Einstein's Big Idea

When we think of equal times C squared, we have this vision of Einstein's and O, which is called, frankly, man with white hair. E equals MC squared is not about an old Einstein. It's actually about a young, energetic, dynamic, even a sexy Einstein. What would I see if I rolled on a beam of light? Perhaps some sort of electrical force is emanating outwards from the wire. What? Faraday, my dear boy. Electricity flows through a wire, not sideways to it. You see, John? You see? It is my great ambition to demonstrate that an extra is a closed system. But in any transformation, no amount of matter, no mass is ever lost and none is going. The people, whenever they... It is day who will determine right and wrong. Emily, who are being absurd, why are scribe to an object? A vague and immeasurable force like this Viva. It is a return to the old ways. I can't put up discovering something of the old. I discovered you! There is no right time for the truth. Coral, I like them. Yes? Auto-hung. The news is our focus. The US endangered ants to chew. We can't harbor a Jew. If she stays, the regime will shut us all down. It's split the atom. No, no. You split the atom. And it was best, times the square of the speed of light. We'd like me to check your mathematics. A hundred years ago, a deceptively simple formula revealed a hidden unity, buried deep in the fabric of the universe. It tells of a fantastic connection between energy, matter and light. Its author was a youthful Albert Einstein. It's the most famous equation in the world. E equals M C square. But while we've all heard of Einstein's big idea, very few of us know what it means. In fact, E equals M C square is so remarkable that even Einstein wasn't sure if it was really true. Albert, you're later than I expected. We've only got such a cheese tonight. What? We need to talk. Has something happened? Oh, no, nothing. Sorry, no. I spent most of the day staring out the window at work, looking at trains. And I started to think about an object. And how much energy it had. Can I explain it to you? Of course you can. But first, dinner. Hmm, what then talk? I think so, God's a lot of thing at me. The gods were not laughing at Einstein. He'd united in one stunning insight. The work of many who had come before him. Scientists who'd fought and even died to create each part of the equation. The story of E equals M C square starts long before Einstein with the discovery of E for energy. In the early 19th century, scientists didn't think in terms of energy. They thought in terms of individual powers or forces. These were all disconnected unrelated things. The power of the wind, the force of a door closing, the crack of lightning. The idea that there might be some sort of overarching, unifying energy, which lay behind all these forces, had yet to be revealed. One lonely man's drive to understand the hidden mysteries of nature would begin to change all that. Young Michael Faraday hated his job. He was uneducated, the son of a blacksmith. He'd been lucky to become a bookbinder's apprentice. But Faraday craved one thing. He craved knowledge. Every book that passed through his hands, he developed a passion for science. All of his free time and his meager weight is report into his self-education. He was on the threshold of an incredible journey into the invisible world of energy. Faraday had impressed one of his master's customers, and was rewarded with a ticket that would change his life. This is his place. Can I pass, please? Can I pass? Some of us are trying to improve ourselves. Can I pass? Some of us are trying to improve ourselves. Can I pass? Some of us are trying to improve ourselves. People will let us with coos of coos, pass, pass. This way to a better life. In the early 1800s, science was a pursuit of gentlemen. Something Faraday was clearly met. He had a rudimentary education. He'd read widely. He'd gone to public lectures. But in 1812, he was given tickets to hear his name. He had a rudimentary education. He'd read widely. He'd gone to public lectures. But in 1812, he was given tickets to hear Sir Humphrey Baby, the most prominent chemist of the age. 19th century scientists were the pop stars of their day. Their lectures were hugely popular. Tickets were hard to come by, and Davey reveled in his status. They're waiting. I knew. He was also a keen follower of the latest fashion. Nitrous oxide or laughing gas. He said it had all the benefits of alcohol without the hangover. Electricity, ladies and gentlemen. A mysterious force that can unravel the confusing mixture of intermingled substances that surround us and produce pure, pure elements. Davey was an absolutely first-rate scientist. However, many will come to say that his greatest discovery is Michael Ferday. He's unknown that is until I isolated potassium from molten potash and sodium as I showed you last time from common salt. That's the same magical point. Ferday may not have been born a gentleman, but he wasn't going to let class barriers stop him from pursuing a career in science. He worked for nights on end to bind his lecture notes into a book for his new hero. Lord, help me to think only of others, to be if used to mankind, help me be part of the great circle that is your work and love. Lord, I am your servant. Well, this is excellent work, Ferday. So what did you aim to do with your life? My desire is to escape from trade, which I find vicious and selfish, and to become a servant of science, which I imagine makes its pursuers, amiable, and liberal. Really? Well, I shall leave it to the experience of a few years to set you right on that score. Look, I haven't done anything, I'm almost home. I don't know if anything comes up. Despite this humiliating setback, Ferday was determined to break free from his daily toil. His patience was rewarded. You, Mo? Meet Mr. Michael Ferday. He's going to be my help for what I recover. He sure is me, he is a Christian fellow. Perhaps with God and Ferday in charge of the chemicals, you and I will be safe in our place of work. Thank you, Professor Davy. Welcome, Ferday. Oh, no, thank you. And thank you, Sir Humphrey. Thank you. This is Stichty Haujopindus, your told, and you'll be fine, Ferday. Ferday became the laboratory assistant, eagerly absorbing every scrap of knowledge that Davy damed to impart. But in time, the pupil would surpass the master. The big excitement of the day was electricity. Little Charter, you. The battery had just been invented, and all manner of experiments were being done. But no one really understood what this strange force of electricity was. The academic establishment at the time thought that electricity was, you know, like a fluid flowing through a pipe, pushing its way along. But in 1821, a Danish researcher showed that when you pass an electrocurrent through a wire and place a compass near it, it deflects the needle at right angles. This was the first time researchers had seen electricity affect a magnet. The first glimpse of two forces, which had previously been seen as entirely separate. Now unified in some inexplicable way. I can look at this, all the bright spark around here, perhaps you can look at it. As did's reported an amazing finding. We're just replicating it here. Let's try the compass on the other side. Now that is wrong. But if the electrical force is flowing through the wire, why does the needle not move in the same direction? Quite. Let's try turning the whole apparatus round. Again, you. So, the electrical force goes this way. The compass points that way. How can one affect the other? Perhaps the electricity is throwing out some invisible force as it moves along. What? Perhaps some sort of... Electrical force is a very important thing. Oh, my dear boy, let me tell you that at the University of Cambridge, electricity flows through a wire. Not sideways to it. Well, that may be what the teacher can reach. But it doesn't explain what's happening before our eye. No, no, let's just get on. Let's swap the compass to below the wire. Why the compass was deflected at right angles? Why the electricity? Why the? Why the? Why the compass was deflected at right angles? Why the electricity was affecting the compass at all? Dumbfounded, Davy, and many others. As we celebrate the marriage of Michael and Sarah. For Faraday, however, the problem became an obsession. It was a fascination inspired by his religion. For him, the problem was a way to understand God's hidden mysteries. I love from a fairly man. There is a small, almost persecuted group in London called the Sandamanians. They were religious. Not really a sect. They were just a small subset, sort of like Quakers. Faraday was a member of the group, who was a very gentle decent group. They believed that underneath the whole service of reality, everything was created by God in a unified way. That if you opened up one little part of it, you could see how everything was connected. Michael Faraday was someone who, like Einstein, thought in terms of pictures. Faraday was different from anybody else. He had a flare, a front understanding his experiments, for understanding what was really going on inside them. My methodically placing a compass all around an electrified wire, Faraday started to notice a pattern. Faraday was different. Faraday imagined that invisible lines of force flowed around an electric wire. And then he imagined that a man that had similar lines emerging from it. And that those lines grew caught up in this flow. It was a bit like a flag in a wind. And it was a flag in a wind. And it was a flag in a wind. But Faraday's great leap of imagination was to turn this experiment on its head. Instead of an electrified wire moving a compass needle, he wondered if he could get a static magnet to move a wire. I'm going to sing you like this, Faraday. He's like a happy child. I'm shaking human. Underneath, I'm shaking. You should see John. You see? Yes. This is the experiment of the century. It's the invention of the electric motor. Scale up the magnets and the wires make them really big. Attach heavy weights to them. And they'll be dragged along. But almost more importantly, he's inventing a new kind of physics here. Although he didn't realize it at the time, Faraday had also just demonstrated an overarching principle. The chemicals in the battery had been transformed into electricity in the wire, which had combined with the magnet to produce motion. Behind all these various forces, there was a common energy. A couple of months earlier, David had been elected President of the Royal Society, which was the elite body of English science. But then he saw this great discovery published in the quarterly journal of science. I don't know if he was Envious, but he certainly saw this young man who had been his assistant. Mayor Blacksmith Sun, had come up with one of the greatest discoveries of the Victorian era. David accused his parody of plagiarizing similar work from another imminent British scientist William Walliston. So Faraday, what is Walliston make of all this? He's written to me, and ensures he's taken no offense, and he acknowledges that what I published was entirely my own work. Why? Why? David is just being an ass, but will David now retract his allegation? Sadly no. In fact, he's still vehemently opposed to you being elected a member of the Society. Really? And what do you think? Faraday, my dear boy, you have my vote. I'm mine. I believe we have Walliston's. Well, a mess. Well, no matter. No matter. It's the science that counts. So tell me, how does this wire of yours spin around its magnet? What mysterious forces are at play? There seems to be an electromagnetic interaction. In my mind, I see a swirling array of lines of force spinning out of the electrified wire, like a spiraling wind. But invisible lines of force. It's all a bit vague, isn't it? Faraday, might have a word in private. Certainly. Listen, Faraday. Let's stop this nonsense. I want you to take down your ballot paper from the notice board. So I'm free. I see no reason to take it down. My friends have proposed me. It is they who put the paper up. I will not take it down. Good day. Faraday was elected to the Royal Society. David died five years later, a victim of his many gaseous inhalations. In time Faraday's world of invisible forces would lead to a whole new understanding of energy. He'd started what Einstein would call the Great Revolution. It was in the very heart of this exciting new world of energy that Einstein grew up. My father and uncle wanted to make their fortune by bringing electric light to the streets of Germany. From an early age, I loved to look at machines, understand how things work. He's going to kill himself. Albert, stay there. I experienced miracle when my father showed me a compass. I trembled and grew cold. There had to be something behind objects that laid deeply hidden. Einstein's teachers tried to drum into him as Faraday had shown that energy could be converted from one form into another. They also believed that all forms of energy had already been discovered. Einstein was going to prove them wrong. He would discover a new vast reservoir of energy hidden where no other scientist had ever thought of looking. Deep in the heart of matter. The first time I saw him, I saw him. A hundred years before Einstein's birth, King Louis XV was on the throne of France. But the ancient absolute power of the monarchy over the people was starting to be challenged. Chac lives at windows, fog gets away, we need air. The French Revolution is just around the corner. This was the era of enlightenment. When intellectuals believed very firmly that the way forward lay in science, and they felt that one of the first tasks that lay ahead of them was to rationalise and to classify every single kind of matter so they could see how it all interacted together. Antoine Lavoisier, a wealthy aristocratic young man decided to take up this task to see if there was some basic connection between all the stuff of everyday life. All the different substances in the world. But what worked for Lavoisier as a scientist, his meticulous, even obsessive attention to detail, was also to be his downfall. The first thing I had to do was to see if I could see what was going on. You are, if my eyes do not deceive me, consuming only myth this evening. First you had a glass of milk. Now you are eating a bowl of milk. Will you next move on to a plate of milk? Your presence of the vagines command you as a lady of تعurious, dimmarmozen. Most unusual. As you seek knowledge, so I shall dispense it for the last five weeks. I have to take nothing but milk. Good lord, man. I will rather die than fast on milk for five weeks. Are you in the grip of some horrendous ailments? On the contrary, I am investigating the effects of diet, one health. I am sure with the greatest of respect to a member of the royal academy of sciences, your gut must sink your throat has been slated. Where is your gut count? Is no dad petitioning the academy for a widening of your throat? Marianne, how dare you insult the count? Don't forget what the count offers. Not just marriage, but look of how you will be introduced to all the salons. You will be the toast of Paris. We did not be ashamed of them to burden you with the duties of matrimonium before you have had a chance to experience your curiosity for nature. Asian, we all go through. It's getting rather hot in here. You really planned to marry the Amover? Yes, I planned. But it is not mine. Then I must contrive to save him. The Voisier wasn't a scientist by profession. He was the head of tax enforcement in Paris. His great idea was to build a huge wall around the city and to tax everything that came and went. But his taxes on the simple things in life, bread, wine and cheese, did not endure him to the average peruvian. This strupulous, festidious young man did still allow himself the occasional act of passion. In 1771, La Voisier married Marianne Pauls, the daughter of his colleague in the tax office. Thus he saved her as he had promised from an arranged marriage to account 40 years her elder. I'll let him to show you something. La Voisier, I think, found his job as a tax collector really rather tedious. And the times he looked forward to the evenings and the weekends when he could indulge his passion for chemical experimentation. And he called those times his jaw debonair, his days of happiness. Madam. What will happen if I take a bar of copper or iron and leave it outside in a rain for months on end? Madam, love was a year. Love was a year. The methods. What will become of them? These are these other, examination. Prior to an examination, cloth also. I really seek the truth. Then you toy with me, Monsieur, you know the truth. The copper will become covered in a green body green. And the iron will last. I believe the term is a car scene. Most impressive, much charming ones. But let me press you further. Minimum metal rusts. Does he get heavier or lighter? What's that? I think you mean it's roughening. Oh. And perhaps this little butterfly should land. And I'll let me take a closer look. Every last citizen in France, a sensible age, knows it well a metal rusts. It weighs away. It gets lighter and eventually disappears. Ah, but... Ah, stop. I have not finished. Can it tell yourself, sir? There is more. In a recently published template, by a brilliant young chemist. And one of us here demonstrates that the iron combines with the air. It in fact becomes heavy. Most impressive. I intend. No. Whatever you intend, Monsieur. I intend to be by your side. I will learn all I can about your sides and become your worthy colleague. But let me show you how the iron combines with the air. To form such a delicate union. Tomorrow. Monsieur. Tomorrow. Marianne learned chemistry at her husband's side, but soon sought other ways to contribute to his work. She learned English, so that she could translate contemporary scientific works. She took drawing lessons, so that she could record in forensic detail the minutiae of their work together. She ran their laboratory and was the public face of La Vazier Inc. She was central to the whole research effort. That is a terrible thing to say. You are a cheeky man. It's way, please, gentlemen. Monsieur. It is my great ambition to demonstrate that nature is a closed system. But in any transformation, no amount of matter, no mass is ever lost and none is gained. Overheat, please. This precise amount of water is heated to steam. This steam is brought into contact with a red hot iron barrel embedded in the coal. From this end, we cool this steam. But interestingly, we collect less water than we started with. So clearly, we lose a certain amount of water. However, we also collect, I guess, and the weight of the iron barrel increases. Now, when we combine these two increases, the new weight of the iron barrel and the gas we have collected, they are exactly equal to the weight of the lost water. But is it atmospheric, Mr. La Vazier? No, because I am measuring it to the very last grain, I can see that it is lighter than the air around us and moreover. It is flammable. Voila. Water is made out of hydrogen and oxygen. So what he had done is get the oxygen to stick to the inside of a red hot iron rifle barrel. He was basically just making a rust, which is oxygen iron, but he was making the rust really quickly. Now, that left the hydrogen, what he called combustible air, and that was just floating around us against. No mass had been lost, it had merely been transformed. And now, he wanted to transform it all back into water. This is only the beginning. In the next few months, I hope the demon striped, but I can recombine. This combustible air with a vital air. And transform them both back into water. I will recreate exactly the same amount of water that was lost here in this process. It is my hope to complete the cycle of water into gas into water. And not a drop of dust. For a long time, Voila's a suspected that the exact amount of matter, the mass, and found in any transformation was always conserved. But to prove this, he had to perform thousands of experiments. And he had to do the measurements with incredible accuracy. That's where his great wealth from being a tax collector came in. He could afford to commission the most sensitive instruments ever built. He became obsessed with accuracy. I have invented a device which projects an image of the substance of fire onto a screen. Do you see? When a lantern is shown to a flame, we see a shimmering pattern above the flame. My device renders the substance of fire visible. Have you collected it? The substance of fire? Have you? Have you trapped it and measured it? No, but one can see it. I'm sorry. In the absence of exact measurements of precise observations, without rigorous reasoning, one can only be engaging in conjecture. So this is not science. I am not given to conjecture, Monsieur. Really? No. If you release me, I am extremely busy today. But thank you. Thank you. Servant Zoll? Then you'll see! Let me guess, Mara. King Scientific Desperate has decreed that your invention does not conform to the version of the truth as laid down by the Academy. Love was ye. He talks about facts, the truth. Listen to me, my friend. They are all the same, the royal academies. They insult the liberty of the mind. They think they are the sole arbiters of genius. They are rotten to the core, just like every other tentacle of the King. The people, it is there you will determine right and wrong. Don't worry. In my next pamphlet, I will expose this specutor of yours. For years, the Lavoziers burned, chopped, melted and boiled every conceivable substance. They choned that as long as one is scrupulous about collecting all of vapors, liquids and powders created in a transformation. Then mass is not decreased. Liquids might become gases, metals may rust, wood may become ash and smoke, but matter. The tiny atoms that make up all substances, none of it is ever lost. The crowning glory of this opus was their remarkable use of static electricity to cause oxygen and hydrogen to recombine back into water. What's happening? The Royal Family and the Royal Family As the French Revolution exploded, the Royal Family and holds swaths of aristocrats lost their heads on the Guiote. To the French Revolutionaries of 1790, Lavozier meant one thing and one thing only, he was the despise tax collector who built that war on Paris. Lavozier's job as a tax collector brought him under suspicion. He was denounced by a failed scientist, turned radical journalist Jean-Paul Marre. Minister Nicolas Maléquine He was a waterbie in the Re系 to reduce severe aure's oleament for gas and stay alive, Ban Swat 3, M Andrew, Lavozier, Okay Jean! I go. 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It would add up to the exact same weight as the original city in the air around it before. Nothing disappears. A century later, all of nature had been classified into two great domains. There was energy, the forces that animated objects, and there was mass, the physical stuff that made up those objects. The whole of 19th century science rested on these two mighty pillars. The laws that governed one did not apply to the other. But young, newly enrolled physics student Albert Einstein didn't like laws. It's a great time. What happened to you? It is more than a little ironic having been reprimanded yesterday by that idiot Professor Perna for poor attendance. That I should in fact attend a practical lesson, which was as long as it was boring and utterly pointless, by the way. I need to be the victim of an explosion of my own apparatus. That was your own fault, sir. Thank you. And how are you today? Pralay, marriage? Extremely well, Einstein. The better for seeing you have escaped physics laboratory with your life. Well, in order not to alarm you any further, I pledge to forever continue my studies here at the Cafe Banhoff, reading only the great masters of theoretical physics, and assuring the bebbling nonsense of the polytechnicians. It's about all you ever do. It's getting a little stuffy in here, Fralay, marriage. Would you care to take a walk with me? There's something I'd like to discuss with you. Why, at Einstein? Of course. I'd like to tell you what you have missed in lectures this week. Einstein wasn't exactly a model student. He excelled in certain subjects, especially physics and math, but he wasn't very diligent in a lot of his other classes. He was undoubtedly very questioning, which seems to have annoyed most of his professors throughout his life. He would pursue his fascinations with just incredible determination. We know from his letters that Einstein, even from the age of 16, was literally obsessed with the nature of light. What would we see, as you think? If we were together, and we split up and up, and till we caught up to the front of a beam of light. It was Einstein's relentless pursuit of light, which would bring about a revolution in science. With light, he would reinvent the universe and find a hidden pathway that would unite energy and mass. Light moves incredibly fast. 670 million miles per hour. That's why scientists use the term C. It stands for Solaritas, Latin for Swiftness. Long before the 19th century, scientists had computed the speed of light, but no one knew what light actually was. McIn England, a man we've already met, was willing to make an educated guess. After Sir Humphrey Davies' deaths, Michael Faraday became Professor Faraday, one of the most important experimenters in the world. The scientific establishments still found it hard to accept that electricity and magnetism were just two aspects of the same phenomenon, which Faraday called electromagnetism. But now, he has an even more outrageous proposal for his audience. Invisible lines that can emanate from electricity and a wire from a magnet or even from the sun. For it is my contention that light itself is just one form of these vibrating lines of electromagnetism. For 15 years Faraday struggled to convince the skeptics that light was an electromagnetic wave, but he lacked the advanced mathematics to back up his idea. Eventually, someone came to his rescue. Professor James Clark Maxwell believed in Faraday's far-sighted vision, and he had the mathematical skill to prove it. Maxwell and the aging Faraday became close friends. James. James, forgive me. A word of advice. I don't get old. Michael, how are you? I'm fine. Memory isn't too good. Well, I thought you might like to see what I just published. Linda. So you're a result sure that when electricity flows along the wire, but it actually does create a little bit of magnetism. And as that magnetic charge moves, it creates a little piece of electricity. Electricity and magnetism are interwoven, like a never-ending braid, so it is always pulsing forward. It's wonderful. Michael, there's something very crucial in math. This electricity producing magnetism and magnetism producing electricity can only ever happen at a very particular speed. The equations are very clear about it. They come up with just one number. 670 million miles per hour. I'm not sure. It's the speed of light. That is the speed of light. And you're right all along. Light is an electromagnetic wave. Maxwell had proven Faraday right. Electricity and magnetism are just two aspects of a deeper unity. A force now called electromagnetism, which travels at 670 million miles per hour. In its visible form, it is nothing other than light itself. And nothing fascinated the young Einstein more than light. We have lectures in half an hour. Let me think. Professor Vebann is life-training monologue. Or you? Mozart and James Clark Maxwell. You can't. We'll get a warning. Our project is too precious to waste time listening to those dull odds. Come with me. We'll read Maxwell. I think about the electromagnetic theory of light. And why might he let all Johnny, how you incant the leading? He's very pretty. She's very pretty. Yes. But can she saw and stunts like our dark souls do? Maxwell's equations contained an incredible prediction. They said you could never catch up to a beam of light. Even if you were traveling at 670 million miles an hour, you would still see light squiggle away from you at 670 million miles an hour. You see how she stands at that way? Yes. You see how for her it is static? Yes. She and the wave are traveling at the same speed. We see the wave moving through the water. But relative to her it just sits there. So is light like that? Common sense would say that if you caught up to a light beam, it would be a wave light. Just sitting there maybe it would be shimmering, bit of electricity and a bit of magnetism. So if she was traveling alongside the light wave, it wouldn't be moving. It would be static. But Maxwell says you can't have static light. Maybe Maxwell is wrong. Maybe if you catch up to light, it is static over to like a wave next to a bird. Imagine if I was sitting still and holding a mirror to my face. And I like travels for my face to the mirror and I see my face. However, if I end the mirror, what traveling at the speed of light? You're going at the same speed as light living your face. Exactly. Light never reaches the mirror. So would I be invisible? That doesn't make sense. Young Einstein was starting to realize that light was unlike any other kind of wave. Einstein was about to enter a surreal universe where energy, mass and the speed of light intermingled in a way no one had ever suspected. But there was one last mathematical ingredient that Einstein would need. The everyday process of squaring.