Re: Einstein, Hawking, and a myth about relativity

[Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>]

The "myth" even traveled to semi-rural Utah in the 30's.  My mother told
me the rumor at the State Ag. College (Logan, now USU) was that the
Physics Prof. there was one of the few who understood Einstein's theory.

She also told me some of the students paid their tuition with a wagon
load of potatoes, etc.

bc

Hugh Haskell wrote:

> One of the little projects I got assigned in grad school was to
> analyze the data that Eddington got in 1919 that he was so sure
> verified Einstein's prediction of gravitational bending of light.
>
> It was not particularly difficult to see that, since the solar corona
> obscured the stars nearest to the sun, and only stars about three
> solar radii out or farther could be analyzed, that the errors
> inherent in the method were such that discriminating between the
> maximum of .75 (?) arc-sec predicted by Newton, and 1.75 (?) arc-sec
> predicted by Einstein was simply not possible. In fact, Eddington's
> data were not inconsistent with no bending, although zero was near
> the limits of the error bar. Fortunately for Eddington's reputation,
cut