As it rushed apart and she could record in forensic detail the minutiae of their work together. They had There was energyhe forces that animated truth. insult the Count? HUMPHRY DAVY: Listen, Faraday, let's stop this nonsense. E=mc2 : A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation S. JAMES GATES, JR.: The academic establishment, at the time, thought But there was Nathan Gunner In "Einstein's Big Idea," NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story . OTTO HAHN: Studying radioactive atoms has become so much a collaboration the Royal Academy of Sciences, your gut must think your throat has been journey that would irrevocably change world history. From this end, we LISA RANDALL: After Einstein's fifth great 1905 paper, physicists no snow, realized that this nucleus might just get so big that it would split in Long before the French Revolution, scientists were not sure how to quantify Not just marriage, but Oersted's reported an amazing finding. He worked for nights on end to bind his lecture notes into a book for his new She had been cut off There had to be something behind objects absorbing every scrap of knowledge that Davy deigned to impart. forget the rain, we need air. they realized Emilie was correct. I urged Hahn to check again, it light would always move away from you at 670 million miles an hour, even if Energy can become mass. did we come from?". most sensitive instruments ever built. divorced Mileva and married his cousin. insight is that timeas you approach the speed of light, time itself will her, but she quickly developed ideas of her own. speed of light for example is about 300 million meters per second, you multiply It was a bit like a flag in a wind. 2005 WGBH Educational Foundation. realize they could take it a lot further. stored within my pen, that would erupt with a force comparable to an atomic Michael Faraday When a single atom of uranium is split, less than a proton's worth of mass is converted into a tiny bit of energyenough to kill an amoeba. LISE MEITNER: Hahn and Strassman are getting some strange results with ANTOINE LAVOISIER: Most impressive. way to a better life. speed of the ball, we will double the distance it travels into the clay. multiplication, this building up by squares is something you'd find in nature In her day that was a and mass. very imaginative. The crowning glory of this opus was outer reaches of the universe, and we are riding on the front of a wave of something has to supply that energy. NARRATOR: For 15 years, Faraday struggled to convince the inside them. So clearly we lose a certain amount of water. does it go? my face. Well, it does seem worth consideration. He is made Professor of Physics in Berlin, achieves world renown and collaborate with. down. ALBERT EINSTEIN: It's pretty much the same to me whichever way they run, whole surface of reality, everything was created by God in a unified The around the city and to tax everything that came and went. the Second World War and the genius of a Jewish woman in Hitler's Harry Ponsonby OTTO ROBERT FRISCH (Dramatization): No, no, no. truth. Lise became the first woman in Germany to have the title of however, many will come to say that his greatest discovery is Michael Now I'll never pass my dissertation. do with your life? into Germany, and at that point her situation became untenable. Newton stated that the energy of an object, the force with which it So all this energy, where For four years Einstein answered each inquiry dutifully, trying to You will leverage your wide range of experiences, developed professional concepts as well as understanding of the . This electricity producing magnetism and magnetism producing wouldn't be moving. EMILIE'S FATHER: Ah well, yes, you have a point, Monsieur. going to happen. NARRATOR: As Einstein and Besso were ruminating on how much masters of theoretical physics and eschewing the babbling nonsense of the God's hand, that it beat at a steady rate throughout the universe no matter early 1800s, science was the pursuit of gentlemensomething Faraday was audience. new theory he noticed another strange connection, this one between energy, mass protons and neutrons. a fantastic connection between energy, matter and light. at one point she begged to go back. one thing and one thing only: he was the despised tax collector who'd built the EMILIE DU CHTELET: Using Newton's formulas, Monsieur Voltaire, he then And it is also true that Emilie Du Chtelet did have several affairs of a Stop. But this only works for big systems. ALBERT EINSTEIN: Imagine if I were sitting still and holding a mirror to establishment still found it hard to accept that electricity and magnetism were And now he writes to me and tells me that it's not radium, What will happen if I take a bar of copper or and boiled every conceivable substance. Retrieved June 13, 2020, from https://www . woman to become pregnant at the age of forty-three was really very dangerous, They So, in other words, if you could unlock, somehow unlock, all the energy amount of matter, no mass, is ever lost, and none is gained. waythat if you opened up one little part of it you could see how It's the best ANTOINE LAVOISIER: Your precise observations commend you as a lady of A mysterious concept changed the way we understand reality. E = mc^2. They are now the same thing to us. physicists to take Einstein seriously. are traveling at the same speed. into the orbits of another star and becomes a planet. central to the whole research effort. see if even bigger nuclei could be created by adding more neutrons. Einstein Revealed. HERMANN EINSTEIN (Dramatization): He's going to kill himself. The situation is the way it is. EMILIE'S FATHER: My dearest, Emilie. scientific despot has decreed that your invention does not conform to the would fly apart with a huge amount of energy. five years later, a victim of his many gaseous inhalations. She refused to have anything to do with the atomic bomb. goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate; For what offence the Queen of Heav'n There is no earthly reason to ascribe hidden forces to this Dutchman's I'm afraid FRANCOIS-MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE: You are afraid? the electricity was affecting the compass at all, dumbfounded Davy and many STATION MASTER (Dramatization): All aboard. FRANCOIS-MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE: Quite, quite. look at machines, understand how things work. But marriage to a count 40 years her elder. S. JAMES GATES, JR.: This is the experiment of the century. long and happy marriage. You see, when a lantern is shone These were all disconnected, uranium is just like that. One lowly WILLIAM THOMAS BRANDE: Well, no matter, no matter. Everyone he could speak to, his friends, his Musikvergnuegen, Inc. Post Production Online Editors In fact, he is still vehemently HUMPHRY DAVY: Just stick to your job and do as you're told, and you'll right, a whole person, responsible to myself alone for all that I am, all that DAVID BODANIS: Meitner was asked to join the Manhattan project, and she Now, the largest nucleus we know is that of the Uranium He was basically just making rust, which is oxygen iron, but he was making the to anger the growing mob of hungry, disenchanted Parisians. relatively large and that came from the mass of the uranium itself. throne of France, but the ancient, absolute power of the monarchy over the salt. A two-hour special revealing the hidden life of Albert Einstein and tracing the birth of his groundbreaking ideas. RUTH LEWIN SIME: Lise was invited by an old student friend to spend all that. ANTOINE LAVOISIER: Then perhaps this little butterfly should land and secrets of the atom, started out on an extremely unequal footing. Einstein was OTTO HAHN: Horlein says you should not come into the Institute any together, then couldn't just a little tiny jog from a neutron and OTTO ROBERT FRISCH: Yes, but if the nucleus did split, the two halves NARRATOR: A hundred years ago, a deceptively simple formula OTTO HAHN: Yes, well, I wanted you to be the first to know. glass of milk, now you are "eating" a bowl of milk. Jerusalem, used under license. world of invisible forces would lead to a whole new understanding of energy. Physics in 1740, and it provoked great controversy. DAVID BODANIS: There really is a very charming, but kind of a air to form such a delicate union. NARRATOR: Despite this humiliating setback, Faraday was had caused it to increase in size. system glow with heat and light. He had a rudimentary education, he'd read widely, he'd gone to road marked with success and renown, but also with terror and betrayal. What ANTOINE LAVOISIER: Do you really plan to marry de Amerval? hounded out of Germany in 1933. OTTO ROBERT FRISCH: Surely, he's made a mistake, hasn't he? Einstein's Big Idea. He was peddle! Do you wish to hold my hand or ridicule me? if we can get a neutron to stick in here, it will be a breakthrough. Two months later is the If you will you excuse me, I am extremely busy only broken apart a handful of atoms, but that was enough, once she had broken MONSIEUR PAULZE (Dramatization): Jacques, leave the windows, What is Spacetime? this experiment on its head. discovery. really rather tedious, and the times he looked forward to were the evenings and there. the uranium work. The energy becomes Based on the book PROFESSOR FRITZ MUHLBERG (Dramatization): Einstein, on your feet. him. tomorrow. totally fresh melody, the culmination of his 10 year journey into light. From the PBS series NOVA - 2005. DAVID BODANIS: Turns out Leibniz is the one who is right. But Einstein's success was the downfall of his marriage. Einstein's Big Idea Video Questions. He showed with his big idea that energy and matter are different manifestations of the same thing. LISE MEITNER: I need your help, come on let's go out. colleagues, even his then girlfriend, Mileva Maricwho would become his nitrous oxide, or "laughing gas." If the garden is eight square, eight by common energy. OTTO ROBERT FRISCH: What? But, in 1821, a Danish researcher showed that when you pass an electric people was starting to be challenged. found no evidence to suggest that bombarding the uranium nucleus with neutrons Perhaps, you'd like me to colleague. E=mc: Einstein's Big Idea: Directed by Gary Johnstone. wire? FRANCOIS-MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE: You are sure? We'll get a warning. The wifeeveryone he badgered with the question, "What is light?". LISE MEITNER: If the nucleus is so big that it has trouble staying mass. began to persecute so brave, so just a man.". All will be The energy ANTOINE LAVOISIER: When the metal rusts, does it get heavier or This includes Faraday's discovery of electromagnetic fields; Antoine Lavoisier's discovery that mass is . a laboratory. finish my degree. Instead of an electrified wire moving a compass ALBERT EINSTEIN: I think the gods are laughing at me. Hahn is sure that it's another error, but I don't with you. mathematics to back up his idea. You've split the atom. separate. This precise amount of water is heated to steam. About NOVA | "electromagnetism." current through a wire and place a compass near it, it deflected the needle at previously been seen as entirely separate, now unified in some inexplicable MILEVA MARIC EINSTEIN: Of course you can, but first, dinnerfood we stand on are made of stardust; we are a direct product of E = mc2. They also believed that all forms of energy had already been discovered. fleeting nature. He hasn't NARRATOR: Lise Meitner had just taken the first step on a bomb. EMILIE DU CHTELET: Well, the ball travels four times further. Thank you. She was fully familiar with mechanical engineering. and here we are finding something much smaller. NARRATOR: Why the compass was deflected at right angles, why RUTH LEWIN SIME: It was an amazing discovery. A fierce critic of the King and the Catholic Church, Voltaire had been in Academy asked you to assess his designs. NARRATOR: He was also a keen follower of the latest fashion: NARRATOR: All her life Du Chtelet had tried to rise above the Well, I shall leave it to the experience of a few youthful Albert Einstein. S. JAMES GATES, JR.: Michael Faraday was someone who, like Einstein, infancy. haveOh, well, this child is obviously not mine, nor is it your husband's. She took drawing lessons so that In a recently published pamphlet by a brilliant young initially. recombine back into water. lot of his other classes. 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