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Artist’s impression of the very distant quasar ULAS J1120+0641, with a mass two billion times that of the sun. Quasars like these are now used to test general relativity using radio waves, which can be detected in daylight.
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European Southern Observatory /M. Kornmesser, public domain
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MCCARTNEY 1. “Conan” channel 4. ____ horse (gymnastics apparatus) 10. State that’s produced 25 astronauts, according to NASA 14. Location of Schlemm’s canal 15. Protect in glass, say 16. Boot 17. Stewie’s sister on “Family Guy” 18. Rachael Ray offering 19. God holding a thunderbolt 20. He recalled that, as a boy, his father told him 36-/45-/55-Across 23. ____-hugger 24. Clinch, as a deal 25. Grammy category 20-Across won for cowriting 1966’s “Michelle” 34. From the States: Abbr.
ANSWERS NEXT WEEK!
DOWN 35. La Scala performance 36. With 45- and 55-Across, a quote told to 20-Across from his father 43. Palindromic boy’s name 44. Pick a card 45. See 36-Across 51. Towing org. 52. Tonto prortrayer in 2013’s “The Lone Ranger” 55. See 36-Across 61. “This is a priority!” 63. “Bones” actress Taylor 64. Darth, in his boyhood 65. Vitriol 66. Insinuated 67. Some pulse takers, for short 68. First place? 69. Baker and Hill 70. ____ Moines
1. Lure 2. How some learn music 3. Transitions 4. Salon offering 5. Ten sawbucks 6. DCL doubled 7. Mother of Hermes 8. ____ de corps 9. 2009 Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Brian 10. Primordial stuff 11. UH-1 helicopter, in slang 12. Terre Haute sch. 13. Game extenders: Abbr. 21. He played Jay in 2013’s “The Great Gatsby” 22. At birth 26. Palindromic girl’s name 27. Big inits. in Detroit 28. Across, in odes 29. Protagonist bound for Mordor 30. Chairman ____ (NBA nickname) 31. Mess up 32. Help 33. Univ. dorm supervisors 36. Auction unit
LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS TO LINKEDIN M C V P D A F W D A V E R A I D E R S R E D T E X B R A I N J U R I E S A R P I N C A N U N L A L B A G E O L O M E G A N A A N M A I N G R E D I E N T S B E T S R E T I E S S S S S S S M C A D A M S C O O K E B E E N A L G O N Q U I N D I A N T O G A U N D U E B O R E H A I L A R E S A V O R I C E S K I N F E C T I O N N T S R E P S E L E C T S G S T I R E U N C E S T
37. Addis Ababa is its capital: Abbr. 38. Brunched, say 39. Scheider of “Jaws” 40. “No seating” letters on Broadway 41. :-( 42. Hulk Hogan’s ‘80s-’90s org. 46. Former German president Johannes 47. Kitt who sang “Santa Baby” 48. “Sir ____ and the Green Knight” 49. Prefix with meter 50. “Wanted” poster offer 53. Pasta salad ingredient 54. Overly prim person 55. Elihu for whom an Ivy is named 56. Unfurl 57. Big name in luxury hotels 58. Hair band with the hit “Round and Round” 59. De Matteo of “The Sopranos” 60. Sites for mice 61. Homer Simpson’s dad 62. Caesar of comedy EASY #28
www.sudoku.com
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Field notes
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©2013 DAVID LEVINSON WILK
CROSSWORD By David Levinson Wilk
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Einstein, Newton and the Eclipse of 1919 Part 3 of 3 By Barry Evans
fieldnotes@northcoastjournal.com
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ast week, we saw how photographs taken during the total solar eclipse of 1919 were said to confirm Albert Einstein’s 1916 “General Relativity” theory of gravity, even though one of the three datasets — which ran counter to Einstein — was discarded. Until other ways of testing General Relativity were devised, few scientists voiced what, in retrospect, is obvious: Measuring the deflection of starlight near the sun during a total eclipse is a terrible way of testing the General Theory of Relativity! It’s inexact, it depends on perfect visibility, it can be thrown off by moisture in the atmosphere, refraction and a hundred other variables, and it’s subject to interpretation by fallible (and probably biased) humans. Only in the 1970s did radio telescopes easily verify Einstein’s prediction for space curvature by measuring the deflection of radio signals (detectable in broad daylight!) from distant quasars. In 1980, historians John Earman and Clark Glymour published a scholarly paper in Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, in which they took a long, hard look at the events preceding the November 1919 announcement of the expeditions’ results. They concluded that Eddington, in his zeal to champion what he called Einstein’s “beautiful and profound theory,” had fudged the results, tossing the “bad” (counter to Einstein) dataset because it didn’t fit his preconceived beliefs. Had these data been used, Earman and Glymour surmised, the conclusion from the 1919 eclipse expeditions would have been much more nuanced, with no clear “winner” in the Newton vs. Einstein “duel in the sun.” Subsequently, John Waller’s popular science book Einstein’s Luck popularized this revisionist history. Waller’s title sums up the new thesis: Einstein was lucky. The publicized results from the eclipse could easily
have gone the other way, had not Eddington been biased in favor of Einstein. Fortunately for the history of science and Eddington’s reputation, not everyone was wholly satisfied with Earman and Glymour’s version of the 1919 events. University of Arkansas physicist Daniel Kennefick undertook a re-reinterpretation and concluded that Eddington was not involved in the decision to discount the pro-Newton, anti-Einstein data. The Sobral expedition had been launched by the Greenwich Observatory, and it was there, under the supervision of the skeptical Frank Dyson and independently of Eddington, that the decision was made. The telescope in question had lost focus during the eclipse (probably due to a sharp drop in temperature) resulting in what was (in 1919) an insurmountable scaling problem. One final irony: Kennefick discovered that the problem plates had been reanalyzed, without fanfare, in 1979 using modern computerized astrometric (star-measuring) equipment. Remember how Einstein’s theory predicted a 1.75 second displacement for starlight “grazing” the sun, half that of the old Newtonian theory of gravity? Dyson’s team at Greenwich had measured a mean shift from the discarded out-of-focus data of 0.93 seconds, favoring Newton. When reanalyzed with modern equipment (which eliminated most sources of error), the shift was an Einstein-compatible 1.55 plus-orminus 0.34 seconds! In other words, if those doughty astronomers of 1919 had magically been given access to today’s tools, they would have seen that all three sets of data unambiguously supported Einstein’s model of gravity. l Barry Evans (barryevans9@yahoo.com) was originally introduced to Eddington’s writings by his aunt, a fellow Quaker.
northcoastjournal.com • North Coast Journal • Thursday, Jan. 2, 2014
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