tEENtury dreo a close, stists could reflect isfa tt of teries of tricity, magism,gases, optics, acoustics, kiics, and statistical mee just a feron, andradioactivity, ied tt, ttle erg.

        If a ted, accelerated, perturbed, distilled, bined, yand majestic t ill tend to e t in capitals: tromagic Field t, Ris, C, tions, andoting. truments t ty    t for sce to do.

        In 1875, eo matics or to p ily not to cury, ion and refi, not revolution. Planck didn’t listen. udiedtical po ropy, a process at t of to ious young man.

        1In 1891 s and learo    tant ropy been done already, in tance by a retiring sc Yale Uy namedJ. illard Gibbs.

        Gibbs is per brilliant person t most people    tot of near invisibility, ually t from t studying in Europe, icut. For    ten years at Yale    even botodrao tracted an average of sligudent asemester. ten    to folloe form of notationt many found inpre buried among ions    brilliance.

        In 1875–78, Gibbs produced a series of papers, collectively titledOn terogeneous Substances , t dazzlingly elucidated t is a measure of randomness or disorder in a system. Darrell Ebbing, ibook GeneralCry, very usefully suggests t of tand in sequence from ace to king,    be said to be in its ordered state. S tate. Entropy is a     state is and of determining ticular outes o ionspublisable journal you o uand additional cepts sucies, lattice distances, and stoicric relations ts the general idea.

        nearly everytures, surfaces, solids, piorocation, and osmosis,” to quote illiam    Gibbs did    apply simply to    and energy at t of large and noisy scale of team engine, but    and iial at tomic level of s. Gibbs’s Equilibrium    for reasons t defy speculation Gibbs co publisions in transas of ticut Academy of Arts and Sces,a journal t mao be obscure even in ecticut, oo late.

        Undaunted—uro otters.

        2e surnto t, but first    make a slig relevant!) detour toCleveland, Oitution t of early middle years named Albert Miced by    Eds t produced curious anddisturbis t ions for muc followed.

        Mic actually intending to, anding belief in sometable, invisible, unately    to permeate tes, embraced by Need by nearly everyoneever siion of absolute trality in eentury p traveled across tiness of space. It    aromagism ypes of vibrations. Vibrations must occur in sometiion to, ae as 1909, t Britis J. J. ting:

        “t a fantastic creation of tive p is as essential to us aster it ty intestably establis it did. People, in s, taco ther.

        If you o illustrate teentury America as a land of opportunity,you could    Mico a family of poor Jeed States    and greo pay for college, raveled to ason, D.d took to l by t door of te     Ulysses S. Grant utional. (It    age.) In tiated ot t Grant agreed to secure for    t Michelson learned his physics.

        ten years later, by ed in trying to measure somet—a kind of s as tions ofNe as it pusen unlucky in life.     orld ar.    to look after ters er sy-five, an Allied bomb fell oime of accumulations. t in aspiracy to assassinate ler and executed.

        respect to an observer depending on    or a, but no one    a o measure t occurred toMic for raveling to ismoving a, and    if you took careful enougs atopposite seasons and pared ligravel time betwo, you would have youranswer.

        Micalked Alexander Graor of telepoproviding to build an ingenious aive instrument of Micerferometer, ed by t sidious measurements. te and exing, and o be suspended fora time to permit Mipre by 1887 ts. t at all ists ed to find.

        As Caltecrop Kip S. tten: “t turned out to betions and at all seasons.” It     in t Neimeevery famous ive result in tory of p Ameri so    not for tyyears. Meanysmell, in tific t.

        Remarkably, ae ietury da an end,urrets and pino be added, a feo be carved,” in ter in Nature.

        In fact, of course, t to enter a tury of sd anytand everytists    in a beicles and antiparticles, en spans of time t make nanoseds look plodding and uful,ranspireness on scales far belos of imaginioeum age, and t person to pusunateMax Planck.

        In 1900, noical p at ty of Berlin and at tadvanced age of forty-tum ted tenergy is not a tinuous ter but es in individualized packets,, and a good one. In t term it ion to ts in t itdemonstrated t lig be a er all. In term it ion for t    all events, t clue t t to ge.

        But t—t ion, no access to a laboratory, a of tional patent offi Bern, o be promoted to tecly beeed.) Einstein, and in t oful year ted to Annalen derPo C. P. S in tory of poelectric effect by means of Planck’s icles in suspension (ion), and olining a special tivity.

        t s auture of ligomake television possible, among othings).

        3t atoms doindeed exist—a fact t e. the world.

        Einstein    grele io e. Famously    learn to speak until rical business failing, to Milan, butAlbert, by noeenager,    to Szerland to tinue ion—trance exams on t try. In 1896 izensoavoid military scription aered tecitute on a four-year coursedesigo c eac but not outstandingstudent.

        In 1900 ed and o tribute papers toAnnalen der P paper, on traum to 1904 atistical meco discover t tlyproductive J. illard Gibbs in ecticut    atistical Meics of 1901.

        At time udent, a    of    up foradoptioein never saer, s, in 1902, Eiook a job ent office,    seven years.     so co distract    y in 1905.

        Called “On trodynamioving Bodies,” it is one of t extraordinarystific papers ever publis ed as for    said. It notes or citations, tained almost no matics, made ion of any    , and ao one individual, a3Einstein ;for services to tical p; o    sixteen years, till1921, to receive te a long time, all t not all pared ected trino in 1957 but    il 1995, ty-eiger, ort Ruska, ron microscope in 1932 and received ury after t. Sinobel Prizes are never ay    be asimportant a factor as iy for prizewinners.

        colleague at tent offiamed Mic e C. P. Snoein“, unaided,    listening to to a surprisingly large extent, t is precisely w he had done.”

        ion, E =mc2, did not appear    came in a brief supplementt folloer. As you andsfor energy, m for mass, and c2for t squared.

        In simplest terms, ion says is t mass and energy have an equivalence.

        ted matter; matter is energy ing to times itself) is a truly enormous number, ion is saying is t t—a really —of energy bound upin every material thing.

        4You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you ain    frame ential energy—enougoexplode y very large oliberate it and really . Everytrapped. e’re just not very good at getting it out. Even a uranium bomb—teic t—releases less t of t couldrelease if only we were more ing.

        Among mu’s tion ant streams of    melting a could do it by verting mass to energy extremely effitly à laE =mc2.) Itexplained ars could burn for billions of years    rag tto.)At a stroke, in a simple formula, Einstein endos and astronomers    t ant and supreme. Notake it. It broug (no pun intended, exactly) tot of our uanding of ture of t ially, it alsosolved t clear t it did. Einsteingave us a universe t didn’t .

        Ps as a rule are not overatteo ts of Sent officeclerks, and so, despite tidings, Einstein’s papers attracted little notice.

        solved several of t mysteries of tein applied for a jobas a uy lecturer and ed, and teacedt back to    of course t even e close to finis.

        Paul Valéry once asked Einstein if    a notebook to record ein looked at    genuine surprise. “O’s not necessary,” he replied.

        “It’s so seldom I    out t    teo begood. Einstein’s    idea est t a, acc to Boorse, Motz, and eaver in tful ory of atomic sce.

        4o be t is sometery, but David Bodanis suggests itprobably came from tin celeritas, meaning sness. t volume of tionary, piled a decade before Einsteins to cricket, but makes ion of it as a symbol fness.

        “As tion of a single mind,” te, “it is undoubtedly t intellectualac of y,” .

        In 1907, or so it imes been ten, Albert Einstein sao t gravity. Alas, like many good stories to beapocrypo Eiing in a cy occurred to him.

        Actually, o Einstein ion toty, si    to set t oy.     t itdealt ially unimpeded state. But acle sucy? It ion t of t decade ao tion in early1917 of a paper entitled “ological siderations on tivity.”

        tivity of 1905 ant piece of    as C. P. Snoein    t of it ing to    toget it,” e Sno is likely t ing for today.”

        itrified ein oo splendida figure to remain permaly obscure, and in 1919, t at once ivity developed a reputation for beingimpossible for an ordinary person to grasp. Matters    sout in imes decided to do a story, and—forreasons t ever fail to excite    t, oneo duct terview.

        Crouc of    nearly everyting errors in    ioein o publis only t tion stuyway.

        Soon tivity ion—and tific establis, it must be said, did little to disturb th.

        asked tisronomer Sir Arton if it rue t aein’s relativity ton sidered deeply for a moment and replied: “I am trying to t, tivity    t it involved a lot of differentialequations, Lorentz transformations, and oted matics (t did—eveein needed ), but t it    so tuitive.

        In essence ivity says is t spad time are not absolute, but relative to boto ter one moves ts bee. e ever accelerate ourselves to t, and try (and faster orted ive to an outside observer.

        Almost at once popularizers of sce tried to e up o make tsaccessible to a general audience. One of ttempts—ercially atleast—ivity by ti and prand Russell. Init, Russell employed an image t imes since. oenvision a train one    60 pert of t. tosomeoanding on a platform c pass, train o be only eig    too slos rain o be running at only four-fiftheir normal speed.

        rain ions. to train e normal. It form o do, you see, ioive to t.

        t actually ime you move. Fly across ted States, and youep from tbely alter your oime and space. It ed t a baseball t a s o e. So ts of relativityare real and    suall tomake ti detectable differeo us. But for ot,gravity, tself—tters of sequence.

        So if tivity seem    is only because    experies ofiions in normal life. o turn to Bodanis agaiivity—for instance o sound. If you are in a park and someoneis playing annoying music, you kno if you move to a more distant spot ter. t’s not because ter, of course, but simply t your positioive to it o sometoo small or sluggiso duplicate t a boom box could seem to to produce tvolumes of music simultaneously might seem incredible.

        t cuitive of all ts in tivityis t time is part of space. Our instinct is tard time as eternal, absolute,immutable—noturb its steady tick. In fact, acc to Einstein, time is variableand ever c even    is bound up—“iricably interected,” inStepime.

        Spacetime is usually explained by asking you to imagine somet but pliant—amattress, say, or a s of stretg a , suc of terial on ting to stretcly. to t t a massive object sucime (terial): it streto, it tries to go in a straigon’slaion, but as it nears t and t rollsdoably drao t. ty—a product of time.

        Every object t es a little depression in t it, is “timate sagging mattress.” Gravity on te—“not a ‘force’ but a byproduct of time,” in t Micy does ; s and stars is tortion of spadtime.”

        Of course ttress analogy    take us only so far because it doesn’tincorporate t of time. But take us only so far because it is sonearly impossible to envision a dimension prising ts space to one part time, allinter all events, I t t for a young man staring out tent offi tal of Szerland.

        Among mu’s general tivity suggested t tbe eitrag. But Einstein    a ologist, a ternal. More or less reflexively, o ions sometant, erbalas of gravity, serving as a kind of matical pause button. Bookson tory of sce alein t it ually a fairlyappalling piece of sd .    “t blunder of my life.”

        tally, at about time t Einstein ant to    tory in Arizona, an astronalaame of Vesto Slip from Indiana) aking spectrograpant stars and disc t to be moving a static. tars Slip sakable signs of a Doppler s5—t distinctive stretc yee-yummm sound cars make as t on a racetrack. to lig is knoorum; approac ss to blue).

        Slip to notice t    and to realize its potential importancefor uanding tions of tunately no one muciced ory, as you    of an oddity to Percival Loian als, post ofastronomical endeavor. Slipein’s tivity, and t.

        Glory instead o a large mass of ego named Eder Einstein, in a small Missouri toon, Illinois, a suburb of Cive, so life able, and Eds, t and gifted ate, d immensely good-looking—“ to a fault,” in tion of illiam ian Doppler, an Austrian p, iced t in 1842. Briefly,    approacationary os sound    as you    of anyt is beingpuso. tener as a kind of pinced sound (t aco drop abruptly (the yummm).

        Adonis” in to s, ofit into ant acts of valor—resg droy across ttlefields of France, embarrassing s. It all seemed too good to be true. It was.

        For all s, erate liar.

        ttle odd, for in t    times almost ludicrously golden. At a single rack meetin 1906, , s put, discus, andi is seven first places i—and came in t a state record for the highjump in Illinois.

        As a sd rouble gaining admission to studypronomy at ty of Cally, tment    Miced to be one of t R Oxford. tly turned uroon in 1913 alking und at—not quite Britis not quite not—t h him for life.

        ter claimed to    of tury practiglaucky, in fact eacball coacedly attaining orate and passing briefly tid almost certainly never    fired in anger.)In 1919, noy, o California and took up a position at tilson Observatory near Los Angeles. Sly, and more ttle uedly,    outstanding astronomer of tietury.

        It is    to sider just tle    time. Astrooday believe the visible universe.

        t’s a    o suppose. Ifgalaxies    orium—tonGarden, say, or t rop named Bruce Gregory uallyputed t put o t o us ly oo be eit of tself or one of many distant, peripheral puffs of gas.

        rated    belief was.

        Over t decade, ackled t fual questions of t, and o ans is necessary to knoain galaxies are and    t is knoy). t gives t doesn’t tell us o begin    you need andard dles”—stars ed and used asbeneasure tness (and ive distance) of otars.

        o e along soon after an ingenious a St    a o do so. Leavitt    tory asa puter, as ters spent tudying pograpes ofstars and making putations— tle more t it    to real astronomy at tymucem, ain uedbes: it meant t    minds available ed to    tracted little reflective attention, and it e ion of tructure of t often eluded terparts.

        One er, Annie Jump on, used itive acquaintance ars to devise a system of stellar classifications so practical t it is still ioday.

        Leavitt’s tribution    a type of star kion Cep first ified) pulsated ellar beat. Cepe rare, but at least one of to most of us. Polaris, tar, is a Cepheid.

        e no Cepars t    tronomers, and bee redgiants. try iants is a little ion for ties of singly ionized oms, among quite a lot else), but putsimply it means t t produces a very rening and dimming. Leavitt’s genius o realize t by paring tive magnitudes of Cep different points in t o eadard dles”—a term sill in universal use. tive distances, not absolute distances,but even so it    time t anyone o measure thelarge-scale universe.

        (Just to put ts into perspective, it is pering t at time Leavittand on al properties of tograpes, tronomer illiam o a first-class telescope as often as ed, g is.)binit’s ic yardstick o Slips, Eded points in space    a puffof distant gossamer iion kno a gas cloud at allbut a blaze of stars, a galaxy in its oleast nine -years aer—vastly vaster—tin for “clouds,” ed not just of t of lots of indepe galaxies—“islanduniverses”—many of tant.

        tation, but uro tion of    just er triking discovery. o measure tra of distant galaxies—tSlip ilson’s ne all t for our oer) are moving aance lyproportional: ter it was moving.

        truly startling. tly and evenly in all dires. Itdidn’t take a    of imagination to read back it musttarted from some tral point. Far from being table, fixed, eternal voidt everyone     migherefore also have an end.

        teped, is t no one    on tatiiverse, as so Neronomer since, self. t if stars ely in a statiiverse tolerably —certainly mucoo    for t a stroke.

        ter observer t immediately appreciate tions of    ofEinstein’s General tivity. te remarkable because, for oein and    Micill one of t alert aeemed stists—accepted a position at Mount ilson to measure ty of ligrustyinterferometer, and must surely    least mentioo y of Einstein’sto his own findings.

        At all events, o make tical ead, it to a Belgian priest-samed Gees Lema?tre t togetrands i trical point, a “primeval atom,” o glory and    ever si    very ly anticipated tion of t ime t Lema?tre seldom gets moretence or t ent discovery of ic background radiation by Penzias and ilsonat tenna in Neo move fromiing idea to establisheory.

        ein    big story. t at time, bot as muco do.

        In 1936 tering style s.    last ed ein’s to a point any of about two hundred.

        atta 1953. One last small oddity aed ery, o    sury later ts of tury’s greatest astronomer remainunkno look to telescope,launched in 1990 and named in his honor.
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