --> 00:40:19.000 So those sorts of things are important to some of us 942 00:40:19.000 --> 00:40:20.700 in literally our everyday work. 943 00:40:20.700 --> 00:40:24.040 There's all sorts of other ways in which relativity is important. 944 00:40:24.940 --> 00:40:27.700 Previous two speakers have mentioned the testing 945 00:40:27.700 --> 00:40:30.860 of the general theory of relativity through gravitational focusing. 946 00:40:31.080 --> 00:40:34.740 That is, the bending of starlight seen only possible 947 00:40:34.740 --> 00:40:36.300 during a total solar eclipse. 948 00:40:37.100 --> 00:40:40.020 Astronomers have quite seriously suggested using the Sun 949 00:40:40.020 --> 00:40:41.640 as a gravitational telescope. 950 00:40:42.200 --> 00:40:46.220 Could we put a smaller telescope way, way back from the Sun 951 00:40:46.220 --> 00:40:48.780 such that we would see the light being focused 952 00:40:48.780 --> 00:40:50.040 by the gravity of the Sun? 953 00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:53.920 And so look far, far into the distance 954 00:40:53.920 --> 00:40:55.300 with fantastic resolution. 955 00:40:55.400 --> 00:40:59.820 Really see what, if you like, the edge of the universe is like. 956 00:40:59.920 --> 00:41:02.600 It's a great idea, except for when you sit down 957 00:41:02.600 --> 00:41:05.180 and you do the Suns and you see how much light 958 00:41:05.180 --> 00:41:06.320 actually gets bent by the Sun. 959 00:41:06.420 --> 00:41:08.280 You can then work out its focal length. 960 00:41:08.700 --> 00:41:11.240 It comes out to be about 30 astronomical units, 961 00:41:11.320 --> 00:41:13.180 which means you actually need to have your telescope 962 00:41:13.180 --> 00:41:15.780 out at Neptune looking back towards the Sun 963 00:41:15.780 --> 00:41:20.340 in order to paradoxically see stars, galaxies, quasars 964 00:41:20.340 --> 00:41:20.680 in the future. 965 00:41:20.700 --> 00:41:21.120 And so you can see that it's not far, far, far distance. 966 00:41:22.160 --> 00:41:24.580 Again, we've heard about Einstein getting some things wrong. 967 00:41:24.780 --> 00:41:27.340 I remember in particular a graduate course I was doing 968 00:41:27.340 --> 00:41:31.740 many years ago on relativity, and for a little project 969 00:41:31.740 --> 00:41:35.800 I used the example of an idea that Einstein put forward 970 00:41:35.800 --> 00:41:38.600 in a paper in the 1930s about using stars, 971 00:41:38.800 --> 00:41:42.940 focusing more distant light from galaxies and so on. 972 00:41:43.060 --> 00:41:45.040 And he finished off the paper by saying, 973 00:41:45.100 --> 00:41:48.940 of course there is no hope of observing this phenomenon directly. 974 00:41:49.640 --> 00:41:52.980 In that he was wrong, in that his imagination failed him. 975 00:41:53.040 --> 00:41:55.960 It failed him because he was only thinking about single stars 976 00:41:55.960 --> 00:41:58.700 causing the focusing, whereas nowadays astronomers 977 00:41:58.700 --> 00:42:03.520 are very used to seeing multiple images of very distant quasars, 978 00:42:03.540 --> 00:42:07.220 but with the focusing being done by intervening galaxies, 979 00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:09.080 that is, collections of stars. 980 00:42:09.500 --> 00:42:12.240 They've got enough gravitational pull, as it were, 981 00:42:12.320 --> 00:42:15.740 to bend the light from very distant objects like quasars 982 00:42:15.740 --> 00:42:16.580 very substantially. 983 00:42:16.840 --> 00:42:18.380 So there Einstein got it wrong. 984 00:42:18.380 --> 00:42:23.600 The final thing I'd say to do with Einstein and so on 985 00:42:23.600 --> 00:42:26.240 is things like time delays are very important. 986 00:42:26.460 --> 00:42:31.460 If you were watching the Deep Impact mission TV coverage on Monday, 987 00:42:31.560 --> 00:42:35.040 you may have seen on the screen behind the various commentators, 988 00:42:35.200 --> 00:42:41.580 it had the time followed by the letters UTCERT. 989 00:42:42.560 --> 00:42:45.200 UTC stands for Coordinated Universal Time, 990 00:42:45.320 --> 00:42:47.560 which is what we tend to use as the worldwide standard. 991 00:42:47.560 --> 00:42:52.560 But they had to add ERT, which means Earth Return Time. 992 00:42:53.880 --> 00:42:56.900 That impact upon that comet occurred seven minutes 993 00:42:56.900 --> 00:42:58.980 before we actually got the signals back, 994 00:42:59.080 --> 00:43:00.900 because that's how far away it was. 995 00:43:01.420 --> 00:43:03.620 And relativity is, to some extent, 996 00:43:03.680 --> 00:43:06.840 all about different times in different places. 997 00:43:06.960 --> 00:43:09.920 I've often thought when I've been teaching undergraduate physics courses 998 00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:12.280 that I'd like to be a bit of a smart lecturer 999 00:43:12.280 --> 00:43:16.560 or a smart question asker and just ask for the final exam 1000 00:43:16.620 --> 00:43:18.040 this question, 1001 00:43:18.620 --> 00:43:19.700 what time is it? 1002 00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:25.820 I think that the time taken in an exam is another example 1003 00:43:25.820 --> 00:43:28.660 of Einstein's relativity in the young man talking to the pretty girl, 1004 00:43:28.760 --> 00:43:30.260 how fast time can fly. 1005 00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:32.820 But a physics student can answer that question 1006 00:43:32.820 --> 00:43:34.520 in all sorts of different ways. 1007 00:43:34.960 --> 00:43:37.460 But to take the question a little bit further, 1008 00:43:37.600 --> 00:43:39.900 when people ask me about, well, what are you talking about 1009 00:43:39.900 --> 00:43:41.460 when you're talking about space-time, 1010 00:43:41.740 --> 00:43:44.260 just add an extra word to that question. 1011 00:43:44.560 --> 00:43:46.400 What time is it there? 1012 00:43:46.620 --> 00:43:47.840 Or what time is it here? 1013 00:43:48.200 --> 00:43:50.440 It all depends upon so many different things. 1014 00:43:50.540 --> 00:43:57.060 Like that TV screen back at the control center 1015 00:43:57.060 --> 00:43:58.160 for the deep impact mission. 1016 00:43:58.280 --> 00:44:01.760 When it said UTCERT, Coordinated Universal Time, 1017 00:44:02.060 --> 00:44:05.560 Earth Receipt Time, it was very important. 1018 00:44:05.800 --> 00:44:08.760 They were very, very specific about what they were talking about then. 1019 00:44:09.040 --> 00:44:11.400 And that's how relativity, as it were, 1020 00:44:11.460 --> 00:44:13.220 enters into our everyday lives. 1021 00:44:13.540 --> 00:44:14.520 Thank you very much. 1022 00:44:18.620 --> 00:44:19.180 Thank you. 1023 00:44:23.520 --> 00:44:24.080 OK. 1024 00:44:24.320 --> 00:44:27.660 Before I open it up to the audience for some questions, 1025 00:44:27.760 --> 00:44:29.900 we're going to have an opportunity for the audience 1026 00:44:29.900 --> 00:44:32.560 to ask questions 15 minutes before the end. 1027 00:44:32.660 --> 00:44:35.780 I just want to give the speakers a chance 1028 00:44:35.780 --> 00:44:37.380 to riposte the other speakers. 1029 00:44:38.240 --> 00:44:41.460 So, John, would you like to go first and maybe comment? 1030 00:44:41.940 --> 00:44:46.080 It reminded us that Einstein made a mistake 1031 00:44:46.080 --> 00:44:49.520 when he tried to make a cosmological theory. 1032 00:44:50.100 --> 00:44:53.420 In fact, it was the first truly scientific account 1033 00:44:53.420 --> 00:44:54.560 of the structure of the universe 1034 00:44:54.560 --> 00:44:56.360 that people had been able to construct. 1035 00:44:57.580 --> 00:44:59.760 And the mistake he made was 1036 00:44:59.760 --> 00:45:01.520 he felt he had to have this static universe. 1037 00:45:02.740 --> 00:45:04.740 And so he tinkered with the equations 1038 00:45:04.740 --> 00:45:06.260 and made what he later described 1039 00:45:06.260 --> 00:45:07.940 as the greatest blunder of his life 1040 00:45:07.940 --> 00:45:12.300 in order to produce an apparent static solution. 1041 00:45:12.900 --> 00:45:14.220 In fact, it didn't really work 1042 00:45:14.220 --> 00:45:15.820 because it was an unstable thing. 1043 00:45:15.820 --> 00:45:16.680 It might have stayed there, 1044 00:45:16.720 --> 00:45:17.920 but the slightest perturbation 1045 00:45:17.920 --> 00:45:20.560 would either have collapsed or expanded. 1046 00:45:21.920 --> 00:45:24.240 And it's healthy to remember that 1047 00:45:24.240 --> 00:45:26.620 because people who work in fundamental physics, 1048 00:45:26.720 --> 00:45:28.620 either the physics of the very small quantum physics 1049 00:45:28.620 --> 00:45:31.020 or the physics of the very large general relativity 1050 00:45:31.020 --> 00:45:32.580 or cosmology, 1051 00:45:33.240 --> 00:45:34.340 tend to think that they are 1052 00:45:34.340 --> 00:45:39.400 the deepest and most important types of scientists around 1053 00:45:39.400 --> 00:45:41.680 because these are sort of fundamental questions. 1054 00:45:42.200 --> 00:45:44.360 You could write a history of science 1055 00:45:44.360 --> 00:45:45.540 over the last 200 years 1056 00:45:45.540 --> 00:45:48.560 as the discovery of the importance 1057 00:45:48.560 --> 00:45:51.060 of the significance of the past, 1058 00:45:51.940 --> 00:45:53.060 the significance of history. 1059 00:45:53.960 --> 00:45:56.460 And the first people to make that discovery 1060 00:45:56.460 --> 00:45:57.760 were, of course, the geologists. 1061 00:45:58.680 --> 00:46:00.440 Lyell and people like that realized 1062 00:46:00.440 --> 00:46:03.140 that you couldn't understand the Earth's structure 1063 00:46:03.140 --> 00:46:06.040 without taking into account its past history, 1064 00:46:06.860 --> 00:46:08.560 volcanic eruptions and erosion 1065 00:46:08.560 --> 00:46:09.800 and all those sort of things. 1066 00:46:10.440 --> 00:46:13.100 That was about the end of the 18th century. 1067 00:46:13.300 --> 00:46:15.520 The second people who discovered it, 1068 00:46:15.520 --> 00:46:16.780 the important of history, 1069 00:46:16.920 --> 00:46:17.840 were, of course, the biologists. 1070 00:46:18.160 --> 00:46:20.400 1859, Darwin's theory of evolution. 1071 00:46:21.160 --> 00:46:24.080 The physicists were far and away the last people 1072 00:46:24.080 --> 00:46:26.140 to discover the significance of time. 1073 00:46:26.260 --> 00:46:28.800 Not until the 1920s, as we've been told, 1074 00:46:28.980 --> 00:46:30.680 did they realize that the universe 1075 00:46:30.680 --> 00:46:33.200 can only be understood today 1076 00:46:33.200 --> 00:46:36.600 in terms of its history from the past. 1077 00:46:36.800 --> 00:46:38.360 And it's a useful corrective 1078 00:46:38.360 --> 00:46:42.860 to the slightly smug triumphalism 1079 00:46:42.860 --> 00:46:44.600 that sometimes creeps into fundamental physics 1080 00:46:44.600 --> 00:46:45.500 to remember that we were not. 1081 00:46:45.500 --> 00:46:48.040 We were rather slow in catching on to that. 1082 00:46:48.380 --> 00:46:50.320 And there's a final twist to this story 1083 00:46:50.320 --> 00:46:53.240 because Einstein tinkered with the equations. 1084 00:46:53.280 --> 00:46:54.520 He introduced something that's called 1085 00:46:54.520 --> 00:46:55.680 the cosmological constant. 1086 00:46:55.980 --> 00:46:57.500 He thought that was a terrible mistake. 1087 00:46:58.140 --> 00:47:00.940 And observations now seem to show 1088 00:47:00.940 --> 00:47:02.620 that that constant actually is there. 1089 00:47:02.820 --> 00:47:04.720 We now tend to call it dark energy. 1090 00:47:04.900 --> 00:47:08.400 And it's very important for the structure of the universe, 1091 00:47:08.500 --> 00:47:10.520 though it is also extraordinarily small 1092 00:47:10.520 --> 00:47:12.160 in terms of its natural dimension. 1093 00:47:12.580 --> 00:47:15.200 So you see, science comes around 1094 00:47:15.200 --> 00:47:18.680 and ideas that are rejected in one generation 1095 00:47:18.680 --> 00:47:20.000 may turn up in the next. 1096 00:47:20.620 --> 00:47:21.760 That's all I want to say, really. 1097 00:47:22.480 --> 00:47:22.840 Robert. 1098 00:47:23.780 --> 00:47:25.060 Yes, I was interested, John, 1099 00:47:25.180 --> 00:47:27.760 what you were saying about Einstein 1100 00:47:30.640 --> 00:47:32.380 having played a small role in the, 1101 00:47:32.460 --> 00:47:33.760 well, quite a big role, actually, 1102 00:47:33.800 --> 00:47:35.940 in the early history of quantum theory, 1103 00:47:36.040 --> 00:47:37.680 being ultimately left behind with it 1104 00:47:37.680 --> 00:47:41.360 and now being seen as, as you say, 1105 00:47:41.440 --> 00:47:43.260 the last of the sort of classical physicists 1106 00:47:43.820 --> 00:47:45.180 rather than the first of the modern physicists. 1107 00:47:45.200 --> 00:47:47.860 Well, one of the, and that has, 1108 00:47:48.020 --> 00:47:49.360 I don't think you mean it that way, 1109 00:47:49.480 --> 00:47:51.180 but amongst many scientists today, 1110 00:47:51.320 --> 00:47:53.280 that has certain pejorative overtones. 1111 00:47:53.400 --> 00:47:55.100 The silly old fool had been left behind. 1112 00:47:55.420 --> 00:47:58.400 And there was a certain view of that 1113 00:47:58.400 --> 00:48:00.340 by the time he died in 55. 1114 00:48:01.820 --> 00:48:04.680 But one of the most striking things about his work 1115 00:48:04.680 --> 00:48:08.420 is that he had, he started from 1116 00:48:08.940 --> 00:48:11.180 very clearly stated axioms. 1117 00:48:11.200 --> 00:48:13.220 This is something that, if you ever get the chance, 1118 00:48:13.240 --> 00:48:14.200 there's a wonderful book 1119 00:48:14.200 --> 00:48:15.060 on, 1120 00:48:15.060 --> 00:48:16.480 on the five papers 1121 00:48:17.680 --> 00:48:18.900 written by John Stachel, 1122 00:48:19.020 --> 00:48:19.740 it's just come out. 1123 00:48:20.480 --> 00:48:21.760 I forget the name of the, 1124 00:48:21.860 --> 00:48:22.800 I forget the name of the book, 1125 00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:23.840 so this is quite a short book. 1126 00:48:23.940 --> 00:48:25.620 Anyway, John Stachel is the editor 1127 00:48:25.620 --> 00:48:27.900 of these reproductions of Einstein's 1128 00:48:28.360 --> 00:48:29.700 key papers in 1905. 1129 00:48:30.100 --> 00:48:31.380 And the thing that's most striking about it, 1130 00:48:31.960 --> 00:48:33.440 you know, we can all pick them up 1131 00:48:33.440 --> 00:48:34.480 and knowing nothing, 1132 00:48:34.620 --> 00:48:34.940 he will, 1133 00:48:35.020 --> 00:48:36.520 Einstein takes us from, 1134 00:48:36.560 --> 00:48:37.700 you know, what was known then 1135 00:48:38.240 --> 00:48:39.500 via some axioms 1136 00:48:39.500 --> 00:48:41.260 to these amazing discoveries. 1137 00:48:41.640 --> 00:48:42.960 And one of the most striking things 1138 00:48:42.960 --> 00:48:45.040 about so much of modern philosophy, 1139 00:48:45.060 --> 00:48:45.580 physics today, 1140 00:48:46.280 --> 00:48:47.620 in quantum theory, 1141 00:48:47.880 --> 00:48:50.900 is that we don't really have that same approach. 1142 00:48:51.400 --> 00:48:52.800 The wonders of, you know, 1143 00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:54.700 the theory of everything you've probably heard about 1144 00:48:54.700 --> 00:48:56.600 and superstring theory and M theory 1145 00:48:56.600 --> 00:48:57.600 and all these other things. 1146 00:48:57.680 --> 00:48:59.120 In a sense, 1147 00:48:59.400 --> 00:49:01.220 they're all floating in midair. 1148 00:49:01.340 --> 00:49:03.120 We don't have that bedrock 1149 00:49:03.120 --> 00:49:06.260 of clearly set out principles 1150 00:49:06.260 --> 00:49:08.640 that allow us to see exactly 1151 00:49:09.620 --> 00:49:11.400 where these theories come from 1152 00:49:11.400 --> 00:49:13.080 and why they are like they are. 1153 00:49:13.360 --> 00:49:14.780 And I, for one, 1154 00:49:14.780 --> 00:49:16.240 get sort of, sometimes rather nostalgic 1155 00:49:16.240 --> 00:49:17.720 for the old fuddy-duddy Einstein 1156 00:49:18.140 --> 00:49:20.020 because at least he knew where he was coming from 1157 00:49:20.020 --> 00:49:21.860 rather than coming out with all these wonderful things. 1158 00:49:22.040 --> 00:49:23.000 And I wondered if you had 1159 00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:25.360 any sort of yearnings to go back to the old days 1160 00:49:25.360 --> 00:49:27.120 of, you know, clearly, 1161 00:49:27.600 --> 00:49:28.820 clearly laid out principles 1162 00:49:28.820 --> 00:49:30.640 where you knew where these people were coming from 1163 00:49:30.640 --> 00:49:32.460 rather than making it all up as they go along. 1164 00:49:32.700 --> 00:49:33.580 Well, I'm old, Robert, 1165 00:49:33.640 --> 00:49:35.220 but I'm not quite as old as it happens. 1166 00:49:38.480 --> 00:49:41.120 Duncan, do you have a riposte? 1167 00:49:41.680 --> 00:49:42.840 No riposte as such. 1168 00:49:42.840 --> 00:49:44.660 I think that an interesting point, 1169 00:49:44.780 --> 00:49:45.800 which was alluded to, 1170 00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:47.060 but probably not made clear, 1171 00:49:47.280 --> 00:49:49.740 is one could divide up Einstein's life 1172 00:49:49.740 --> 00:49:52.440 into the time he was outside of what we might call 1173 00:49:52.440 --> 00:49:54.940 the academy in which he made his great discoveries, 1174 00:49:55.980 --> 00:49:57.860 whereupon when he got his professorship 1175 00:49:58.460 --> 00:49:59.380 eventually at Princeton, 1176 00:49:59.480 --> 00:50:01.840 he produced essentially very, very little. 1177 00:50:03.740 --> 00:50:05.140 It's around the opposite way 1178 00:50:05.140 --> 00:50:06.780 to the way in which you might expect academics 1179 00:50:06.780 --> 00:50:07.940 as such to work, 1180 00:50:08.020 --> 00:50:09.920 that he must have had all of his time available 1181 00:50:09.920 --> 00:50:10.980 for getting on with these things, 1182 00:50:11.080 --> 00:50:12.520 but actually produced very little. 1183 00:50:13.460 --> 00:50:14.480 Whereas when he was working 1184 00:50:14.480 --> 00:50:15.520 as a paint and office clerk, 1185 00:50:15.640 --> 00:50:17.460 he produced a fantastic amount. 1186 00:50:17.740 --> 00:50:20.120 I'm not saying that maybe some academics 1187 00:50:20.120 --> 00:50:21.180 should be kicked out of universities 1188 00:50:21.180 --> 00:50:23.180 to work as a paint and office clerk, 1189 00:50:23.420 --> 00:50:23.900 heaven forbid. 1190 00:50:26.240 --> 00:50:28.620 But I think there is a useful point there. 1191 00:50:28.960 --> 00:50:31.880 The other thing is that nowadays 1192 00:50:31.880 --> 00:50:33.860 it does seem to be more difficult for, 1193 00:50:34.020 --> 00:50:35.940 as it were, rogue researchers 1194 00:50:35.940 --> 00:50:39.080 to make vital contributions, 1195 00:50:39.280 --> 00:50:40.080 which maybe they can. 1196 00:50:40.500 --> 00:50:42.120 Unfortunately, one's got to say 1197 00:50:42.120 --> 00:50:43.480 that the amount of signal that they, 1198 00:50:43.480 --> 00:50:45.040 a potential to provide, 1199 00:50:45.140 --> 00:50:46.360 is hidden in an awful lot of noise. 1200 00:50:46.780 --> 00:50:49.740 Anybody who puts up their head 1201 00:50:49.740 --> 00:50:50.800 above the parapet as such 1202 00:50:50.800 --> 00:50:52.260 in the world of science worldwide 1203 00:50:52.260 --> 00:50:53.800 knows that you soon get inundated 1204 00:50:53.800 --> 00:50:55.900 by quite often registered letters 1205 00:50:55.900 --> 00:50:57.280 coming from various countries. 1206 00:50:57.360 --> 00:50:59.320 Argentina and India are the two 1207 00:50:59.320 --> 00:51:00.940 which I get most of them from. 1208 00:51:00.980 --> 00:51:01.580 Written in green ink. 1209 00:51:01.820 --> 00:51:02.920 Written in green ink, 1210 00:51:02.960 --> 00:51:04.500 with lots of underlining and so on. 1211 00:51:04.560 --> 00:51:06.620 This is the discovery of life, 1212 00:51:06.640 --> 00:51:07.380 the universe and everything. 1213 00:51:08.000 --> 00:51:10.220 Unfortunately, the vast majority of them 1214 00:51:10.220 --> 00:51:11.140 are absolute bunk. 1215 00:51:11.880 --> 00:51:13.120 But that is not to say 1216 00:51:13.120 --> 00:51:14.780 that we shouldn't be encouraging them. 1217 00:51:14.840 --> 00:51:16.100 The best way, in some way, 1218 00:51:16.140 --> 00:51:17.080 to encourage people 1219 00:51:17.080 --> 00:51:19.960 is to make them aware of the format 1220 00:51:19.960 --> 00:51:22.360 in which things are actually done as such 1221 00:51:22.360 --> 00:51:24.360 in scientific circles. 1222 00:51:24.460 --> 00:51:25.960 That is, how do you actually get a paper published? 1223 00:51:26.500 --> 00:51:28.120 If it's crap, it isn't going to get published. 1224 00:51:28.240 --> 00:51:29.040 But you've at least got to get it 1225 00:51:29.040 --> 00:51:30.580 into the right format in the first place 1226 00:51:30.580 --> 00:51:31.680 and send it to the right place. 1227 00:51:32.580 --> 00:51:33.940 Again, I'm not encouraging people 1228 00:51:33.940 --> 00:51:34.640 to start doing that 1229 00:51:34.640 --> 00:51:35.800 because the editor in nature 1230 00:51:35.800 --> 00:51:36.900 will be after me tomorrow. 1231 00:51:37.720 --> 00:51:39.480 I'm sure he gets enough nonsense 1232 00:51:39.480 --> 00:51:40.240 sent to him as it were. 1233 00:51:40.320 --> 00:51:41.820 But in amongst all of this, 1234 00:51:42.380 --> 00:51:42.700 occasionally, 1235 00:51:42.700 --> 00:51:43.720 there are great gems. 1236 00:51:43.960 --> 00:51:45.560 And there certainly are a few people still 1237 00:51:45.560 --> 00:51:47.260 who are working outside of the academy. 1238 00:51:47.400 --> 00:51:49.180 James Lovelock in Britain is a good example, 1239 00:51:49.340 --> 00:51:51.760 the inventor of such a Gaia hypothesis, 1240 00:51:52.000 --> 00:51:54.220 which I may or may not believe in. 1241 00:51:54.280 --> 00:51:55.500 Nevertheless, I'm glad he's there 1242 00:51:55.500 --> 00:51:57.160 and I'm glad that he's able 1243 00:51:57.160 --> 00:51:58.400 to get his ideas out. 1244 00:51:58.500 --> 00:51:59.900 I think that's a vital thing 1245 00:51:59.900 --> 00:52:00.780 for the health of, 1246 00:52:01.520 --> 00:52:03.000 if you like, intellectual life. 1247 00:52:04.280 --> 00:52:07.820 Okay, I want to now touch on something 1248 00:52:07.820 --> 00:52:10.480 that Duncan mentioned in his talk. 1249 00:52:10.640 --> 00:52:11.260 And that is, 1250 00:52:11.340 --> 00:52:12.060 if Einstein, 1251 00:52:12.700 --> 00:52:13.580 if Einstein hadn't existed, 1252 00:52:14.780 --> 00:52:16.580 would mankind or humankind 1253 00:52:16.580 --> 00:52:19.880 have discovered his ideas anyway? 1254 00:52:20.200 --> 00:52:21.040 I would like to hear 1255 00:52:21.040 --> 00:52:22.600 what the speakers have to say on that. 1256 00:52:22.820 --> 00:52:24.640 And how soon do you think 1257 00:52:24.640 --> 00:52:27.100 they would have rediscovered 1258 00:52:27.100 --> 00:52:28.160 those three papers? 1259 00:52:28.960 --> 00:52:30.000 How long would it have, 1260 00:52:30.100 --> 00:52:32.140 how much time would we have wasted 1261 00:52:32.640 --> 00:52:33.500 in humankind 1262 00:52:33.500 --> 00:52:36.080 if 1905 hadn't happened? 1263 00:52:37.400 --> 00:52:38.440 I feel pretty sure 1264 00:52:38.440 --> 00:52:39.640 the discoveries would have been made. 1265 00:52:39.700 --> 00:52:40.920 I mean, that's the nature of science. 1266 00:52:41.240 --> 00:52:41.680 And, 1267 00:52:42.700 --> 00:52:43.800 I mean, as Duncan was saying, 1268 00:52:43.880 --> 00:52:45.060 that if Beethoven hadn't lived, 1269 00:52:45.600 --> 00:52:47.300 we wouldn't have had the late Cortez. 1270 00:52:47.420 --> 00:52:49.660 But we don't say that if Einstein hadn't lived, 1271 00:52:49.720 --> 00:52:50.720 we wouldn't have had general relativity. 1272 00:52:51.040 --> 00:52:52.240 It would have been discovered probably 1273 00:52:52.240 --> 00:52:54.420 more slowly and more piecemeal, maybe. 1274 00:52:55.780 --> 00:52:58.420 But not laying hidden for a hundred years 1275 00:52:58.420 --> 00:52:59.460 or something of that nature. 1276 00:52:59.520 --> 00:53:01.400 It would be of the order of a few years, I guess, 1277 00:53:01.500 --> 00:53:03.380 that would have got people onto it. 1278 00:53:03.500 --> 00:53:04.180 That's my point. 1279 00:53:04.360 --> 00:53:05.660 Yeah, I think with general relativity, 1280 00:53:05.680 --> 00:53:07.460 the 1915 paper would have been discovered. 1281 00:53:07.560 --> 00:53:08.640 The field equations 1282 00:53:09.420 --> 00:53:12.120 became the subject of a rather nasty dispute, 1283 00:53:12.200 --> 00:53:12.520 actually, 1284 00:53:12.700 --> 00:53:13.820 between Einstein and Hilbert. 1285 00:53:14.640 --> 00:53:17.100 David Hilbert was a German mathematician, 1286 00:53:17.440 --> 00:53:19.060 probably the finest mathematician 1287 00:53:19.060 --> 00:53:20.320 living at that time. 1288 00:53:20.540 --> 00:53:23.780 And there was a dispute between them 1289 00:53:23.780 --> 00:53:25.000 about who was the first 1290 00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:26.780 to get the field equations down. 1291 00:53:27.700 --> 00:53:29.300 So Hilbert was really breathing down 1292 00:53:29.300 --> 00:53:30.940 Einstein's neck on that particular one. 1293 00:53:31.280 --> 00:53:32.660 But the other ones like 1294 00:53:33.620 --> 00:53:35.160 E equals mc squared, 1295 00:53:35.280 --> 00:53:36.720 which you need special relativity for. 1296 00:53:36.880 --> 00:53:37.540 So really, 1297 00:53:38.940 --> 00:53:41.020 whether people like Lorentz, 1298 00:53:41.020 --> 00:53:41.600 who had, 1299 00:53:42.700 --> 00:53:45.300 written down the equations of special relativity, 1300 00:53:45.740 --> 00:53:48.120 and Fitzgerald had written them down years before, 1301 00:53:48.320 --> 00:53:51.840 but hadn't got a sort of physical framework for them. 1302 00:53:51.900 --> 00:53:53.800 They were written down essentially to explain 1303 00:53:53.800 --> 00:53:57.140 an otherwise anomalous experimental result 1304 00:53:57.140 --> 00:53:58.560 that had been discovered in 1888. 1305 00:53:58.880 --> 00:54:03.500 Whether they had been able to push on further 1306 00:54:03.500 --> 00:54:05.000 to discover E equals mc squared, 1307 00:54:05.060 --> 00:54:06.220 I rather doubt it, actually. 1308 00:54:06.580 --> 00:54:10.640 I think you have to have the understanding that 1309 00:54:10.640 --> 00:54:12.680 these equations are telling you, 1310 00:54:12.680 --> 00:54:15.700 something very profound about space and time. 1311 00:54:16.120 --> 00:54:18.020 And therefore, since it's very profound, 1312 00:54:18.120 --> 00:54:20.740 it needs to be applied to other laws, 1313 00:54:20.900 --> 00:54:23.320 specifically the law of energy conservation. 1314 00:54:23.740 --> 00:54:25.700 And that leads you to E equals mc squared. 1315 00:54:26.000 --> 00:54:27.360 I don't think you can do that 1316 00:54:27.360 --> 00:54:30.660 unless you really understand at a very deep level 1317 00:54:30.660 --> 00:54:31.000 where these equations come from. 1318 00:54:31.000 --> 00:54:33.260 Would that have taken us another 50 years maybe? 1319 00:54:33.640 --> 00:54:34.820 Or less than that? 1320 00:54:34.840 --> 00:54:35.880 No, I think I don't think so. 1321 00:54:35.900 --> 00:54:36.900 No, it probably wouldn't have done. 1322 00:54:37.060 --> 00:54:39.900 But I think Einstein's prime, 1323 00:54:40.180 --> 00:54:41.980 his greatest achievement in general relativity, 1324 00:54:42.160 --> 00:54:42.540 ironically, 1325 00:54:42.680 --> 00:54:45.920 I think we would have had to wait less time 1326 00:54:45.920 --> 00:54:47.820 to get that than we would special relativity. 1327 00:54:49.280 --> 00:54:50.500 And incidentally, Duncan, 1328 00:54:50.580 --> 00:54:53.120 I mean, he was a professor in Berlin 1329 00:54:53.120 --> 00:54:55.140 when he discovered general relativity. 1330 00:54:55.460 --> 00:54:57.680 So the Academy didn't spoil it altogether. 1331 00:54:58.800 --> 00:55:00.380 There are parallels, of course, 1332 00:55:00.420 --> 00:55:02.620 from history of science and mathematics 1333 00:55:02.620 --> 00:55:06.140 of essentially simultaneous inventions. 1334 00:55:06.360 --> 00:55:07.240 For example, the calculus. 1335 00:55:07.540 --> 00:55:07.900 Yes. 1336 00:55:08.040 --> 00:55:09.340 Newton and... 1337 00:55:09.340 --> 00:55:10.140 Leibniz. 1338 00:55:10.260 --> 00:55:11.880 Leibniz, yep, in Germany. 1339 00:55:11.880 --> 00:55:13.900 And they argued about that for an awful long time. 1340 00:55:14.000 --> 00:55:15.880 And it carries on in the notation we use 1341 00:55:15.880 --> 00:55:17.480 for writing down the calculus. 1342 00:55:17.620 --> 00:55:19.240 Two totally different forms 1343 00:55:19.240 --> 00:55:20.900 which are equivalent to each other. 1344 00:55:20.960 --> 00:55:21.820 But one comes from Newton, 1345 00:55:21.920 --> 00:55:23.240 one comes from Leibniz. 1346 00:55:24.500 --> 00:55:26.120 There's lots of similar examples, 1347 00:55:26.400 --> 00:55:28.000 I think, as we go back through history. 1348 00:55:28.220 --> 00:55:29.960 As I say, cometh the hour, cometh the man, 1349 00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:30.620 or cometh the woman. 1350 00:55:30.760 --> 00:55:32.580 But things are ripe for things to be... 1351 00:55:32.580 --> 00:55:33.120 Yeah, that's right. 1352 00:55:33.180 --> 00:55:34.100 ...for things to be unveiled. 1353 00:55:34.600 --> 00:55:35.580 Yes, I think that's right. 1354 00:55:35.780 --> 00:55:36.060 Yeah. 1355 00:55:36.420 --> 00:55:38.800 In fact, there's a law called, 1356 00:55:38.840 --> 00:55:40.300 I think it's called Stieglitz's law, 1357 00:55:40.440 --> 00:55:41.860 that the new... 1358 00:55:41.860 --> 00:55:43.460 The name associated with the discovery 1359 00:55:43.460 --> 00:55:45.560 is not the person who did the discovery. 1360 00:55:46.960 --> 00:55:49.440 And he published an entire chapter on this. 1361 00:55:49.660 --> 00:55:51.440 Like the Gaussian curve, 1362 00:55:51.520 --> 00:55:53.640 you know, the famous bell-shaped curve 1363 00:55:53.640 --> 00:55:56.520 that describes things like distribution of IQs 1364 00:55:56.520 --> 00:55:57.060 and things like that. 1365 00:55:57.120 --> 00:55:58.720 That was discovered by the French mathematician 1366 00:55:58.720 --> 00:56:00.640 de Moivre much earlier. 1367 00:56:01.120 --> 00:56:03.720 And there are many other examples like that 1368 00:56:03.720 --> 00:56:05.240 where the name associated with it 1369 00:56:05.840 --> 00:56:08.560 is not the name of the real discoverer. 1370 00:56:08.600 --> 00:56:09.020 Davy Lampe. 1371 00:56:09.600 --> 00:56:11.180 Davy Lampe, Humphrey Davy, but not... 1372 00:56:11.860 --> 00:56:12.220 No, it's Stevenson. 1373 00:56:12.320 --> 00:56:12.740 Right. 1374 00:56:13.000 --> 00:56:15.260 It turns out that Stevenson was working class. 1375 00:56:15.640 --> 00:56:16.340 Oh, okay. 1376 00:56:16.500 --> 00:56:18.040 And Davy certainly wasn't. 1377 00:56:18.040 --> 00:56:19.020 No, he certainly wasn't. 1378 00:56:20.020 --> 00:56:22.800 Another theme I'd like the speakers to touch on is 1379 00:56:23.860 --> 00:56:27.300 science is about doing the experiment first 1380 00:56:28.800 --> 00:56:32.920 and fitting the theory to the experiment, 1381 00:56:33.040 --> 00:56:37.300 not trying to fit your experiment to the theory. 1382 00:56:37.440 --> 00:56:40.420 Doing it that way around is regarded as wrong in science. 1383 00:56:40.420 --> 00:56:42.600 And what I want to ask you is, 1384 00:56:44.120 --> 00:56:47.520 does Einstein's celebrity status, in fact, 1385 00:56:49.800 --> 00:56:51.400 overemphasize the wrong approach, 1386 00:56:51.500 --> 00:56:53.020 coming up with the theory first? 1387 00:56:53.520 --> 00:56:56.060 I wonder if you have any comments on whether that's... 1388 00:56:56.060 --> 00:57:00.120 the celebrity thing has done damage to science in that respect. 1389 00:57:00.220 --> 00:57:01.900 I've always thought of it as actually being the other way around, 1390 00:57:01.940 --> 00:57:04.060 that the job of the theoretician is to come up with 1391 00:57:04.060 --> 00:57:05.860 potentially for survival hypotheses, 1392 00:57:06.120 --> 00:57:08.480 which can then be experimentally tested. 1393 00:57:09.460 --> 00:57:10.400 The theoretician is... 1394 00:57:10.400 --> 00:57:11.920 I think the theoreticians turn that back round and say 1395 00:57:11.920 --> 00:57:14.340 that the results of observations shouldn't be believed 1396 00:57:14.340 --> 00:57:15.540 until confirmed by theory, 1397 00:57:16.820 --> 00:57:18.980 which is obviously backwards. 1398 00:57:19.740 --> 00:57:23.280 I think there's a dialogue between theory and experiment, 1399 00:57:23.520 --> 00:57:27.140 but which speaks first depends on the situation. 1400 00:57:27.740 --> 00:57:30.220 I mean, theory is quite often experimentally driven. 1401 00:57:30.480 --> 00:57:34.180 Theorists are driven to reach ideas they wouldn't have thought of 1402 00:57:34.180 --> 00:57:35.400 without the nudge of nature, 1403 00:57:35.520 --> 00:57:36.800 and that's experimental driving. 1404 00:57:36.960 --> 00:57:40.060 But people, equally theorists, propose to say, 1405 00:57:40.400 --> 00:57:42.620 well, I think there's a lot of ideas that can then be put to the test. 1406 00:57:42.800 --> 00:57:43.240 So I don't... 1407 00:57:44.220 --> 00:57:46.360 Einstein, of course, was very much a sort of... 1408 00:57:46.360 --> 00:57:49.620 He said, didn't he, that the fundamental basis of physics 1409 00:57:49.620 --> 00:57:50.860 has to be freely invented. 1410 00:57:51.480 --> 00:57:53.080 And he didn't mean by that, certainly, 1411 00:57:53.180 --> 00:57:55.100 that it's just a sort of confabulation, 1412 00:57:55.240 --> 00:57:56.760 you just make a fairy tale, 1413 00:57:56.940 --> 00:57:59.600 but he meant that you had to have a creative leap 1414 00:57:59.600 --> 00:58:02.720 of the theoretical imagination to see what was going on. 1415 00:58:03.920 --> 00:58:05.260 It goes both ways. 1416 00:58:05.620 --> 00:58:07.860 Yes, I think it does in Einstein's own work. 1417 00:58:07.900 --> 00:58:09.980 There's a dispute within the... 1418 00:58:10.400 --> 00:58:13.040 history of science community about the extent to which 1419 00:58:13.040 --> 00:58:16.360 Einstein's special theory of relativity was... 1420 00:58:16.360 --> 00:58:23.960 was provoked in Einstein by this bizarre experimental result, 1421 00:58:24.120 --> 00:58:26.120 the Marx and Morley experiment in the 1880s, 1422 00:58:26.180 --> 00:58:28.540 which suggested that the speed of light, 1423 00:58:29.400 --> 00:58:30.880 the value for the speed of light, 1424 00:58:31.520 --> 00:58:34.580 was independent of the movement of the observer, 1425 00:58:34.740 --> 00:58:36.440 which is really weird. 1426 00:58:36.740 --> 00:58:39.760 And Einstein himself, it's very unclear. 1427 00:58:39.940 --> 00:58:40.380 He... 1428 00:58:40.400 --> 00:58:42.480 He sort of changed his tune on this throughout his life, 1429 00:58:42.540 --> 00:58:45.080 the extent to which that experimental result 1430 00:58:45.080 --> 00:58:46.440 was a key thing for him, 1431 00:58:46.520 --> 00:58:48.320 rather than sort of... 1432 00:58:48.320 --> 00:58:50.760 rather more abstract overarching principles. 1433 00:58:51.120 --> 00:58:52.320 And as for general relativity, 1434 00:58:53.240 --> 00:58:55.260 I don't think for a moment that Einstein 1435 00:58:55.260 --> 00:58:58.260 was led to general relativity by a desire to explain 1436 00:58:58.260 --> 00:59:01.420 the peculiarities of the motion of Mercury, 1437 00:59:01.780 --> 00:59:04.960 which had been known for 60 years previously. 1438 00:59:05.380 --> 00:59:08.260 I think that just fell out later on. 1439 00:59:08.400 --> 00:59:10.380 So Einstein was quite capable... 1440 00:59:10.380 --> 00:59:12.620 of being influenced a little bit by experiment, 1441 00:59:12.980 --> 00:59:16.980 a little bit by a desire to find overarching unity in... 1442 00:59:17.840 --> 00:59:18.580 in theory. 1443 00:59:18.960 --> 00:59:22.420 So I think it's one of these sort of wiggish approaches 1444 00:59:22.420 --> 00:59:24.120 to the history of science that sort of says, 1445 00:59:24.280 --> 00:59:25.540 oh, yes, there was this experiment, 1446 00:59:25.680 --> 00:59:27.740 and then the theories came along and cleared it up, 1447 00:59:27.760 --> 00:59:29.740 or the theories had this principle, and then it was... 1448 00:59:29.740 --> 00:59:33.780 I think it's always a rather kludgy, messy blend of the two. 1449 00:59:33.920 --> 00:59:34.480 It's nowhere near... 1450 00:59:34.480 --> 00:59:36.100 Science is a human activity, 1451 00:59:36.220 --> 00:59:37.700 so it doesn't follow these rules. 1452 00:59:38.960 --> 00:59:39.760 Does the... 1453 00:59:39.760 --> 00:59:44.980 celebrity status of doing these big leaps in theory, 1454 00:59:45.280 --> 00:59:45.900 does it... 1455 00:59:46.800 --> 00:59:49.260 Does it take away from the scientists 1456 00:59:49.260 --> 00:59:51.700 who do small incremental research, 1457 00:59:51.960 --> 00:59:53.780 which, although are small leaps, 1458 00:59:53.800 --> 00:59:57.440 are nevertheless necessary to bring science out there 1459 00:59:57.440 --> 00:59:58.760 into the practical world? 1460 00:59:59.120 --> 01:00:03.720 By idolizing people like Einstein, 1461 01:00:03.920 --> 01:00:09.740 are we perhaps ignoring the necessary incremental research 1462 01:00:09.760 --> 01:00:10.760 that happens? 1463 01:00:12.880 --> 01:00:16.080 Certainly funding agencies are notorious for that, 1464 01:00:16.760 --> 01:00:21.700 tending to only fund extremely big, sexy-sounding projects 1465 01:00:21.700 --> 01:00:23.300 rather than small incremental research. 1466 01:00:23.600 --> 01:00:25.120 Do you have any thoughts on that? 1467 01:00:25.660 --> 01:00:26.680 Well, I think the problem... 1468 01:00:26.680 --> 01:00:28.400 I think the problem is it's been referred to already 1469 01:00:28.400 --> 01:00:29.580 with the funding agencies, 1470 01:00:29.720 --> 01:00:34.460 is that they'd like to fund collaborations of honest toilers, 1471 01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:36.580 because they can formulate... 1472 01:00:36.580 --> 01:00:37.420 They can say, well, they're going to do... 1473 01:00:37.420 --> 01:00:38.820 We're going to do this and do that. 1474 01:00:38.820 --> 01:00:40.380 And the odd people of genius, 1475 01:00:41.480 --> 01:00:42.940 or the blue-sky researchers, 1476 01:00:43.240 --> 01:00:45.720 or the people who have strange ideas, 1477 01:00:45.840 --> 01:00:48.000 may find it difficult to be funded. 1478 01:00:48.080 --> 01:00:49.800 I think the difference today, 1479 01:00:49.940 --> 01:00:50.920 the difficulty runs the other way. 1480 01:00:50.980 --> 01:00:51.820 Would you agree with that? 1481 01:00:52.180 --> 01:00:53.000 Yes, I think I would. 1482 01:00:53.120 --> 01:00:53.460 The... 1483 01:00:55.040 --> 01:00:56.160 There's a tendency, I mean, 1484 01:00:56.240 --> 01:00:58.920 in my day job as a science writer, 1485 01:00:59.140 --> 01:00:59.380 you know, 1486 01:01:00.340 --> 01:01:02.080 there's this fascination with the idea that, 1487 01:01:02.100 --> 01:01:03.720 is this chap the second Einstein? 1488 01:01:04.260 --> 01:01:04.460 Yes. 1489 01:01:04.880 --> 01:01:06.140 About ten years ago, 1490 01:01:07.340 --> 01:01:07.740 the... 1491 01:01:07.740 --> 01:01:09.880 The concept of, you know, 1492 01:01:09.880 --> 01:01:11.200 the mantle of the second Einstein 1493 01:01:11.200 --> 01:01:15.000 was placed on the shoulders of someone called Ed Witten, 1494 01:01:15.140 --> 01:01:16.500 who is regarded in the... 1495 01:01:16.500 --> 01:01:19.840 whose nickname in the theoretical physics community 1496 01:01:19.840 --> 01:01:20.880 is the Pope. 1497 01:01:21.480 --> 01:01:25.320 And it's because he came up with various ideas, 1498 01:01:25.400 --> 01:01:28.800 various insights into this search for the theory of everything, 1499 01:01:28.900 --> 01:01:30.080 which eluded Einstein, 1500 01:01:31.540 --> 01:01:32.140 which... 1501 01:01:33.880 --> 01:01:36.400 They're nothing like as... 1502 01:01:37.900 --> 01:01:42.140 profound as the advances that Einstein made. 1503 01:01:42.860 --> 01:01:44.160 He showed that... 1504 01:01:44.820 --> 01:01:45.880 Put very simply, 1505 01:01:46.000 --> 01:01:48.440 he showed that a whole disparate set of ideas 1506 01:01:48.440 --> 01:01:51.640 that seemed to be possible candidates for a theory of everything 1507 01:01:51.640 --> 01:01:54.180 were in fact different aspects of something bigger. 1508 01:01:54.400 --> 01:01:57.880 And for that, he's regarded as like the second Einstein, right? 1509 01:01:57.940 --> 01:01:58.820 And we're still trying to understand 1510 01:01:58.820 --> 01:02:00.940 why any of these theories exist anyway. 1511 01:02:01.200 --> 01:02:01.940 So there's still... 1512 01:02:01.940 --> 01:02:03.480 We still have this sort of, in a sense, 1513 01:02:03.520 --> 01:02:05.080 desire to have, you know, 1514 01:02:05.080 --> 01:02:06.860 an Einstein figure. 1515 01:02:06.860 --> 01:02:08.220 But increasingly, 1516 01:02:09.640 --> 01:02:11.120 it's becoming unsustainable. 1517 01:02:11.140 --> 01:02:11.860 Not least, I think, 1518 01:02:11.880 --> 01:02:12.920 because I think it's impossible 1519 01:02:12.920 --> 01:02:15.720 for any one person to achieve 1520 01:02:15.720 --> 01:02:17.900 these type of breakthroughs 1521 01:02:17.900 --> 01:02:20.120 on the sheer complexity of the problems 1522 01:02:20.120 --> 01:02:20.860 that are now being attacked. 1523 01:02:21.680 --> 01:02:23.440 I think we've gone beyond those days now. 1524 01:02:23.700 --> 01:02:24.840 It's interesting that Ed Witten 1525 01:02:25.480 --> 01:02:26.680 won a Fields Medal, 1526 01:02:26.800 --> 01:02:28.260 which is the sort of mathematician's equivalent 1527 01:02:28.260 --> 01:02:29.460 of a Nobel Prize. 1528 01:02:29.660 --> 01:02:31.060 But he hasn't won a Nobel Prize for physics. 1529 01:02:31.240 --> 01:02:31.700 No, right. 1530 01:02:32.120 --> 01:02:32.900 That's telling. 1531 01:02:33.200 --> 01:02:33.680 Yeah. 1532 01:02:35.020 --> 01:02:36.520 To what extent do you think 1533 01:02:36.520 --> 01:02:37.440 if you like, 1534 01:02:37.520 --> 01:02:38.100 we're going wrong 1535 01:02:38.100 --> 01:02:40.920 by just trying to push forward the frontiers 1536 01:02:42.180 --> 01:02:43.640 beyond, as it were, the mainstream, 1537 01:02:43.900 --> 01:02:45.520 as opposed to needing something 1538 01:02:45.520 --> 01:02:46.720 to come out of left field? 1539 01:02:47.820 --> 01:02:50.180 I mean, when I said that Einstein 1540 01:02:51.300 --> 01:02:52.560 come at the hour, come at the man 1541 01:02:52.560 --> 01:02:53.800 kind of observation, 1542 01:02:56.060 --> 01:02:58.360 was that a logical progression, as it were, 1543 01:02:58.420 --> 01:03:00.140 or was it really coming, as I say, 1544 01:03:00.160 --> 01:03:01.320 as a totally novel idea? 1545 01:03:03.120 --> 01:03:06.080 One of the things which Newton's most famous for, 1546 01:03:06.800 --> 01:03:08.660 although it wasn't an original statement, 1547 01:03:08.860 --> 01:03:11.700 was when he wrote, if I've seen further, 1548 01:03:11.800 --> 01:03:14.140 it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. 1549 01:03:14.740 --> 01:03:16.280 Like I say, it's not an original observation. 1550 01:03:16.620 --> 01:03:18.240 I might note in passing that actually 1551 01:03:18.240 --> 01:03:20.020 the person he wrote that to was Robert Hooke, 1552 01:03:20.120 --> 01:03:21.460 who was a hunchback dwarf. 1553 01:03:25.840 --> 01:03:27.160 And Murray Gell-Mann, 1554 01:03:27.180 --> 01:03:28.440 who's one of the great names 1555 01:03:28.440 --> 01:03:30.540 of theoretical physics today, 1556 01:03:30.660 --> 01:03:32.120 I think he was your, was he your supervisor? 1557 01:03:32.360 --> 01:03:33.720 Well, I did a first talk with him. 1558 01:03:33.820 --> 01:03:33.980 Yes. 1559 01:03:35.040 --> 01:03:36.060 He won the Nobel Prize, 1560 01:03:36.060 --> 01:03:37.780 and he said that if I have seen further 1561 01:03:37.780 --> 01:03:38.500 than other people, 1562 01:03:38.560 --> 01:03:40.780 it's because I'm surrounded by dwarves. 1563 01:03:42.100 --> 01:03:43.320 What he actually said was, 1564 01:03:43.460 --> 01:03:44.700 I'm still on the shoulders of pygmies, 1565 01:03:44.840 --> 01:03:45.600 but it's the same thing. 1566 01:03:46.400 --> 01:03:47.040 It's the same. 1567 01:03:48.500 --> 01:03:51.120 So, picking up on this theme here 1568 01:03:51.120 --> 01:03:53.420 of standing on the shoulders of giants, 1569 01:03:54.280 --> 01:03:56.980 could it be, could we say that perhaps 1570 01:03:58.020 --> 01:03:59.920 Einstein's celebrity status 1571 01:03:59.920 --> 01:04:02.860 has maybe masked some of these giants 1572 01:04:02.860 --> 01:04:04.180 that he's maybe stood upon? 1573 01:04:04.180 --> 01:04:07.360 For example, could it be that 1574 01:04:07.360 --> 01:04:09.620 his paper on Brownian motion 1575 01:04:09.620 --> 01:04:12.680 has in fact masked the work 1576 01:04:12.680 --> 01:04:15.540 of a lesser known Polish physicist 1577 01:04:15.540 --> 01:04:16.680 called Smolachowski, 1578 01:04:16.860 --> 01:04:18.980 who also worked on Brownian motion at the time, 1579 01:04:19.080 --> 01:04:21.140 but didn't get any of the glory 1580 01:04:21.140 --> 01:04:23.980 because Einstein was the better known person. 1581 01:04:24.480 --> 01:04:26.000 And then in quantum mechanics, 1582 01:04:26.320 --> 01:04:28.240 Max Planck laid the foundations, 1583 01:04:28.400 --> 01:04:30.160 and then in special relativity, 1584 01:04:31.160 --> 01:04:33.180 there's Poincaré and Lorentz. 1585 01:04:33.280 --> 01:04:37.420 The public don't know these names 1586 01:04:37.420 --> 01:04:38.480 as well as Einstein, 1587 01:04:38.680 --> 01:04:41.060 and it has in fact his celebrity status 1588 01:04:41.060 --> 01:04:43.320 sort of distorted things a bit, 1589 01:04:43.340 --> 01:04:45.140 and we're not giving due credit 1590 01:04:45.140 --> 01:04:46.680 to the giants that he stands on. 1591 01:04:46.900 --> 01:04:48.680 I think it has to be said that 1592 01:04:48.680 --> 01:04:51.040 there's a terrible what statisticians call 1593 01:04:51.040 --> 01:04:53.960 the selection effect in the history of science, 1594 01:04:54.060 --> 01:04:56.580 which is that some people you don't hear about 1595 01:04:56.580 --> 01:04:58.820 because basically they didn't go about things 1596 01:04:58.820 --> 01:04:59.700 in the right way. 1597 01:05:00.020 --> 01:05:02.280 One of the most notorious examples of this 1598 01:05:02.280 --> 01:05:05.660 is a Swiss physicist called Stuckelberg, 1599 01:05:05.940 --> 01:05:10.320 who hardly anybody has heard of, 1600 01:05:10.460 --> 01:05:14.200 and he did work that at least two breakthroughs 1601 01:05:14.200 --> 01:05:15.820 that he worked on were worth Nobel prizes, 1602 01:05:16.060 --> 01:05:18.260 but because he published in a very obscure, 1603 01:05:19.440 --> 01:05:22.380 I think, was it Swedish journal or Swiss? 1604 01:05:22.480 --> 01:05:25.580 Swiss, right, very, very obscure physics journal, 1605 01:05:25.640 --> 01:05:28.440 and using a bizarre mathematical notation 1606 01:05:28.440 --> 01:05:29.560 that's peculiar to himself, 1607 01:05:29.720 --> 01:05:31.700 and I think involved the use of colored pencils 1608 01:05:31.700 --> 01:05:32.400 at one point, 1609 01:05:34.240 --> 01:05:36.360 which was the devil to typeset, 1610 01:05:37.460 --> 01:05:40.140 and was generally altogether a eccentric person 1611 01:05:40.140 --> 01:05:41.880 who didn't play the game. 1612 01:05:42.860 --> 01:05:44.580 Nobody's heard of this person, 1613 01:05:44.800 --> 01:05:46.660 and yet he was responsible, 1614 01:05:46.960 --> 01:05:51.160 he co-discovered in some cases 10 years before 1615 01:05:51.160 --> 01:05:54.880 key ideas in modern theoretical physics, 1616 01:05:55.080 --> 01:05:57.220 so I don't think Einstein's celebrity 1617 01:05:57.220 --> 01:05:58.760 can necessarily be blamed for that, 1618 01:05:58.820 --> 01:06:01.520 but equally if you don't play the game, 1619 01:06:01.520 --> 01:06:03.740 in science, as in any field, 1620 01:06:04.020 --> 01:06:05.720 you can pay a heavy price for it. 1621 01:06:05.760 --> 01:06:07.100 Being brilliant is not enough. 1622 01:06:10.640 --> 01:06:12.560 Duncan, John, would you like to follow up 1623 01:06:12.560 --> 01:06:13.340 on those comments at all? 1624 01:06:14.220 --> 01:06:15.580 I've noticed that most of the people 1625 01:06:15.580 --> 01:06:16.840 who have forgotten have got long 1626 01:06:16.840 --> 01:06:18.240 and almost unpronounceable names. 1627 01:06:23.980 --> 01:06:26.540 It's a good idea to have a short name in science. 1628 01:06:27.660 --> 01:06:30.160 Okay, well, I think we might begin 1629 01:06:30.160 --> 01:06:31.440 to hand it over to the audience, 1630 01:06:31.440 --> 01:06:32.160 in that case. 1631 01:06:33.900 --> 01:06:35.880 So what I'm going to do now 1632 01:06:35.880 --> 01:06:39.120 is ask the audience to ask some questions. 1633 01:06:39.200 --> 01:06:41.520 We have a microphone right there, 1634 01:06:41.680 --> 01:06:43.340 and if you all line up, 1635 01:06:44.300 --> 01:06:46.160 we'll start throwing open some questions. 1636 01:06:46.380 --> 01:06:49.600 And what I'd like to do just at the end of question time 1637 01:06:49.600 --> 01:06:52.800 is to throw open a vote to the audience. 1638 01:06:53.000 --> 01:06:54.700 I'd like some audience participation, 1639 01:06:55.360 --> 01:06:57.000 and we're going to vote to see 1640 01:06:57.000 --> 01:06:58.340 what you think about Einstein. 1641 01:06:58.660 --> 01:07:00.700 But I'll tell you the voting parameters 1642 01:07:01.440 --> 01:07:01.560 at the end. 1643 01:07:04.340 --> 01:07:07.020 Now, before we hand over to the audience, 1644 01:07:07.200 --> 01:07:08.780 I just want to ask John, 1645 01:07:08.920 --> 01:07:10.500 will you be available in the tent 1646 01:07:10.500 --> 01:07:12.840 for signing books at the end or not today? 1647 01:07:12.880 --> 01:07:13.760 I'm afraid not tonight. 1648 01:07:14.180 --> 01:07:14.780 But tomorrow? 1649 01:07:15.060 --> 01:07:15.640 Tomorrow, of course. 1650 01:07:15.800 --> 01:07:17.560 You know, authors love signing books. 1651 01:07:18.780 --> 01:07:21.380 So if you want your book signed, 1652 01:07:21.920 --> 01:07:23.520 I'm afraid it's tomorrow, folks. 1653 01:07:23.820 --> 01:07:25.380 Okay, so let's proceed 1654 01:07:25.380 --> 01:07:29.360 and hand over to the audience. 1655 01:07:29.640 --> 01:07:31.060 Yes, I should have marked up on this, 1656 01:07:31.060 --> 01:07:32.640 but it's either in Clarke's books 1657 01:07:32.640 --> 01:07:34.480 or Gibbon's book where Rutherford 1658 01:07:35.060 --> 01:07:37.840 really didn't like the modern theory of relativity 1659 01:07:37.840 --> 01:07:41.840 because his students were coming too metaphysical 1660 01:07:41.840 --> 01:07:43.940 and not doing his experimental work. 1661 01:07:44.240 --> 01:07:47.360 The other thing I think is you should mention 1662 01:07:47.360 --> 01:07:50.200 that Einstein's book on Einstein, 1663 01:07:50.280 --> 01:07:51.780 collected essays on peace, 1664 01:07:52.000 --> 01:07:54.840 Einstein on peace is 700 pages long. 1665 01:07:55.000 --> 01:07:56.820 There's not one equation in it, 1666 01:07:56.900 --> 01:07:59.380 and it includes his correspondence with Freud 1667 01:07:59.380 --> 01:08:00.780 on the causes of war. 1668 01:08:00.780 --> 01:08:00.960 There's not one equation in it, 1669 01:08:00.960 --> 01:08:02.140 on the causes of war and the possible solutions. 1670 01:08:03.260 --> 01:08:04.800 700 pages is not one equation. 1671 01:08:06.200 --> 01:08:07.380 It should have sold well, 1672 01:08:07.500 --> 01:08:10.340 given the usual sum which we hear, 1673 01:08:10.460 --> 01:08:12.040 I think Stephen Hawking said it in his book, 1674 01:08:12.120 --> 01:08:15.180 that every equation in a book halves the sales. 1675 01:08:16.380 --> 01:08:17.740 Actually, what you brought up there 1676 01:08:17.740 --> 01:08:19.180 does bring up another thing, 1677 01:08:19.240 --> 01:08:21.780 which is the universal experts syndrome, 1678 01:08:22.340 --> 01:08:24.460 which is, I'm not saying that Einstein 1679 01:08:24.460 --> 01:08:26.440 didn't know a lot about the cause of war 1680 01:08:26.440 --> 01:08:28.340 and what we need to have universal peace 1681 01:08:28.340 --> 01:08:28.960 and everything else, 1682 01:08:29.020 --> 01:08:30.760 but it doesn't follow, for instance, 1683 01:08:30.760 --> 01:08:32.580 from the fact that he invented relativity as such, 1684 01:08:32.680 --> 01:08:34.780 that he was also an expert in that area. 1685 01:08:35.080 --> 01:08:37.340 And quite often I'll get a phone call from the media 1686 01:08:37.340 --> 01:08:39.820 saying something about some obscure area of astrophysics, 1687 01:08:39.940 --> 01:08:41.720 and they ask me to answer it. 1688 01:08:41.740 --> 01:08:44.020 I've got to say, look, I do not know anything about that. 1689 01:08:44.180 --> 01:08:45.800 There are other people who know a lot more. 1690 01:08:45.980 --> 01:08:48.720 It's very important to keep tabs on, as it were, 1691 01:08:48.780 --> 01:08:51.280 what you can claim to have some expertise on 1692 01:08:51.280 --> 01:08:53.420 and what you clearly don't know enough about 1693 01:08:53.420 --> 01:08:54.440 to say anything sensible. 1694 01:08:55.640 --> 01:08:56.040 Einstein... 1695 01:08:56.900 --> 01:08:57.300 . 1696 01:08:59.100 --> 01:08:59.500 . 1697 01:08:59.500 --> 01:08:59.920 . 1698 01:09:02.740 --> 01:09:05.740 Einstein recognized his iconic status 1699 01:09:05.740 --> 01:09:09.660 and realized that he had to use that in some way 1700 01:09:09.660 --> 01:09:12.140 to promote certain, what he thought were good causes. 1701 01:09:12.320 --> 01:09:14.420 But he did ultimately realize his limitations. 1702 01:09:14.660 --> 01:09:17.540 He was offered the presidency of the State of Israel 1703 01:09:17.540 --> 01:09:19.640 and decided, no, that's too far. 1704 01:09:19.780 --> 01:09:24.140 So he was aware of his limitations, bless him, 1705 01:09:24.200 --> 01:09:25.960 and went to call it a day. 1706 01:09:26.060 --> 01:09:28.100 But I think he did a lot of what he did, 1707 01:09:28.900 --> 01:09:29.480 his first few years, 1708 01:09:29.500 --> 01:09:30.880 and he was essentially out of sense of duty. 1709 01:09:31.220 --> 01:09:33.340 No, I mean, absolutely, if you're in the public eye 1710 01:09:33.340 --> 01:09:37.000 and you can grab it if you think you can do some good work. 1711 01:09:37.140 --> 01:09:38.740 The best example of that is in the movie Network 1712 01:09:38.740 --> 01:09:41.720 when the character Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, 1713 01:09:42.520 --> 01:09:44.540 sees his vision and he says... 1714 01:09:44.540 --> 01:09:47.600 He's told to pass a certain message over the TV 1715 01:09:47.600 --> 01:09:49.500 and he says, but why me? 1716 01:09:49.800 --> 01:09:52.400 And the answer is, because you're on TV, dummy. 1717 01:09:54.640 --> 01:09:56.920 Do you want to respond to that question, Paul Johnson? 1718 01:09:56.960 --> 01:09:59.200 No, I think this chap has been waiting patiently at the microphone. 1719 01:09:59.200 --> 01:10:01.860 You've been very patient. Please go ahead. 1720 01:10:02.160 --> 01:10:04.580 My name is John Brooking. I'm happily retired. 1721 01:10:06.280 --> 01:10:09.520 I'm not a mathematician, and I've been intrigued 1722 01:10:09.520 --> 01:10:15.460 when I hear mathematicians talk about the beauty of their maths. 1723 01:10:15.640 --> 01:10:18.080 I don't know if that means symmetry or simplicity. 1724 01:10:18.380 --> 01:10:20.700 Could you enlighten me about what you mean 1725 01:10:20.700 --> 01:10:24.480 when you talk about this theory presents a mathematical beauty? 1726 01:10:24.840 --> 01:10:25.760 I'd love to know. 1727 01:10:26.020 --> 01:10:27.800 That's a very tricky question to try and answer. 1728 01:10:27.800 --> 01:10:31.220 All forms of beauty are easier to perceive than to define. 1729 01:10:31.780 --> 01:10:36.320 And mathematical beauty is a fairly austere form of aesthetic pleasure. 1730 01:10:36.580 --> 01:10:39.640 But it's just something that those of us who speak that language 1731 01:10:39.640 --> 01:10:42.740 can not only recognise but agree about. 1732 01:10:43.040 --> 01:10:48.320 You're right. It involves things like symmetry, elegance, compactness, 1733 01:10:48.480 --> 01:10:51.640 but also a property that mathematicians call being deep. 1734 01:10:51.960 --> 01:10:54.880 By that they mean a very simple-looking expression. 1735 01:10:55.140 --> 01:10:57.300 It turns out to have very rich, 1736 01:10:57.800 --> 01:11:00.500 and proliferating consequences. 1737 01:11:01.680 --> 01:11:03.320 So it's something like that. 1738 01:11:03.600 --> 01:11:06.980 But I can't do better than that. 1739 01:11:07.780 --> 01:11:10.820 Unless you can define for me, say, musical beauty. 1740 01:11:11.920 --> 01:11:13.860 Duncan and Robert, do you want to have a stab at that? 1741 01:11:13.960 --> 01:11:16.180 No, I'm just trying to remember who it was. 1742 01:11:18.140 --> 01:11:20.520 It may have been something like Count Basie once said, 1743 01:11:20.620 --> 01:11:23.400 if you have to ask what jazz is, you're never going to understand. 1744 01:11:28.040 --> 01:11:30.760 These are essentially... Sorry, who was that? 1745 01:11:31.060 --> 01:11:31.800 Fats Waller. 1746 01:11:31.840 --> 01:11:33.180 Fats Waller, thank you. 1747 01:11:33.460 --> 01:11:38.840 And I think it's the same with mathematical beauty. 1748 01:11:39.020 --> 01:11:43.260 But there are aspects of it that are available 1749 01:11:43.260 --> 01:11:47.720 at a sort of more basic level, like the Gaussian curve. 1750 01:11:48.260 --> 01:11:50.100 OK, it's very deep. 1751 01:11:50.160 --> 01:11:54.200 It's got a lot of attraction for mathematicians 1752 01:11:54.200 --> 01:11:56.900 because it has all sorts of very interesting properties. 1753 01:11:57.920 --> 01:11:59.620 When you try and integrate it and things. 1754 01:11:59.760 --> 01:12:02.100 But it's also just a beautiful shape. 1755 01:12:02.700 --> 01:12:03.840 It's as simple as that. 1756 01:12:03.920 --> 01:12:06.100 So that's one aspect of mathematical beauty 1757 01:12:06.100 --> 01:12:08.220 that's available at all sorts of different levels. 1758 01:12:08.520 --> 01:12:11.480 But others are only available at a much higher level. 1759 01:12:12.400 --> 01:12:15.040 That helps, because the other good seems to give 1760 01:12:15.040 --> 01:12:17.000 a sort of sense of great satisfaction. 1761 01:12:17.580 --> 01:12:18.560 Thank you very much. 1762 01:12:19.860 --> 01:12:20.960 Next person, please. 1763 01:12:22.620 --> 01:12:25.880 I thought it was very interesting what Duncan remarked 1764 01:12:25.880 --> 01:12:27.640 about working outside the academy. 1765 01:12:27.800 --> 01:12:32.940 And used as an example, Lovelock and the theory of Gaia. 1766 01:12:33.820 --> 01:12:36.740 Particularly with respect to Einstein. 1767 01:12:36.920 --> 01:12:42.520 Because Einstein came up with an idea of general relativity 1768 01:12:42.520 --> 01:12:46.280 or special relativity of curved space-time, 1769 01:12:46.540 --> 01:12:50.720 which was very counterintuitive to the sort of Newtonian world 1770 01:12:50.720 --> 01:12:52.280 that we take for granted. 1771 01:12:53.040 --> 01:12:57.080 And yet, of course, relativity has triumphed 1772 01:12:57.080 --> 01:12:58.320 and Einstein has triumphed. 1773 01:12:59.740 --> 01:13:01.840 And that was over a short period of time. 1774 01:13:01.940 --> 01:13:03.200 It really is, what, 20 years. 1775 01:13:03.360 --> 01:13:07.160 And then relativity was accepted by the great scientists of the world. 1776 01:13:08.280 --> 01:13:13.200 And yet, the Gaia hypothesis was first put together about 65 1777 01:13:13.200 --> 01:13:15.640 and then, I guess, first published in 1977. 1778 01:13:16.140 --> 01:13:17.800 And the Gaia hypothesis says 1779 01:13:17.800 --> 01:13:20.820 what is intuitively obvious to all people, 1780 01:13:20.900 --> 01:13:22.020 all traditional people, 1781 01:13:22.160 --> 01:13:24.780 that the Earth acts as if it is a living organism. 1782 01:13:25.520 --> 01:13:26.220 And yet, 1783 01:13:27.080 --> 01:13:28.920 even though there have been two scientific conferences 1784 01:13:28.920 --> 01:13:31.400 especially about the Gaia hypothesis, 1785 01:13:31.780 --> 01:13:33.760 the Gaia hypothesis is rejected 1786 01:13:34.840 --> 01:13:36.700 by many, many scientists. 1787 01:13:37.040 --> 01:13:39.680 I mean, even Duncan, who mentioned it, said, 1788 01:13:39.800 --> 01:13:41.060 he stepped away from it and said, 1789 01:13:41.060 --> 01:13:42.680 well, I'm not saying I believe it. 1790 01:13:43.160 --> 01:13:43.720 So, 1791 01:13:44.560 --> 01:13:46.820 what is this quality of 1792 01:13:46.820 --> 01:13:51.000 of idea that Einstein had about general relativity 1793 01:13:51.000 --> 01:13:53.120 that flew in the face of our common knowledge 1794 01:13:53.120 --> 01:13:55.220 and yet, here's the Gaia hypothesis 1795 01:13:55.220 --> 01:13:57.080 which asserts everything we always believe 1796 01:13:57.080 --> 01:13:58.780 and yet is rejected? 1797 01:13:59.140 --> 01:14:00.340 I think that's a good question, 1798 01:14:00.380 --> 01:14:01.860 but it relates back to the previous question 1799 01:14:01.860 --> 01:14:05.100 that E equals mc squared is intrinsically beautiful 1800 01:14:05.100 --> 01:14:06.180 and clearly correct. 1801 01:14:06.680 --> 01:14:08.060 Whereas the Gaia hypothesis, 1802 01:14:08.400 --> 01:14:10.220 to actually grab a hold of it and understand it, 1803 01:14:10.240 --> 01:14:11.300 you can't write a single equation. 1804 01:14:11.600 --> 01:14:13.240 Maybe that's part of the reason 1805 01:14:13.240 --> 01:14:15.060 why it's being taken so long, 1806 01:14:15.080 --> 01:14:16.500 either to be accepted or... 1807 01:14:17.240 --> 01:14:19.300 The good news on the Gaia hypothesis 1808 01:14:19.300 --> 01:14:21.620 is that it suffered terribly in the, 1809 01:14:22.480 --> 01:14:24.020 following its publication in 1977, 1810 01:14:25.000 --> 01:14:26.620 until quite recently, 1811 01:14:26.740 --> 01:14:29.020 because it was widely seen by ultra-Darwinists 1812 01:14:29.540 --> 01:14:32.040 as going against Darwinian principles. 1813 01:14:32.500 --> 01:14:34.740 It wasn't at all clear, they said, 1814 01:14:34.800 --> 01:14:36.720 how you could get these type of processes 1815 01:14:36.720 --> 01:14:41.020 to emerge from a Darwinian framework. 1816 01:14:41.580 --> 01:14:43.080 And so people like Richard Dawkins 1817 01:14:43.080 --> 01:14:44.620 were sticking the boot into it 1818 01:14:44.620 --> 01:14:46.380 because they believed it was counter 1819 01:14:46.380 --> 01:14:49.420 to Darwinian orthodoxy. 1820 01:14:49.420 --> 01:14:51.480 Now, in the last about four or five years, 1821 01:14:51.560 --> 01:14:53.180 papers have started to come out 1822 01:14:53.840 --> 01:14:55.580 through, I'm trying to remember his name, 1823 01:14:55.620 --> 01:14:56.800 one of the great collaborators 1824 01:14:56.800 --> 01:14:58.600 at the University of East Anglia 1825 01:15:00.100 --> 01:15:01.540 with James Lovelock. 1826 01:15:01.640 --> 01:15:04.200 These are theoretical biologists 1827 01:15:04.200 --> 01:15:07.360 who've shown that far from working against 1828 01:15:07.360 --> 01:15:10.040 Darwinian concepts of natural selection, 1829 01:15:10.220 --> 01:15:14.280 it can actually work in concert with them. 1830 01:15:14.380 --> 01:15:15.880 And the two work hand in hand 1831 01:15:15.880 --> 01:15:17.240 to explain all sorts of things 1832 01:15:17.240 --> 01:15:18.700 we weren't able to explain at all. 1833 01:15:18.860 --> 01:15:20.560 So one of the major reasons 1834 01:15:20.560 --> 01:15:23.160 the thing suffered so much 1835 01:15:23.160 --> 01:15:25.360 was because it was seen to be 1836 01:15:25.360 --> 01:15:26.500 in direct contradiction 1837 01:15:26.500 --> 01:15:29.300 to the ultra-Darwinist conceptions 1838 01:15:29.300 --> 01:15:31.420 of the way that life behaves on Earth. 1839 01:15:31.540 --> 01:15:34.520 And that is now starting to melt away. 1840 01:15:34.660 --> 01:15:36.480 It's starting to become mainstream now. 1841 01:15:36.540 --> 01:15:38.100 I'm really pleased to hear that. 1842 01:15:39.000 --> 01:15:40.280 John, do you want to comment on that? 1843 01:15:40.300 --> 01:15:40.960 Well, I think there will always be 1844 01:15:40.960 --> 01:15:42.220 more fluidity of argument 1845 01:15:42.220 --> 01:15:44.440 about qualitative insights, however deep, 1846 01:15:44.640 --> 01:15:45.540 than there will be 1847 01:15:45.540 --> 01:15:48.040 about quantitative predictive theories. 1848 01:15:49.360 --> 01:15:51.100 Yeah, I think picking up on that, 1849 01:15:51.160 --> 01:15:53.140 the other thing that's gone on 1850 01:15:53.160 --> 01:15:54.200 that I suffer from is that 1851 01:15:55.420 --> 01:15:56.780 James isn't a mathematician. 1852 01:15:58.100 --> 01:16:01.320 And if you want a scientific idea 1853 01:16:01.320 --> 01:16:02.360 to be taken seriously, 1854 01:16:02.520 --> 01:16:03.920 I'm afraid you've just got to stick in 1855 01:16:03.920 --> 01:16:04.800 a differential equation. 1856 01:16:07.540 --> 01:16:09.840 It's something to laugh at, 1857 01:16:09.920 --> 01:16:11.460 but the standard rule for me 1858 01:16:11.460 --> 01:16:12.760 for deciding whether a letter 1859 01:16:12.760 --> 01:16:13.740 is from a crank or not 1860 01:16:13.740 --> 01:16:15.620 is to hold it up at arm's length. 1861 01:16:15.720 --> 01:16:16.520 If it looks like it's been 1862 01:16:16.520 --> 01:16:17.460 nicely typed on it, 1863 01:16:17.500 --> 01:16:18.600 hold it at arm's length. 1864 01:16:18.780 --> 01:16:20.320 And if I can't see an integral, 1865 01:16:21.060 --> 01:16:22.940 then I know that it's probably from, 1866 01:16:22.940 --> 01:16:24.260 from a crank. 1867 01:16:24.600 --> 01:16:26.940 Cranks don't do integration, okay? 1868 01:16:27.020 --> 01:16:28.320 They don't do differential equations. 1869 01:16:29.460 --> 01:16:31.320 And unfortunately, this is a rule of thumb 1870 01:16:31.320 --> 01:16:34.220 that also works in science generally. 1871 01:16:34.440 --> 01:16:34.920 You know, people, 1872 01:16:35.080 --> 01:16:36.900 you know, the tyranny of the calculus. 1873 01:16:37.080 --> 01:16:39.620 If you can't get some calculus in there, 1874 01:16:39.720 --> 01:16:40.800 you're really a bit stuffed. 1875 01:16:41.720 --> 01:16:43.260 And James could only come up with 1876 01:16:43.260 --> 01:16:44.560 some sort of computer models, 1877 01:16:44.720 --> 01:16:45.860 and you'd just think, yeah, you know, 1878 01:16:45.920 --> 01:16:48.920 this is just like, you know, space invaders. 1879 01:16:49.100 --> 01:16:50.240 You know, we're not interested in this. 1880 01:16:50.440 --> 01:16:52.180 But now the differential equations, 1881 01:16:52.180 --> 01:16:53.400 partial differential equations, 1882 01:16:53.660 --> 01:16:54.940 are coming out in the papers on Guy. 1883 01:16:55.060 --> 01:16:57.120 Oh, yeah, okay, so let's take this seriously. 1884 01:16:57.480 --> 01:16:59.160 It could still be rubbish for all I know, 1885 01:16:59.240 --> 01:17:01.480 but, you know, at least it's incomprehensible rubbish now. 1886 01:17:03.140 --> 01:17:04.700 Well, Darwin did all right. 1887 01:17:04.760 --> 01:17:06.580 Darwin did all right without any equations. 1888 01:17:06.920 --> 01:17:08.200 Yeah, he did. That's absolutely true. 1889 01:17:08.560 --> 01:17:09.920 Yeah, Robert, I must say that there is 1890 01:17:09.920 --> 01:17:12.300 a better class of crank who does put in. 1891 01:17:12.320 --> 01:17:13.840 Oh, really? Oh, my God, no! 1892 01:17:15.760 --> 01:17:17.280 That's a terrifying thought. 1893 01:17:17.380 --> 01:17:19.700 They've evolved into a higher form of crank. 1894 01:17:20.100 --> 01:17:21.920 I think we have the next question. 1895 01:17:22.180 --> 01:17:24.960 Given the problems with predicting the future, 1896 01:17:25.140 --> 01:17:32.480 could you say how you think Einstein's theoretical frameworks 1897 01:17:32.480 --> 01:17:34.520 will fare in the time ahead, 1898 01:17:34.620 --> 01:17:36.720 particularly in relation to cosmology? 1899 01:17:37.800 --> 01:17:41.880 New Scientist in particular seems to specialize in stories 1900 01:17:41.880 --> 01:17:45.620 that on a fairly regular basis say, 1901 01:17:45.740 --> 01:17:49.060 well, this is an anomaly unless, you know, 1902 01:17:49.160 --> 01:17:52.020 but if Einstein's wrong, blah, blah, blah, 1903 01:17:52.100 --> 01:17:52.160 and so on. 1904 01:17:53.040 --> 01:17:57.420 You know, I think the recent issue about the Big Bang 1905 01:17:57.420 --> 01:18:00.220 has such a qualification in it, 1906 01:18:00.320 --> 01:18:02.920 and there are people who are suggesting 1907 01:18:02.920 --> 01:18:06.420 that we should look at the Michelson and Morley experiments again 1908 01:18:06.420 --> 01:18:09.420 in light of Miller's data and that sort of stuff. 1909 01:18:09.480 --> 01:18:10.360 How do you think it'll fare? 1910 01:18:11.220 --> 01:18:12.020 Thanks, Pamela. 1911 01:18:12.320 --> 01:18:13.540 I think we have a response. 1912 01:18:13.840 --> 01:18:14.120 Yeah. 1913 01:18:14.840 --> 01:18:18.180 OK, there are various aspects of Einstein's work 1914 01:18:18.700 --> 01:18:19.420 that is now... 1915 01:18:21.820 --> 01:18:23.680 showing signs of needing correction. 1916 01:18:25.540 --> 01:18:28.320 The most obvious one is in general relativity 1917 01:18:28.320 --> 01:18:29.300 and his theory of gravity. 1918 01:18:30.800 --> 01:18:32.980 Ironically, all that stuff about the cosmological constant, 1919 01:18:33.120 --> 01:18:34.980 you know, the thing he introduced to fiddle his equations 1920 01:18:34.980 --> 01:18:36.140 to get the right answer, 1921 01:18:36.280 --> 01:18:39.420 and now it looks like what he thought was his big mistake 1922 01:18:39.420 --> 01:18:41.000 in keeping it. 1923 01:18:41.300 --> 01:18:44.160 It may have been a big mistake for him to have chucked it out 1924 01:18:45.200 --> 01:18:49.400 because the cosmological constant is the simplest addition 1925 01:18:49.400 --> 01:18:51.580 you can make to the equations of general relativity 1926 01:18:51.580 --> 01:18:53.700 that keeps all their nice mathematical properties, 1927 01:18:53.940 --> 01:18:57.420 and it also just happens to be the natural expression 1928 01:18:57.420 --> 01:19:01.060 for quantum effects to appear in general relativity, OK? 1929 01:19:01.260 --> 01:19:05.400 So we see in that single additive term, 1930 01:19:06.080 --> 01:19:06.540 it's like a... 1931 01:19:06.540 --> 01:19:09.020 For mathematicians, actually, it's like a constant of integration. 1932 01:19:10.880 --> 01:19:14.280 That's the obvious place at which quantum effects can come in. 1933 01:19:14.400 --> 01:19:17.880 So that's where general relativity is starting to evolve 1934 01:19:18.400 --> 01:19:19.380 by the introduction of the cosmological constant 1935 01:19:19.400 --> 01:19:21.820 of quantum effects and theories of everything 1936 01:19:21.820 --> 01:19:23.340 which John might want to talk about in a minute. 1937 01:19:23.440 --> 01:19:25.340 But on special relativity as well, 1938 01:19:25.560 --> 01:19:29.440 there are now signs of the need for a modification. 1939 01:19:30.300 --> 01:19:32.840 Along the lines of a theory, 1940 01:19:32.860 --> 01:19:34.720 it's being called doubly special relativity. 1941 01:19:35.340 --> 01:19:37.360 Now, what that means is that before, 1942 01:19:37.780 --> 01:19:41.860 the whole concept of the equations of special relativity 1943 01:19:41.860 --> 01:19:45.420 are that there's something special about the speed of light. 1944 01:19:45.600 --> 01:19:48.060 The speed of light is not just any other speed, 1945 01:19:48.120 --> 01:19:49.380 like the top speed that abounds, 1946 01:19:49.380 --> 01:19:51.180 like the speed that the BMW Series 7 car can go. 1947 01:19:51.320 --> 01:19:53.620 It's a fundamental constant of nature. 1948 01:19:53.840 --> 01:19:55.660 It's not just an ordinary velocity. 1949 01:19:56.060 --> 01:19:58.180 And to that extent, it's like a law of nature 1950 01:19:58.180 --> 01:20:00.280 and has to be the same for all observers. 1951 01:20:00.860 --> 01:20:04.980 Now there are suspicions that there's another thing 1952 01:20:04.980 --> 01:20:06.900 that has to be the same for all observers, 1953 01:20:07.220 --> 01:20:10.900 and that's an energy scale called the Planck energy, right? 1954 01:20:11.280 --> 01:20:13.920 And that that has to be the same for all observers. 1955 01:20:14.080 --> 01:20:16.920 Because the Planck energy is so incredibly high, 1956 01:20:17.120 --> 01:20:18.240 it has no effect, 1957 01:20:18.240 --> 01:20:21.900 even on normal fields of relativity. 1958 01:20:22.240 --> 01:20:25.960 It only shows in extreme cases of relativistic systems as well. 1959 01:20:26.140 --> 01:20:29.440 And then this extra term that demands that all observers 1960 01:20:29.440 --> 01:20:33.480 have the same value for the Planck energy also comes out. 1961 01:20:33.580 --> 01:20:34.940 So it's not just special relativity, 1962 01:20:35.120 --> 01:20:36.300 it's doubly special relativity, 1963 01:20:36.440 --> 01:20:38.460 because it has these two constants, 1964 01:20:38.600 --> 01:20:39.920 they're universal for all observers. 1965 01:20:40.120 --> 01:20:43.280 And that's the other place where Einstein's theory 1966 01:20:43.280 --> 01:20:46.860 is most clearly showing signs of moving on to the next phase. 1967 01:20:47.280 --> 01:20:48.020 Yeah, I mean, 1968 01:20:48.240 --> 01:20:51.020 science makes maps of the physical world. 1969 01:20:51.280 --> 01:20:53.380 It doesn't achieve absolute truth, 1970 01:20:53.460 --> 01:20:55.360 it achieves a verisimilitudinous, 1971 01:20:55.360 --> 01:20:57.280 as people like to say, description. 1972 01:20:57.760 --> 01:20:59.160 Good on a certain scale, 1973 01:20:59.420 --> 01:21:00.880 but when you change the scale, 1974 01:21:00.900 --> 01:21:03.300 the chances are you'll see features of the terrain, 1975 01:21:03.460 --> 01:21:03.900 so to speak, 1976 01:21:04.040 --> 01:21:05.400 which you couldn't have seen before. 1977 01:21:05.560 --> 01:21:10.440 The Einstein map didn't mean that Newton's map was worthless. 1978 01:21:10.560 --> 01:21:13.340 If you want to send an explorer to Mars, 1979 01:21:13.500 --> 01:21:15.000 Newton will do the trick for you, actually. 1980 01:21:16.200 --> 01:21:18.220 But so they get a sense of the truth. 1981 01:21:18.220 --> 01:21:19.100 So the succession of maps, 1982 01:21:19.140 --> 01:21:20.420 and the Einsteinian map, of course, 1983 01:21:20.420 --> 01:21:22.720 well, it's given way in various respects already, 1984 01:21:22.900 --> 01:21:24.980 and will be modified in further things. 1985 01:21:25.120 --> 01:21:26.200 That's the way science progresses. 1986 01:21:26.600 --> 01:21:27.420 Yeah, it's not wrong. 1987 01:21:27.660 --> 01:21:28.620 Not wrong, not wrong, 1988 01:21:28.680 --> 01:21:32.340 but not perfect on every scale. 1989 01:21:32.620 --> 01:21:34.220 It's just an advancement of models. 1990 01:21:34.380 --> 01:21:36.260 We just end up with better and better models. 1991 01:21:36.500 --> 01:21:38.420 Never mistake model with reality. 1992 01:21:39.800 --> 01:21:42.100 Okay, I'd like to move on to the next question, please. 1993 01:21:42.260 --> 01:21:42.980 Next speaker. 1994 01:21:43.240 --> 01:21:44.220 Next question, I mean. 1995 01:21:44.480 --> 01:21:45.060 Thank you. 1996 01:21:45.780 --> 01:21:47.880 There's a wonderful story about Einstein, 1997 01:21:47.880 --> 01:21:48.560 I've heard. 1998 01:21:48.620 --> 01:21:49.940 You might better tell me if it's true, 1999 01:21:50.060 --> 01:21:52.140 that he was once asked, 2000 01:21:52.280 --> 01:21:54.220 what is the most important question? 2001 01:21:54.860 --> 01:21:56.340 And his response was, 2002 01:21:56.560 --> 01:21:58.640 is the universe a friendly place? 2003 01:21:59.440 --> 01:22:02.140 And you might be able to verify if that's a true story. 2004 01:22:02.280 --> 01:22:03.700 I hope it is, because it's so wonderful. 2005 01:22:04.200 --> 01:22:07.100 And I'd, as three eminent scientists, 2006 01:22:07.300 --> 01:22:08.740 I guess I'd want to ask, 2007 01:22:09.420 --> 01:22:11.320 is the universe a friendly place? 2008 01:22:11.720 --> 01:22:13.940 Is that a question that inspires you? 2009 01:22:14.060 --> 01:22:17.280 And is that part of the endeavour of science 2010 01:22:17.280 --> 01:22:17.860 to, you know, 2011 01:22:17.880 --> 01:22:18.960 to reflect on that? 2012 01:22:20.120 --> 01:22:22.480 It doesn't sound like an Einstein question to me. 2013 01:22:22.540 --> 01:22:26.020 Einstein once said that he moved to science 2014 01:22:26.520 --> 01:22:29.380 as a flight from the personal to the impersonal. 2015 01:22:29.740 --> 01:22:31.960 And he had a sort of cosmic religiousness 2016 01:22:32.520 --> 01:22:34.280 that felt that there was a, 2017 01:22:35.160 --> 01:22:36.880 his god, he said, was the god of Spinoza, 2018 01:22:37.460 --> 01:22:39.520 a sort of symbol for cosmic order. 2019 01:22:39.660 --> 01:22:41.820 He wasn't really interested in anything, 2020 01:22:41.820 --> 01:22:43.520 didn't believe in a personal god, of course, 2021 01:22:43.580 --> 01:22:45.740 and he wasn't interested in that sort of question. 2022 01:22:45.840 --> 01:22:47.500 What Einstein did say was, 2023 01:22:47.500 --> 01:22:49.540 that when he met the old one, 2024 01:22:49.660 --> 01:22:51.400 which is how he liked to refer to the god, 2025 01:22:51.540 --> 01:22:54.000 he would ask him whether he had any choice 2026 01:22:54.000 --> 01:22:55.600 about the way in which he made the universe. 2027 01:22:59.640 --> 01:23:02.160 That seems, that was his sort of fundamental 2028 01:23:02.820 --> 01:23:04.020 cosmological question, I think. 2029 01:23:04.200 --> 01:23:07.160 Yeah, and it's a question that still pursues physicists 2030 01:23:07.160 --> 01:23:07.880 to this day. 2031 01:23:08.160 --> 01:23:08.560 Absolutely. 2032 01:23:08.960 --> 01:23:09.980 Yeah, I mean, that's one of the reasons 2033 01:23:09.980 --> 01:23:11.640 that Ed Witten is regarded as the pope, 2034 01:23:11.780 --> 01:23:16.980 because he was able to show that what appeared to be 2035 01:23:16.980 --> 01:23:17.900 lots of solutions, 2036 01:23:18.120 --> 01:23:19.980 what lots of possible theories of everything 2037 01:23:19.980 --> 01:23:22.280 were in fact manifestations of one theory of everything. 2038 01:23:22.460 --> 01:23:24.480 So, it brought a sense of relief to everyone 2039 01:23:24.480 --> 01:23:26.720 that maybe there is just one answer. 2040 01:23:28.720 --> 01:23:30.700 That, to some extent, that's becoming, 2041 01:23:30.700 --> 01:23:33.100 starting to become unfashionable again. 2042 01:23:33.220 --> 01:23:36.440 People are beginning to think that this search 2043 01:23:36.440 --> 01:23:39.160 for a single answer, because there is only one universe, 2044 01:23:39.360 --> 01:23:43.240 therefore there can only be one set of equations, 2045 01:23:43.960 --> 01:23:45.320 that's beginning to give way, 2046 01:23:45.380 --> 01:23:46.960 literally in the last five years or so, 2047 01:23:46.980 --> 01:23:49.200 into a perception of, well, hang on a minute, 2048 01:23:49.840 --> 01:23:52.340 there are various theoreticians now beginning to believe 2049 01:23:52.340 --> 01:23:55.000 that there are in fact, our universe is just one of 2050 01:23:55.000 --> 01:23:57.480 zillions of universes, there's a multiverse out there. 2051 01:23:57.760 --> 01:24:00.820 So, suddenly, this has pulled the rug under the idea 2052 01:24:00.820 --> 01:24:02.440 that there can only be one universe. 2053 01:24:02.740 --> 01:24:05.820 Maybe there are ten to the 500 universes, 2054 01:24:06.100 --> 01:24:10.400 and it's all been a mirage to look for that single set 2055 01:24:10.400 --> 01:24:12.100 of equations, which would have horrified Einstein. 2056 01:24:12.380 --> 01:24:13.800 To some extent, it horrifies me. 2057 01:24:13.880 --> 01:24:14.960 I think it horrifies you as well. 2058 01:24:15.120 --> 01:24:15.540 Yeah, absolutely. 2059 01:24:15.540 --> 01:24:17.940 I mean, I think the moral of what Robert has just told us 2060 01:24:17.940 --> 01:24:19.980 is that the words speculation and fashion 2061 01:24:19.980 --> 01:24:22.320 are not foreign to the pursuit of science, 2062 01:24:22.520 --> 01:24:23.420 as it actually appears. 2063 01:24:24.320 --> 01:24:24.560 Yeah, absolutely. 2064 01:24:24.560 --> 01:24:24.640 Yeah. 2065 01:24:24.760 --> 01:24:26.940 The other, sorry, just to finish off, 2066 01:24:26.960 --> 01:24:28.580 the other thing I'd say, just in passing, 2067 01:24:28.640 --> 01:24:32.140 is that Einstein quotes are, you know, 2068 01:24:32.160 --> 01:24:33.880 an industry inventing Einstein quotes. 2069 01:24:34.840 --> 01:24:37.740 You know, there's a grandmother on the Isle of Wight, 2070 01:24:37.780 --> 01:24:39.800 you know, who's got a typewriter 2071 01:24:39.800 --> 01:24:41.240 who just types these things out, I think. 2072 01:24:41.860 --> 01:24:45.500 I spent a couple of months trying to track down a, 2073 01:24:46.040 --> 01:24:49.080 a quote that Einstein, it's widely quoted, 2074 01:24:49.220 --> 01:24:51.420 where Einstein is supposedly saying that 2075 01:24:51.420 --> 01:24:53.960 if he had any religion at all, it would be Buddhism. 2076 01:24:54.980 --> 01:24:57.660 And me and a science historian have tried tracking this down. 2077 01:24:57.720 --> 01:24:59.080 It seems to be a complete invention. 2078 01:25:00.280 --> 01:25:03.340 So, yeah, he didn't say anything like as many things 2079 01:25:03.340 --> 01:25:04.280 as we'd like to think he did. 2080 01:25:04.380 --> 01:25:07.400 On the other hand, he was, he obviously was both skillful 2081 01:25:07.400 --> 01:25:09.400 and liked inventing one line. 2082 01:25:09.500 --> 01:25:10.200 Oh, yeah, sure. 2083 01:25:10.380 --> 01:25:11.180 A bit of an aphorist. 2084 01:25:11.280 --> 01:25:11.500 God of Lop-Lay dice. 2085 01:25:11.800 --> 01:25:11.920 Yeah. 2086 01:25:12.000 --> 01:25:14.360 I think we've gone a bit off track there, guys. 2087 01:25:14.440 --> 01:25:14.820 Okay. 2088 01:25:15.540 --> 01:25:17.000 Now on to the next questioner, please. 2089 01:25:17.500 --> 01:25:19.780 Yeah, I'm intrigued by the fact that his brain 2090 01:25:19.780 --> 01:25:21.180 has been kept all these years. 2091 01:25:22.720 --> 01:25:25.440 Given the fact he did all this work pre-computers 2092 01:25:25.440 --> 01:25:27.960 and that most of us have trouble programming a VCR, 2093 01:25:28.420 --> 01:25:30.460 has there been much work done on that brain 2094 01:25:30.460 --> 01:25:33.600 to find out what is different to a normal human brain 2095 01:25:33.600 --> 01:25:35.120 or to another human brain? 2096 01:25:35.500 --> 01:25:38.780 And also, should we be looking at cloning that brain? 2097 01:25:40.500 --> 01:25:42.920 I think I can actually answer that. 2098 01:25:42.940 --> 01:25:44.420 I actually read a paper about that. 2099 01:25:44.420 --> 01:25:47.980 Apparently, the brain is contained in a biology, 2100 01:25:47.980 --> 01:25:52.400 medical department in McMaster University in Canada. 2101 01:25:53.620 --> 01:25:58.120 And the paper I read did claim there is a certain region 2102 01:25:58.120 --> 01:26:01.180 of Einstein's brain that's slightly larger than the rest of ours, 2103 01:26:01.260 --> 01:26:02.920 but I can't remember which bit it was. 2104 01:26:04.440 --> 01:26:09.260 Apparently, it's the bit that integrates sort of numerical, 2105 01:26:09.420 --> 01:26:12.160 mathematical ability with sort of imagery. 2106 01:26:12.480 --> 01:26:12.880 Mm-hmm. 2107 01:26:12.880 --> 01:26:16.560 And that seems to be slightly sort of more developed 2108 01:26:16.560 --> 01:26:17.820 in Einstein's brain. 2109 01:26:17.940 --> 01:26:20.220 But Einstein's brain, I think, if memory serves, 2110 01:26:20.400 --> 01:26:23.360 it weighs slightly less than the average brain, 2111 01:26:23.500 --> 01:26:24.920 so to that extent. 2112 01:26:25.140 --> 01:26:27.500 And we should also remember that the part of the brain 2113 01:26:27.500 --> 01:26:28.720 that deals with spatial location 2114 01:26:28.720 --> 01:26:32.180 is enlarged in London taxi drivers. 2115 01:26:32.720 --> 01:26:33.280 Right. 2116 01:26:35.120 --> 01:26:36.220 They know everything. 2117 01:26:36.820 --> 01:26:38.000 Next question, please. 2118 01:26:38.300 --> 01:26:40.660 Yes, I wonder if the panel could comment 2119 01:26:40.660 --> 01:26:42.860 on Einstein's attitude to the idea 2120 01:26:42.860 --> 01:26:45.920 of the alleged breakdown of causality and determinism 2121 01:26:45.920 --> 01:26:49.340 as supposed to result from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. 2122 01:26:51.940 --> 01:26:53.080 Can you take that one, John? 2123 01:26:55.160 --> 01:26:56.580 Can you repeat that for me? 2124 01:26:56.800 --> 01:26:58.100 Yeah, well, he's basically saying, 2125 01:26:58.160 --> 01:27:03.200 how did Einstein respond to the work of people like Heisenberg 2126 01:27:03.200 --> 01:27:03.820 on the sort of breakdown of... 2127 01:27:03.820 --> 01:27:04.900 Well, he hated it. I mean, he hated it. 2128 01:27:05.020 --> 01:27:08.040 I mean, he wanted the world to be clear and deterministic 2129 01:27:08.040 --> 01:27:09.620 in that sort of way. 2130 01:27:09.680 --> 01:27:11.840 And he wanted it, wanted that, I think, 2131 01:27:11.840 --> 01:27:14.840 because he felt that, as I said at the beginning, really, 2132 01:27:14.920 --> 01:27:20.300 that the physical world would only be real and independent of us 2133 01:27:20.300 --> 01:27:23.700 if it was totally objective in that sort of way. 2134 01:27:24.000 --> 01:27:26.140 But I think that was just a very bad mistake. 2135 01:27:26.420 --> 01:27:29.880 The nature of realism is to conform your thought 2136 01:27:29.880 --> 01:27:32.320 to the nature of what you're thinking about. 2137 01:27:32.660 --> 01:27:35.440 And if the physical world is intrinsically veiled 2138 01:27:35.440 --> 01:27:38.300 in its character, is in some sense 2139 01:27:38.300 --> 01:27:40.940 fitful and open in its causal structure, 2140 01:27:40.940 --> 01:27:42.780 that's the way you've got to think about it. 2141 01:27:43.120 --> 01:27:45.140 And Einstein might not like it, 2142 01:27:45.180 --> 01:27:47.100 but he had to lump it in that respect. 2143 01:27:48.420 --> 01:27:54.340 I think that his philosophical commitments to that sort 2144 01:27:54.340 --> 01:27:55.920 were actually not helpful. 2145 01:27:56.300 --> 01:27:58.280 So, Robert, have you managed to confirm that he... 2146 01:27:58.280 --> 01:28:00.540 Did he not say that God does not play dice? 2147 01:28:00.760 --> 01:28:01.480 Oh, no, he... 2148 01:28:01.480 --> 01:28:02.600 Oh, that's for sure. 2149 01:28:02.720 --> 01:28:03.920 I think that that was for the Bourne, yes. 2150 01:28:04.440 --> 01:28:05.940 Yeah, but the point is that Heisenberg 2151 01:28:06.460 --> 01:28:09.360 didn't really offer any connection between the two, 2152 01:28:09.420 --> 01:28:10.820 although he came up with an uncertainty. 2153 01:28:10.940 --> 01:28:14.060 There wasn't anything that necessarily said 2154 01:28:14.060 --> 01:28:16.840 that that resulted in a breakdown of causality. 2155 01:28:16.860 --> 01:28:18.120 It was simply an assertion. 2156 01:28:21.560 --> 01:28:24.440 There isn't anything that logically connects the two. 2157 01:28:26.020 --> 01:28:27.900 Well, the loss of certainty, I think, 2158 01:28:27.920 --> 01:28:29.740 is what he really didn't like at all. 2159 01:28:29.800 --> 01:28:33.200 He was convinced that if only physicists tried harder, 2160 01:28:33.340 --> 01:28:35.180 they'd be able to get behind 2161 01:28:36.160 --> 01:28:37.740 Heisenberg's uncertainty principle relations 2162 01:28:37.740 --> 01:28:40.920 to find what it was, 2163 01:28:40.940 --> 01:28:42.600 and by being able to turn hidden variables, 2164 01:28:42.840 --> 01:28:45.800 that if we only could capture those, 2165 01:28:46.060 --> 01:28:48.560 we'd be able to get absolute knowledge 2166 01:28:48.560 --> 01:28:51.200 of both the location and the speed 2167 01:28:51.200 --> 01:28:53.900 or equally the energy content and the time duration 2168 01:28:53.900 --> 01:28:57.040 of systems, of physical systems. 2169 01:28:57.220 --> 01:29:01.420 He was convinced that it was like an abrogation of duty 2170 01:29:01.940 --> 01:29:06.020 by physicists not to push behind the uncertainty principle 2171 01:29:06.020 --> 01:29:09.180 to get at the deeper concrete reality that was there. 2172 01:29:09.180 --> 01:29:13.340 And it was being hidden by these equations. 2173 01:29:13.740 --> 01:29:16.640 He couldn't believe those equations were the end of the story. 2174 01:29:16.700 --> 01:29:18.580 He thought there was something deeper. 2175 01:29:18.780 --> 01:29:20.920 I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut in here 2176 01:29:20.920 --> 01:29:22.260 and draw this to an end now. 2177 01:29:22.480 --> 01:29:24.500 Now, before we applaud the speakers, 2178 01:29:25.220 --> 01:29:27.640 I'm going to put things to the audience vote. 2179 01:29:28.360 --> 01:29:31.280 Like any good show, like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, 2180 01:29:31.280 --> 01:29:32.220 we've got to ask the audience. 2181 01:29:33.360 --> 01:29:36.460 All right, so we've got two motions here. 2182 01:29:36.520 --> 01:29:38.220 So on the affirmative side, 2183 01:29:38.220 --> 01:29:42.080 we're going to say that Einstein is a genius of his time 2184 01:29:42.080 --> 01:29:46.140 and we will not see anything close to his unique achievements 2185 01:29:46.140 --> 01:29:49.760 from one person again for a very long time. 2186 01:29:50.000 --> 01:29:52.760 His celebrity status is well deserved. 2187 01:29:53.080 --> 01:29:54.200 That's the affirmative side. 2188 01:29:54.360 --> 01:29:58.100 The negative side, he happened to be in the right place 2189 01:29:58.100 --> 01:29:59.000 at the right time. 2190 01:29:59.220 --> 01:30:01.180 He was undoubtedly outstanding, 2191 01:30:01.800 --> 01:30:05.600 but there are many other unsung heroes of his calibre. 2192 01:30:05.840 --> 01:30:08.200 So I'm going to throw those two points 2193 01:30:08.220 --> 01:30:09.420 of view out to the audience. 2194 01:30:11.060 --> 01:30:13.660 And just pretend there's a gun to your head 2195 01:30:13.660 --> 01:30:15.820 and you have to choose between one or the other 2196 01:30:15.820 --> 01:30:17.320 if you're a bit in between, you know, 2197 01:30:17.320 --> 01:30:19.600 go one way or the other, because this is just for fun. 2198 01:30:19.820 --> 01:30:22.060 Okay, so hands up for the affirmative, 2199 01:30:22.300 --> 01:30:23.260 the Einstein genius. 2200 01:30:25.860 --> 01:30:28.180 And hands up for the other side, 2201 01:30:28.200 --> 01:30:30.040 that he was just in the right place at the right time. 2202 01:30:30.480 --> 01:30:32.880 Ooh, the negative guys win. 2203 01:30:34.000 --> 01:30:38.120 Okay, let's give the speakers a big hand, please. 2204 01:30:38.220 --> 01:30:39.700 APPLAUSE