Science: Crossroads

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For ages lost in the drifts of time, some of the most mysterious eyes on earth have stared cryptically toward tiny Bikini Atoll. On Easter Island, outrigger of the fleets of archipelagoes that ride the Pacific Ocean, a long file of stone colossi rear cold, immortal faces. No one knows what men carved these gigantic symbols, what hands, what primitive technology raised them, with what devotion or what fears. Whether they are gods or images of human greatness, they are menacing; they are monuments to the fact that man’s history can perish utterly from the earth.

Of all strange things that the Easter Island idols have looked out upon through the ages, the strangest was preparing last week. A world, with the power of universal suicide at last within its grasp, was about to make its first scientific test of that power. During the earliest favorable weather after July 1, two atom bombs would be exploded at Bikini Island. The first bomb (and the fourth ever to be detonated anywhere) would be dropped on 75 obsolete warcraft anchored in the Bikini lagoon. About three weeks later, a second atom bomb would be exploded under the surface of the lagoon.

Tremor of Finality. “Operation Crossroads” (the irony of the name is intentional) had been ordered by the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington, would be carried out under the command of Vice Admiral W.H.P. Blandy, Commander of the joint Army-Navy task force. Against the peaceful backdrop of palm frond and pandanus, on this most “backward” of islands, the most progressive of centuries would write in one blinding stroke of disintegration the inner meaning of technological civilization: all matter is speed and flame. Well might the stone giants embedded in the solid earth of Easter Island feel, in the far ripple of fission brought them by the waves, a tremor of finality.

On A-day the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, will take off from Kwajalein, 250 miles from Bikini. As it makes three trial runs over the orange-colored U.S.S. Nevada, takes readings of wind drift and adjusts the bomb sights, a loudspeaker will alert the whole area. Ten or more miles from the target, the operational ships will keep up steam in case the wind shifts. Aboard, some 40,000 men will lie down on the decks with their feet toward the blast and their eyes covered against blinding.

Then the Enola Gay will take off on its fourth and final run. The bomb bay will open. The bombardier, Major Harold Wood, before World War II a grocery clerk of Bordentown, N.J., will release the bomb.

The Genius. Through the incomparable blast and flame that will follow, there will be dimly discernible, to those who are interested in cause & effect in history, the features of a shy, almost saintly, childlike little man with the soft brown eyes, the drooping facial lines of a world-weary hound, and hair like an aurora borealis. He is Professor Albert Einstein, author of the Theory of Special Relativity, the Unified Field Theory, and a decisive expansion of Max Planck’s Quantum Theory, onetime director of Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Professor Emeritus at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, onetime Swiss citizen, onetime Enemy No.1 of Hitler’s Third Reich, now a U.S. citizen.

Albert Einstein did not work directly on the atom bomb. When the serpent of necessity hissed, the men and the woman who bit into the apple of scientific good & evil bore different names: Dr. Arthur Holly Compton, Dr. Enrico Fermi, Dr. Leo Szilard, Dr. H. C. Urey, Dr. Niels Bohr, Dr. J. R. Oppenheimer, et al. The woman was Dr. Lise Meitner, a German refugee.

But Einstein was the father of the bomb in two important ways: 1) it was his initiative which started U.S. bomb research; 2) it was his equation (E = mc2) which made the atomic bomb theoretically possible.

Late in 1939, after the German Panzers had driven through Poland, and the citizens of Hiroshima were still going quietly about their daily tasks, the little man who hates to write letters wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt. In it he stated his conviction that a controlled chain reaction of atomic fission (and hence the atom bomb) was now feasible, that the German Government was working on an atomic bomb, that the U.S. must begin research on the bomb at once or civilization would perish. Einstein enclosed a report by his friend, Dr. Leo Szilard, describing in more technical language how & why the bomb was possible. Franklin Roosevelt acted. Result: the Manhattan Project (TIME, Aug. 15), the bomb, the 125,000 dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the biggest boost humanity has yet been given toward terminating its brief history of misery and grandeur.

If any future civilizations should be left to con the records of the modern world, they will probably declare Albert Einstein the 20th Century’s greatest mind. Among 20th-century men, he blends to an extraordinary degree those highly distilled powers of intellect, intuition and imagination which are rarely combined in one mind, but which, when they do occur together, men call genius. It was all but inevitable that this genius should appear in the field of science, for 20th-Century civilization is first & foremost technological.

Pathetic Paradox. It is typical of the dilemma of this civilization that masses of men humbly accept the fact of Einstein’s genius, but only a handful understand in what it consists. They have heard that, in his Special and his General Theories of Relativity, Einstein finally explained the form and the nature of the physical universe and the laws governing it. They cannot understand his explanation. To a small elite of mathematicians and physicists, the score of equations in which Einstein embodied his picture of the universe and its functioning are as concrete as a kitchen table. To the layman they are as staggering as to be told, when he is straining to make out the smudge which is all he can see of the great cluster in the constellation Hercules, that the faint light that strikes his eye left its source 34,000 years ago.

Hence the pathetic paradox that Einstein’s discoveries, the greatest triumph of reasoning mind on record, are accepted by most people on faith. Hence the fact that most people never expect to understand more about Relativity than is told by the limerick:

There was a young lady called Bright,

Who could travel much faster than light;

She went out one day,

In a relative way,

And came back the previous night.

Newton’s Simple World. For 200 years before Einstein, physicists had faithfully followed a set of basic laws published by the great Sir Isaac Newton in 1687. Their faithfulness had paid off. Sir Isaac led them to many triumphs and promised them many more.

Newton’s laws were high-school simple. He assumed the existence of two independent entities—mass and force, which interacted as follows:

1) Every body (mass) continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, except so far as it may be compelled by force to change that state.

2) Any two bodies attract one another with a force (gravitation) which is proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them.

Upon these basic rules (and others closely related), physicists built an imposing structure of knowledge. They predicted the motions of the earth, the moon, the planets. They derived a maze of useful mechanical sub-laws. They explained the behavior of gases, and discovered the nature of heat. Newton’s laws did not account for everything, but the physicists felt that this was due to their own ignorance. Eventually, they were sure, all phenomena could be explained in Newton’s terms.

When conflicting facts were discovered by increasingly sensitive instruments, physicists tended to ignore them, or to explain them away by highly artificial creations. Most famous of these was the ether—a tenuous material supposed to fill all space. Ether was necessary (in Newtonian physics) for carrying light waves.

End of the Ether. The ether had another valuable property: it was at rest—”the calm ether-sea”—while everything else in the universe was in motion. Thus it provided the only stable “frame of reference.” The earth, for instance, was thought to have “absolute motion” through the motionless ether.

In 1887 came that dreadful day when the ether was done to death. Two U.S. physicists, Albert A. Michelson and E. W. Morley, measured the speed of light simultaneously in two directions at right angles to one another. The speeds were expected to differ slightly because of “ether drift” past the earth. They turned out to be exactly the same, proving conclusively that ether did not exist.

Loss of the ether left the physicists inconsolable. Without it, light waves had no medium to carry them. The vital “frame of reference” was gone. No motion was “absolute” now. The motion of every moving body could be measured only “relative” to some other moving body.

For nearly 20 years, the physicists worked hard to “save” the ether. But the ether could not be saved, and with it went the authority of Newton’s scientific decalogue, which depended upon it. Science, the guiding mind of technological civilization, was in crisis.

Albert Einstein, then an unknown clerk in a Swiss patent office, rescued science. In his Theory of Special Relativity (1905) he abandoned Newton’s assumption of independent mass and force. In its place he put the assumption, well supported by observation, that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, no matter what the speed of its source.

This assumption was the heart of Relativity. When properly developed, mathematically, it led to astonishing conclusions, some of them (like many scientific facts) “contrary to common sense.” Suppose, for instance, that the earth is moving at many feet per second toward a star. This approaching motion does not increase the arrival speed of the star’s light, which strikes the earth at exactly the same speed (186,000 miles per second) as if the earth were at rest. Expressed in an equation, it looks like this:

186,000 m p s &velocity of earth = 186,000 m p s

Even if the earth speeds toward the star at 100,000 m p s, it makes no difference :

186,000 m p s & 100,000 m p s = 186.000 m p s

Slow Clocks, Heavy Matter. Obviously, something is wrong, for even Relativity does not abolish simple arithmetic. Einstein’s daring conclusion was that only the speed of light is invariable. When the speed of a body changes, its dimensions and its mass and its time also change. As it speeds up, it shrinks (in the direction of the motion); its clocks slow down; its matter grows heavier. If the earth were to reach a speed of 161,000 m p s, every pound of matter in it would double in weight.

Observers on the speeded-up earth would not know that anything had changed.

But with their slowed-down clocks and their shrunken yardsticks, they would measure the arriving starlight in such a way that its speed would come out 186,000 m. p s. Under Relativity, the “absurd” equations above are not absurd.

Shrunken yardsticks are hard to measure, but the increase of mass which Einstein predicted in 1905 has been observed ac curately. Certain material particles shot out by radium move at 185,000 m p s, almost the speed of light. When they are weighed in flight (by a magnetic device), their mass is shown to have increased ac cording to his prediction.

W’hat makes the mass increase? A fast-moving body, Einstein proved mathe matically, has more energy, and energy has mass. Thus the mass of a moving body is its “rest-mass” plus the mass of the energy it contains.

This was a revolutionary concept. If energy can turn into mass by speeding up a moving body, then mass, perhaps, can turn into energy. “Certainly,” said Einstein. “Mass, including the mass of all matter, is merely another form of energy.” In his famous equation, he gave their equivalent values: E = mc2.*This meant that every pound of any kind of matter contained as much energy as is given off by the explosion of 14 million tons of TNT. It took the world 40 years (until Hiroshima) to appreciate this shocker.

Photons and Quanta. In that same year, 1905, Einstein advanced another theory which many historians of science consider even more important than Relativity. The ether was gone, and although Relativity established the velocity of light as the firmest figure in the universe, it did not supply any medium to carry the waves of light.

At that time nearly all physicists agreed that light consisted of waves whose properties had been observed in great detail. The old theory (favored by Newton) that light was speeding corpuscles had been abandoned. But the theory had one great advantage: corpuscles can move through space by themselves. Unlike waves, they need no medium to carry them.

Einstein’s solution of this dilemma was characteristically bold. “Light,” he said, “is both corpuscles and waves.” A light ray is a shower of energy particles called “photons” whose energy increases with the wave frequency of the light.

Out of this simple but daring idea developed the supremely important knowledge that energy comes in small, discontinuous “quanta” analogous to the atoms of matter and the electrons of electricity.

Gravitation and Starlight. “Special Relativity,” though it stood many rigorous tests, was not accepted at once. For ten years Einstein worked, extending his theory to cover more varied “frames of reference.” In 1915, he published his “General Relativity.” It explained the force of gravitation itself, which Newton had merely pointed out.

Here was a chance for a final, convincing test. According to Einstein, light carried energy. Therefore it had mass. Therefore rays of light from a star should be bent by a definite amount when they passed through the strong gravitational field near the sun. A convenient solar eclipse provided the opportunity to test the theory. Star images near the rim of the blacked-out sun were displaced by almost exactly the amount which Einstein predicted, proving that their rays had been bent.

From that day, Relativity was the basic law of the universe. Einstein’s photons, too, grew into the head-splitting Quantum Mechanics, which teaches that all matter is nothing but waves, crossing and interacting! Little by little, both theories have worked their way into nearly all branches of science.

The end of the physical revolution which Einstein started is not yet in sight. Perhaps it will stop itself—suddenly—in mid-development under the impact of that equation, E = mc2, which inspired the nuclear physicists to turn small bits of matter into world-shaking energy.

If the atom bomb blasted the last popular skepticism about Einstein’s genius it also blasted man’s complacent pride in the power of unaided intellect. At the very moment that it was finally mastered, matter was most elusive and most menacing.

The fateful mind behind the bomb was born into the world it was to change so greatly, at Ulm, Germany, in 1879.

Einstein’s father was an unsuccessful merchant turned unsuccessful electrical engineer.

The boy was painfully shy, introsoective, and so slow in learning to speak that his parents feared he was subnormal. At school he was a poor student. But he learned to improvise on the piano, and used to make up religious songs which he would hum in his own room where no one could hear him.

At 13, Albert was reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Soon he discovered Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

In 1895, Einstein took the entrance examinations for the Polytechnicum in Zurich, Switzerland. He failed, but got in a year later. At Zurich he completed his formal scientific education, became fast friends with the Austrian Socialist leader, political assassin and physicist, Friedrich Adler.

After graduation Einstein became a Swiss citizen, later married the Serbian mathematician, Mileva Marech, by whom he had two sons.

Patent Applied For. For two years Einstein earned a wretched living by tutoring. Then he got an obscure job as patent examiner in the Bern patent office. He worked there for seven years. They were among his most productive, theoretically. Scribbling his ideas on scraps of paper, which he thrust out of sight whenever a supervisor approached, Einstein developed his Theory of Special Relativity, which he published without fanfare under the modest title: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.

Relativity had been born, and among scientists the patent clerk was already famous. Soon he became a lecturer at Bern University, then extraordinary professor of physics at the University of Zurich. He taught for a year at the University of Prague, and in the most medieval city in Europe continued his development of the General Theory of Relativity (published in 1915).

One year before World War I, Max Planck (Quantum Theory) used his influence to have Einstein appointed professor at Berlin’s Academy of Sciences. One of his duties was managing the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Research. Since Einstein would not relinquish his Swiss citizenship, the Prussian Government gave him honorary citizenship.

The American. After Hitler came to power, Einstein went first to Belgium and England, then to the U.S. In 1940 he became a U.S. citizen. In the U.S. he has continued to work on his Unified Field Theory, which he hopes will bridge the gap between his Relativity Theory and the Quantum Theory, thus producing a universal law of nature. There is a story that as he was crossing the Princeton campus one day with Dr. Abraham Flexner, head of the Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein said: “I think I am on the verge of my greatest discovery.” A few weeks later he asked Flexner: “Do you remember that I told you that I was about to make my greatest discovery?” “Yes,” said Flexner, “I wonder how I restrained myself from asking you what it was.” “Well,” said Einstein, “it didn’t pan out.”

In Princeton, Einstein lives with simplicity in a prim, box-shaped frame house, with a wistaria vine shrouding the front porch. Until her death in 1936, his second wife (and cousin), Elsa, was the female Fafnir who guarded his peace, seclusion and his household accounts. It was Elsa who managed his swelling correspondence (20 letters on dull days, hundreds in season), kept off nosy newshawks and curious neighbors. The Einsteins loved music but did not approve of jazz. One neighbor, a friendly woman who was a great chess enthusiast and had heard that Einstein was too, dropped in to offer to play. “Chezz!” cried Elsa Einstein, who spoke English with a pronounced accent

—”There shall be no chezz in this house.”

Einstein works in an austerely simple room with no instrument but a pencil. He has never made a, laboratory experiment, though he likes to pad around the Institute’s laboratory, and make suggestions for improving the apparatus. When people explain to him why the improvement will not improve, he says sadly: “Ja, Ja, I see that it will not work.”

The Navigator. He likes to play the fiddle (favorite composers: Bach, Mozart), and to sail a boat. In sailing, his system is to set the sail, make it fast, and with no thought of velocity or energy, loll back while the boat drifts. He smokes a pipe, but never drinks.

Einstein is probably happiest among children, with whom he loses all his shyness and whom he keeps in gales of laughter. His kindness to children is proverbial. One little Princeton girl used this to good advantage: she got him to do her arithmetic homework for her. When suspected, she confessed simply: “Einstein did it for me.”

Einstein was once violently pacifist. In 1930 he wrote: “. . . That vilest offspring of the herd mind—the odious militia. . . .” After Hitler, his thoughts became somewhat more martial. He is also a Zionist (“The Jew is most happy if he remains a Jew”), an internationalist (“Nationalism is the measles of mankind”). Einstein claims that he is a religious man (“Every really deep scientist must necessarily have religious feeling”). But he does not believe in the immortality of the soul.

Blast Shock. Last week Professor Einstein seemed suffering from blast shock from the bomb he had fathered. In the New York Times he warned Americans that “There is no foreseeable defense against atomic bombs. . . . Scientists do not even know of any field which promises us any hope of adequate defense.” The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, of which Einstein is chairman, frantically appealed for $200,000 to educate people to “a new type of thinking … if mankind is to survive and move toward a higher level.”

Mankind, in general less apocalyptic, scarcely knew what to think or do. Most of them were inclined to accept the bomb stolidly—like an earthquake, an act of God. Few were even yet willing to accept Oswald Spengler’s bracing pessimism about the age: “There is no question of prudent retreat or wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice.” But there was a growing sense that the Brothers de Goncourt had been grimly farsighted when they wrote in their Journal (in 1870):

“They were saying that Berthelot had predicted that a hundred years from now, thanks to physical and chemical science, men would know of what the atom is constituted. … To all this we raised no objection, but we have the feeling that when this time comes in science, God with His white beard will come down to earth, swinging a bunch of keys, and will say to humanity, the way they say at 5 o’clock at the Salon, ‘Closing time, gentlemen.'”

* E=mc2, with E standing for energy expressed in ergs, m the mass in grams, and c the speed of light in centimeters per second