In February 1919, two teams of astronomers from the Greenwich and Cambridge Observatories set off for Sobral and Principe (an island off the coast of Africa) in Brazil, carrying advanced equipment that could photograph the eclipse as it passed through May 29, South America, the Atlantic Ocean, and Africa. The purpose of this expedition, arranged by Frank Dyson of the Royal Greenwich Observatory and Arthur Eddington of Cambridge University, was to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, which was once thought to be Einstein's general theory of relativity. The book was published in 1915 and is still doubted by many scientists today.
This eclipse provides a rare opportunity to verify one of the fundamental results of general relativity, which is that gravity bends light. Einstein's theory** states that light rays passing through the vicinity of massive objects in space will bend significantly as they follow the space-time curve generated by the mass of the object. For light rays coming from distant stars and passing near the Sun's edge, Einstein calculated that its deflection is about 175 arc seconds.
Under normal circumstances, Einstein's ** would not have been verified, for the simple reason that sunlight flooded the light of nearby stars, making them invisible to observers on Earth. However, the darkness of the eclipse allows astronomers to observe and photograph the stellar regions around the Sun. By comparing ** with a reference image taken at night, it is possible to measure how much the presence of the sun bends the light of the star. Conveniently, during a solar eclipse, a cluster of bright stars called the Pyrostar cluster appears near the Sun.
On the day of the eclipse, the Principe team struggled with intermittent cloudy skies, and when the ** taken by the main telescope was out of focus, the Brazilian team had to resort to a backup telescope of lower quality. Eventually, though, both teams were able to produce the image.
After months of analysis, Eddington and Dyson announced in November that their findings supported the theory of general relativity. ** Breathlessly reported the news. The London Times declared a "scientific revolution". The New Cosmological Theory. Newton's ideas were overturned. The New York Times wrote: "The lights in the sky are all crooked. The news immediately catapulted Einstein, a well-known physicist, into the ranks of international celebrities. Coverage tends to focus on the esoteric nature of Einstein's work, emphasizing that only a few people in the world can understand it. It can be said that in 1919, Einstein's name became synonymous with superhuman intelligence, allowing the small industry of Einstein-themed goods to continue to this day.