Washington, DC – 08 November: A lunar eclipse of the Beaver’s blood moon is seen setting behind the SH.BA … [+]
In the early hours of the morning (the time of SH.BA) this Friday, March 14, the moon will make a journey through the umbrella shade of the Earth, displaying a reddish ocher color during the last lunar eclipse to blind the skywatchers in America.
What you may not know is that this moon of blood (nickname comes from that reddish tinge caused by the distribution of sunlight through the Earth’s atmosphere during a lunar eclipse) shares a special day with a scientific giant that built its legend in part due to another eclipse.
March 14 is also Albert Einstein’s birthday. The man who is probably more associated with the intellectual genius that everyone else in history was born in Germany on March 14, 1879.
Eclipse that made Einstein a real Einstein
Just over 40 years later in 1919, a team of scientists would document another total eclipse – this a solar eclipse – on both sides of the Atlantic. Sir’s team Arthur Eddington tried to take advantage of the darkness of the day provided by the eclipse to observe and photograph the closest stars for the sun at the moment. The whole purpose of the exercise was to test Einstein’s general relativity theory, presented by the theoretical developing physicist in 1915.
Brazil – April 27: Photography (Bromid printing) showing the instruments used by the British … [+]
Einstein’s theory revolutionized humanity’s understanding of gravity and cosmos. One of its main predictions was that massive bodies like the stars can literally bend the light passing near them. If true, it would mean that the position of the stars observed by the Earth would appear slightly shifted when they were close to the Sun from our point of view.
The general solar eclipse of May 29, 1919 gave an opportunity to prove the theory. Eddington did this only from two locations with good footage of the event, in Brazil and outside the West African coast. Not only did the resulting observations show that the stars near the Sun were moved as the general relativity predicted, but the measurement of how far the Einstein’s calculation was almost moved.
Brazil: Positive photograph of corona glass, taken at Sobral in Brazil, with a 4 year old telescope … [+]
The result was the rocket fuel for Einstein’s career, placing it in the trajectory to become the science titanium that we all know it today.
As far as I can say, the last general eclipse on Einstein’s birthday actually came before his birth in 1820 and another is not expected at all times this century. So this is likely to be our only opportunity to honor a great brain by seeing a total eclipse, even if it is not exactly the same type that catapulted it into history.