User talk:Carcharoth/Article incubator/Eddington experiment

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The best account on-wiki seems to be Tests of general relativity#Deflection of light by the Sun. The article mentioned there, Kepler problem in general relativity, turns out to be a general article about the mathematics of the general problem. I'm wondering what the best title for the experiment would be. Category:Physics experiments has articles closest to what I'm thinking of (though the Category:Experiments looks like it needs re-organising). I'm thinking either "experiment" or "expedition". We have Category:Scientific expeditions. The article could also focus on the eclipse, though that distracts from the expedition and experiments. Seeing as the article should cover the results and the impact and the later history, it should be "experiment". Maybe Eddington experiment and/or 1919 Solar Eclipse Expeditions? There are also (though less widespread) the names Dyson-Eddington experiment and Dyson-Eddington-Davidson experiment. People: Arthur Stanley Eddington, Frank Watson Dyson, Charles Rundle Davidson [1]. Paper: "F. W. Dyson, A. S. Eddington, and C. Davidson, Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. London. Series A 220 (1920) 291-333".

[edit] Some sources

[edit] Primary

  • Paper: "F. W. Dyson, A. S. Eddington, and C. Davidson, Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. London. Series A 220 (1920) 291-333"

[edit] Secondary

  • “An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War: 1919 Eclipse and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer,” Isis, 2003, 94: 57-89. Winner of the Schuman Prize from the History of Science Society. By Matthew Stanley.
  • Einstein's Jury: The Race to Test Relativity. Jeffrey Crelinsten. 397 pp. Princeton University Press, 2006.
  • Crelinsten, Jeffrey, Einstein's Jury: The Race to Test Relativity (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 2006).
  • MCS Eddington biography
  • Ian H Hutchinson article on Eddington
  • Lick Observatory role
  • Einstein, Eddington and the 1919 Eclipse, Coles, P., Journal: Historical Development of Modern Cosmology, ASP Conference Proceedings Vol. 252. Edited by Vicent J. Martínez, Virginia Trimble, and María Jesús Pons-Bordería. ISBN: 1-58381-092-7 San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2001., p.21 Bibliographic Code: 2001ASPC..252...21C
  • Ian McCausland article
  • Simon Singh article
  • Thoughts on the drama of science
  • J. Donald Fernie article, American Scientist, September-October 2005
  • Fernie, J. Donald, “Judging Einstein,” American Scientist, 93, 5, 404-407 (2005).
  • Account of Australian experiment in 1922
  • Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem, (ISBN 0521477360)
  • Collins, Harry & Trevor Pinch, The Golem At Large: What Everyone Should Know about Science (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1993, 1994).
  • Daniel Kennefick, "Not Only Because of Theory: Dyson, Eddington and the Competing Myths of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition," Proceedings of the 7th Conference on the History of General Relativity, Tenerife, 2005
  • Phillip Ball, "Arthur Eddington Was Innocent," Nature, 7 September 2007, doi:10.1038/news070903-20
  • A V Douglas, The life of Arthur Stanley Eddington (Edinburgh-New York, 1956)
  • Einstein, Hale and Eddington (search for 'eclipse')
  • Earman, John & Clark Glymour, “Relativity and Eclipses: The British Eclipse Expeditions of 1919 and Their Predecessors,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 11, 49-85 (1980).
  • Sponsel, Ailstair, “Constructing a &8216;Revolution in Science’: The Campaign to Promote a Favourable Response for the 1919 Solar Eclipse Experiments,” British Journal for the History of Science 35, 439-67 (2002).
  • Chandrasekhar, S., “Verifying the Theory of Relativity,” Bull. Atomic Sci. (1976); reprinted in Notes and Records of the Royal Society 30, 249–60 (1976).
  • Stachel, J., “Eddington and Einstein,” The Prism of Science, E. Ullmann-Margalit, ed. (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1986), p. 225-250.
  • von Klüber, H., “The Determination of Einstein's Light-Deflection in the Gravitational Field of the Sun, ”Vistas in Astronomy 3, 47-77 (1960)

[edit] Bibliographic

[edit] Also of interest

  • Talk:Predictive power
  • old page version:

    "One of the most famous cases of predictive power was the confirmation of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. The theory predicted that if photographs taken of the stars near the edge of the Sun during a solar eclipse were compared to photographs of the same stars when they were not near the Sun, a "bending" of their light by the Sun's gravitational field would be observed. The existing Newtonian theory of physics also -- for different reasons -- predicted some bending, but to a lesser degree. The prediction was made by Einstein in 1915 as a logical outcome of his theory, but it could not be tested until a solar eclipse on May 29, 1919, when observations were made by the astrophysicist Arthur Eddington which seemingly confirmed Einstein's predictions. The news was heralded throughout the world as a revolution in physics, as the Newtonian theory had been conclusively disproved.
    The historical reality of the eclipse experiment is more complicated than the textbook account, and highlights some of the problems involved in retrospectively applying a notion such as predictive power. The results of the eclipse observations were far from clear – they were taken at two remote locations (Sobral in Brazil and the Atlantic island of Príncipe) and thus they were forced to use telescopes that sacrificed accuracy in favour of portability. In addition, there were mitigating factors such as the Earth's slight rotation during the eclipse, and the temperature differences between day (when the eclipse pictures were taken) and night (when the control pictures were taken), which caused optical anomalies. From the start, the experiments were far from clear-cut, and relied on a series of assumptions and human judgements.
    Moreover, the data from the observations were not as conclusive as was professed. Two telescopes were used at Sobral; one produced 8 photographic plates which recorded a mean deviation from the norm of 1.98″ of arc (1 ″ = 1/3600th of a degree), and the other 18 plates with a mean deviation of 0.86″; the two plates from a single telescope at Principe, though of a poor quality, suggested a mean of 1.62″. Einstein's theory suggested a deviation of approximately 1.75″, while Newton's suggested 0.8″. If all the data had been included, the results would have been inconclusive at best, but Eddington discounted the results obtained from the second Sobral telescope, claiming "systematic error", and gave extra weight to the results from Principe (which he had personally recorded), with little justification or supporting evidence. The Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson, and the president of the Royal Society, J. J. Thomson, sided with Eddington, and on November 6 declared the evidence was decisively in favour of Einstein's theory; much of the scientific community fell in line and agreed. Nevertheless, there were many scientists at the time who felt there were good reasons to doubt whether the prediction had been accurately fulfilled, or whether the results did not have an alternative interpretation. Subsequent eclipse observations in the 1920s and 1930s failed to provide confirmation, although many other different experiments have since provided much stronger (but less dramatic) proof of relativity.
    The 1919 eclipse is one example used in science studies as a demonstration that scientific facts are in various ways constructed, or at least influenced, through a variety of assumptions, institutional forces, and interpersonal relations, and are rarely without expert dispute in their day."

    - needs to be checked carefully before being added.

[edit] Images

[edit] More ideas

  • Get a map showing the path of the eclipse.
  • Get a typical pictures showing the type of equipment and observations, even if one of the 1919 expedition is not possible.

Any more ideas? Carcharoth (talk) 21:42, 3 June 2008 (UTC)