1 00:00:13,544 --> 00:00:16,006 I never think of the future. 2 00:00:19,615 --> 00:00:22,013 I find that it comes soon enough. 3 00:00:32,443 --> 00:00:36,816 In Spring 1951 the most famous scientist in the world 4 00:00:37,216 --> 00:00:41,136 celebrated his 72nd birthday. 5 00:00:41,404 --> 00:00:44,850 A horde of photographers were waiting to take his picture. 6 00:00:45,343 --> 00:00:48,095 Hey Professor, hey Professor. 7 00:00:50,298 --> 00:00:56,431 And when he appeared that day he created one of the most endearing images of the twentieth century. 8 00:01:03,153 --> 00:01:07,106 Playful, irreverent, enigmatic and brilliant: 9 00:01:08,816 --> 00:01:13,772 Albert Einstein was the physicist with the fame of an 'A' list movie star. 10 00:01:16,126 --> 00:01:21,182 When I was young all I wanted and expected from life 11 00:01:21,724 --> 00:01:27,599 was to sit in some corner doing my work without the public paying attention to me. 12 00:01:28,658 --> 00:01:32,641 And now see what has become of me. 13 00:01:36,857 --> 00:01:43,564 But behind that public image the greatest scientist on earth was facing professional ridicule. 14 00:01:51,184 --> 00:01:56,808 This is the extraordinary story of how Albert Einstein spent the last years of his life 15 00:01:57,577 --> 00:02:01,896 battling to destroy the consequences of his own work. 16 00:02:02,795 --> 00:02:07,735 It was a quest that would end in his failure and isolation. 17 00:03:15,581 --> 00:03:18,419 Professor Einstein? 18 00:03:21,588 --> 00:03:23,556 Professor Einstein? 19 00:03:29,686 --> 00:03:32,080 Hello Professor Einstein. 20 00:03:40,629 --> 00:03:44,427 Miss... My notes? 21 00:03:45,671 --> 00:03:51,006 Professor, I... OK, but just for a while. 22 00:03:55,394 --> 00:03:56,723 Thank you. 23 00:04:03,793 --> 00:04:10,286 Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of our age, was nearly at the end of his life. 24 00:04:17,394 --> 00:04:19,724 Great theories were behind him, 25 00:04:20,926 --> 00:04:25,536 but as he lay on his deathbed he continued working on what he hoped would be 26 00:04:26,096 --> 00:04:28,187 his greatest theory of all. 27 00:04:29,144 --> 00:04:31,935 It would have been the holy grail of science. 28 00:04:32,381 --> 00:04:33,920 It would have been the philosopher's stone, 29 00:04:34,280 --> 00:04:37,718 it would have been the crowning achievement of all scientific endeavours 30 00:04:38,104 --> 00:04:40,755 ever since humans walked the face of the earth. 31 00:04:46,089 --> 00:04:50,283 He had been working on this last great theory for more than thirty years, 32 00:04:50,986 --> 00:04:56,373 but throughout this period many scientists thought that he was wasting his time. 33 00:04:56,750 --> 00:04:59,346 In his later years the rest of the physics community 34 00:04:59,944 --> 00:05:05,850 looked upon Einstein as somebody who had completely lost touch with modern research 35 00:05:06,582 --> 00:05:09,273 and almost you know like an old fuddy-duddy like a relic. 36 00:05:27,189 --> 00:05:31,176 The tragedy was that to many, Einstein's last great theory 37 00:05:31,879 --> 00:05:38,488 was doomed before it even began, and it was all because of his personal prejudices. 38 00:05:42,219 --> 00:05:46,902 He could not accept that the consequences of his own work clashed with his belief 39 00:05:47,801 --> 00:05:51,167 of how God had built our universe. 40 00:05:56,638 --> 00:06:00,180 Einstein's odyssey began here in Berne in 1905, 41 00:06:00,836 --> 00:06:04,688 when he was on the verge of his greatest scientific triumphs. 42 00:06:05,835 --> 00:06:08,328 Because it was in this small Swiss City 43 00:06:08,776 --> 00:06:12,239 that he began to make the most extraordinary discoveries. 44 00:06:16,469 --> 00:06:19,574 Well every day he would leave this, this flat in order to go to his work, 45 00:06:20,306 --> 00:06:23,017 he would go underneath the famous clock tower in Berne, 46 00:06:23,824 --> 00:06:27,250 and it's interesting to wonder whether or not this extraordinary clock-tower 47 00:06:28,193 --> 00:06:30,596 with its depictions of the moon and the sun on it, 48 00:06:31,002 --> 00:06:33,267 whether or not this actually inspired him in some way, 49 00:06:33,810 --> 00:06:39,948 or subliminally perhaps to explore and revolutionise concepts of space and time. 50 00:06:51,939 --> 00:06:56,042 And what was truely extraordinary about this amazing period in Einstein's life 51 00:06:56,521 --> 00:06:59,333 was that he had dropped out of academic life completely. 52 00:07:00,177 --> 00:07:02,463 No university would give him a job. 53 00:07:03,151 --> 00:07:07,301 Instead during this time he was working as a patents clerk, third class, 54 00:07:08,039 --> 00:07:11,857 evaluating the latest inventions in this office. 55 00:07:14,707 --> 00:07:17,950 So it's amazing when you think that Einstein was working at the patent office 56 00:07:18,558 --> 00:07:23,678 on applications as diverse as a mechanical vegetable peeler, or, or dynamos. 57 00:07:24,411 --> 00:07:30,058 And yet in his spare time he's working on theories which will change the way we look at the universe. 58 00:07:34,665 --> 00:07:37,315 Conferring with only a handful of friends, 59 00:07:39,705 --> 00:07:42,550 he began writing scientific papers. 60 00:07:47,585 --> 00:07:51,749 He searched for answers to questions that most would never even have asked; 61 00:07:52,457 --> 00:07:54,933 he called them his thought experiments. 62 00:07:55,503 --> 00:07:57,308 One of Einstein's thought experiments was 63 00:07:57,840 --> 00:08:01,820 'What would I see if I moved along beside a beam of light?' 64 00:08:03,495 --> 00:08:07,366 Einstein once said that he's not interested in this phenomenon or that phenomenon, 65 00:08:08,109 --> 00:08:12,815 he wants to know, If I were God how would I create a universe? 66 00:08:17,188 --> 00:08:20,176 In a few short months beginning in the Spring of 1905 67 00:08:20,897 --> 00:08:27,251 he started penning the most extraordinary scientific ideas, about the nature of the universe. 68 00:08:29,259 --> 00:08:34,042 And it would culminate in one of the most famous papers in scientific history. 69 00:08:37,097 --> 00:08:41,748 And this is it, it's called 'On the electrodynamics of moving bodies'. 70 00:08:45,470 --> 00:08:49,757 It quoted no references and read like a stream of consciousness. 71 00:08:50,571 --> 00:08:53,457 It was the start of his special theory of relativity 72 00:08:54,250 --> 00:08:59,860 and it would overturn nothing less than everyone's understanding of time. 73 00:09:12,648 --> 00:09:14,569 Am I keeping good time? 74 00:09:17,644 --> 00:09:19,495 Good time professor. 75 00:09:28,283 --> 00:09:32,217 Before Einstein, it was thought that the passage of time was unchanging. 76 00:09:37,674 --> 00:09:41,149 It ran at the same pace, no matter where you were in the universe. 77 00:09:43,922 --> 00:09:46,184 Or how fast you were travelling. 78 00:09:52,241 --> 00:09:54,683 Time and space were incredibly simple concepts. 79 00:09:55,362 --> 00:09:57,463 The, the concepts you'd recognise from everyday experience. 80 00:09:58,505 --> 00:10:03,205 Space was just the arena in which things happened, and time just ticked along. 81 00:10:04,050 --> 00:10:06,729 So wherever you were in the universe, whatever speed you were moving, 82 00:10:07,428 --> 00:10:09,742 your watch ticked along at the same rate. 83 00:10:12,304 --> 00:10:15,891 But Einstein discovered time was not unchanging, 84 00:10:16,925 --> 00:10:21,395 the rate at which time passed depended on the speed at which you were travelling. 85 00:10:21,622 --> 00:10:24,653 Einstein thought that time was more like a river, 86 00:10:25,241 --> 00:10:29,702 that speeds up, slows down, meanders its way across the cosmos. 87 00:10:30,333 --> 00:10:35,357 In other words twelve o'clock on earth is not necessarily twelve o'clock throughout the universe. 88 00:10:43,778 --> 00:10:49,044 So while everyone else thought that the passage of time was the one unvarying thing in our universe, 89 00:10:51,231 --> 00:10:53,165 Einstein argued otherwise. 90 00:10:57,889 --> 00:11:01,221 He believed it was the speed of light that was always constant. 91 00:11:04,703 --> 00:11:08,303 But if that was the case it meant something bizarre. 92 00:11:13,592 --> 00:11:17,972 The only way in the laws of physics for the speed of light always to appear to be the same 93 00:11:18,807 --> 00:11:24,064 is if everything else changed relative to speed, including time. 94 00:11:27,112 --> 00:11:33,179 In other words the passage of time, the one thing everyone thought was constant, was relative. 95 00:11:34,084 --> 00:11:39,380 It meant for instance that the faster you travelled, the slower time would run. 96 00:11:48,005 --> 00:11:51,989 This was Einstein's special theory of relativity. 97 00:11:55,780 --> 00:11:57,677 But he didn't stop there. 98 00:11:59,933 --> 00:12:04,606 Two months later he published a three page supplement to his theory. 99 00:12:05,599 --> 00:12:08,553 In those pages Einstein linked energy and matter 100 00:12:09,532 --> 00:12:14,927 and in doing so derived the most famous mathematical equation of all time. 101 00:12:15,621 --> 00:12:21,598 What Einstein showed with E = MC squared is that there's a symmetry between energy and matter. 102 00:12:22,076 --> 00:12:26,103 And think about it matter is something we can touch, our bodies are made out of matter, 103 00:12:26,658 --> 00:12:32,331 we can taste it, we can smell it but energy, energy is much more nebulous, much more defused 104 00:12:32,830 --> 00:12:38,924 and the genius of Einstein was that he was able to show that they really are two aspects of the same thing. 105 00:12:55,296 --> 00:12:59,542 This tiny equation would one day explain how at the very beginning of time, 106 00:13:00,362 --> 00:13:04,832 just after the big bang energy was turned into matter. 107 00:13:05,612 --> 00:13:09,659 It explained how the sun could create vast power 108 00:13:10,409 --> 00:13:12,273 from a tiny amount of fuel. 109 00:13:18,262 --> 00:13:20,824 And it opened scientists' eyes 110 00:13:21,354 --> 00:13:25,641 to the lethal power locked up inside every atom. 111 00:13:34,750 --> 00:13:41,619 From this tiny formula would come both creation and destruction. 112 00:13:43,384 --> 00:13:45,385 When these papers were published in 1905 113 00:13:46,380 --> 00:13:49,536 they must've come like a bolt out of the blue for the scientific community 114 00:13:50,077 --> 00:13:52,639 because Einstein was a complete unknown at this point. 115 00:13:53,033 --> 00:13:56,379 And yet immediately they realised that they were revolutionary. 116 00:13:56,998 --> 00:13:59,536 And effectively at this point Einstein had arrived. 117 00:14:05,125 --> 00:14:08,665 For anyone else these achievements would have been enough, 118 00:14:09,710 --> 00:14:12,731 but Einstein had even bigger ambitions. 119 00:14:17,459 --> 00:14:19,754 Every break he's practicing with that thing. 120 00:14:24,350 --> 00:14:26,416 A hundred times against a wall. 121 00:14:28,001 --> 00:14:30,223 If he drops one, he starts all over. 122 00:14:30,596 --> 00:14:32,866 I admire his persistence. 123 00:14:33,581 --> 00:14:36,312 You don't sometimes feel like giving up? 124 00:14:36,790 --> 00:14:38,917 Only when I have the answer. 125 00:14:39,149 --> 00:14:40,593 And does everything have an answer? 126 00:14:41,523 --> 00:14:42,703 I don't know. 127 00:14:43,174 --> 00:14:47,727 But I think that there may be an answer to everything. 128 00:14:53,194 --> 00:14:56,520 While the world was coming to terms with special relativity, 129 00:14:57,362 --> 00:15:00,345 Einstein had already moved on by himself, 130 00:15:00,939 --> 00:15:05,662 to tackle the work of the great seventeenth century scientist Isaac Newton. 131 00:15:06,410 --> 00:15:09,005 In particular his laws of gravity. 132 00:15:16,331 --> 00:15:21,132 Legend has it that Newton was inspired towards his law of gravity by seeing an apple fall in an orchard. 133 00:15:21,675 --> 00:15:24,170 Now Einstein was inspired By a similar thought. 134 00:15:27,457 --> 00:15:31,408 He thought what happens if I drop an apple, but when I drop it I'm in a falling lift 135 00:15:31,865 --> 00:15:37,421 then surely the apple will float in front of my face, it will look as though gravity has been cancelled out. 136 00:15:44,956 --> 00:15:47,611 Gravity is the force that dominates our universe, 137 00:15:48,486 --> 00:15:51,446 it holds huge planets and moons in their orbits. 138 00:15:54,681 --> 00:15:57,765 And it keeps our feet firmly planted on the ground. 139 00:16:00,772 --> 00:16:04,883 But though Newton's laws described the effects of gravity with great accuracy, 140 00:16:09,551 --> 00:16:13,233 no one could actually work out what caused it. 141 00:16:21,642 --> 00:16:25,919 Einstein's great insight was that all massive bodies like planets and stars 142 00:16:26,465 --> 00:16:28,156 bent space and time, 143 00:16:28,768 --> 00:16:34,610 and it is this curvature of space and time that causes what we experience as gravity. 144 00:16:35,698 --> 00:16:39,830 It has become known as his general theory of relativity. 145 00:16:41,334 --> 00:16:45,346 Einstein's real breakthrough with general relativity was to give a reason for gravity. 146 00:16:45,910 --> 00:16:52,059 Einstein's picture of gravity was that massive objects like stars and galaxies curved space and time, 147 00:16:52,781 --> 00:16:56,741 and then other objects moving through that curvature feel gravity. 148 00:16:57,193 --> 00:17:00,410 Gravity in a sense is the curvature of space and time. 149 00:17:10,372 --> 00:17:14,237 General relativity was Einstein's greatest triumph, 150 00:17:14,604 --> 00:17:21,744 it brought him fame that no scientist experienced before or has seen since. 151 00:17:23,783 --> 00:17:26,904 In my view general relativity really was Einstein's master piece. 152 00:17:27,230 --> 00:17:30,006 Well the word genius is banded around in physics a lot but 153 00:17:30,306 --> 00:17:34,793 in Einstein's case, it really applies to general relativity I think. 154 00:17:35,280 --> 00:17:37,423 That's where his reputation comes from. 155 00:17:48,165 --> 00:17:52,026 Though Einstein's theories of time and gravity may seem strange, 156 00:17:53,220 --> 00:17:59,238 his work remains fundamental to the understanding of our universe today. 157 00:18:05,914 --> 00:18:08,243 Planes, relying on the global positioning system, 158 00:18:08,874 --> 00:18:14,002 take Einstein's calculations of time into account to navigate accurately. 159 00:18:16,078 --> 00:18:20,665 Deep space satellites have to compensate for Einstein's reading of gravity. 160 00:18:28,219 --> 00:18:34,458 The work springing from this period in Einstein's life has helped us build the modern world. 161 00:18:42,643 --> 00:18:48,113 But despite this, another piece of work, also completed back in 1905, 162 00:18:48,927 --> 00:18:53,600 had already sown the seeds of what would become his doomed obsession, 163 00:18:54,814 --> 00:18:58,723 an obsession that would last until the very final day of his life 164 00:18:59,362 --> 00:19:03,258 and would result in both his failure and isolation. 165 00:19:16,913 --> 00:19:20,467 The roots of Einstein's troubles came from one of his other great passions. 166 00:19:21,484 --> 00:19:24,580 He saw a connection between the fundamental physics of our universe 167 00:19:25,243 --> 00:19:30,024 and a sense of elegance, beauty even spirituality. 168 00:19:30,750 --> 00:19:35,044 For him these laws of the universe were an expression of the divine. 169 00:19:37,649 --> 00:19:39,863 It is a belief shared by many scientists, 170 00:19:40,449 --> 00:19:46,091 including distinguished particle physicist and Anglican Priest Professor John Polkinghorne. 171 00:19:46,423 --> 00:19:50,154 Einstein was an amateur violinist, went, once went to a concert in Berlin 172 00:19:50,801 --> 00:19:53,698 and heard the young Yehudi Menhuin play, and he was bowled over by his performance. 173 00:19:54,300 --> 00:19:57,232 And there's a story that he went up and bear hugged the young boy afterwards 174 00:19:57,800 --> 00:20:00,210 and said hearing you I know there is a god in heaven. 175 00:20:05,352 --> 00:20:07,751 I think that when we encounter very deep beauty 176 00:20:08,486 --> 00:20:10,350 whether it's beauty in music or something like that 177 00:20:10,820 --> 00:20:14,577 or whether it's beauty in the scientific account of the order and fruitfulness of the world 178 00:20:15,299 --> 00:20:18,929 then it's difficult for us not to think that there is some mind and purpose behind it. 179 00:20:25,937 --> 00:20:30,099 Einstein was very deeply impressed by the fact that as we study the physical world, 180 00:20:30,839 --> 00:20:34,187 get beneath its surface and find out what it's like underneath so to speak, 181 00:20:34,824 --> 00:20:37,130 we find a wonderful and remarkable order, 182 00:20:37,902 --> 00:20:42,497 a beautiful pattern that is expressed actually also in beautiful mathematics as it turns out, 183 00:20:42,819 --> 00:20:45,569 that's the natural language to use. 184 00:20:50,838 --> 00:20:53,070 Einstein believed that the rules of the universe 185 00:20:53,694 --> 00:20:57,079 could always be explained through elegant mathematics. 186 00:21:00,389 --> 00:21:06,334 In effect he thought that science could lead to an understanding of God's design for the universe. 187 00:21:12,905 --> 00:21:16,622 You believe? In God? 188 00:21:17,015 --> 00:21:20,746 Yes. Yes I do. 189 00:21:24,988 --> 00:21:28,904 Do you? Believe? 190 00:21:29,530 --> 00:21:33,844 Do I believe there is someone who plans the daily life of Albert Einstein? 191 00:21:34,812 --> 00:21:40,643 No. Although sometimes I think he may have been leading me up the garden path. 192 00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:44,237 But didn't he make the garden? 193 00:21:44,897 --> 00:21:47,900 I think he is the garden. 194 00:21:48,970 --> 00:21:50,117 And isn't he the gardener too? 195 00:21:50,479 --> 00:21:56,274 Yes, and all my life I have been trying to catch him at his work. 196 00:22:10,806 --> 00:22:17,249 Einstein believed that the rules used to create the universe would not only be beautiful and precise, 197 00:22:17,892 --> 00:22:23,081 he also thought they would always allow scientists to make exact predictions. 198 00:22:26,077 --> 00:22:30,859 So if you knew the position and speed of the planets at a particular moment in time, 199 00:22:31,552 --> 00:22:36,636 you could use the laws of physics to predict their exact movements for eternity. 200 00:22:40,344 --> 00:22:45,328 And Einstein believed that what was true for planets was true for all objects. 201 00:22:45,934 --> 00:22:50,462 Everything could be predicted with certainty, no matter what it was. 202 00:22:52,808 --> 00:22:57,942 But his vision of the universe was about to be challenged by something growing from his own work... 203 00:22:58,504 --> 00:23:02,190 something very, very, very small. 204 00:23:14,379 --> 00:23:20,846 In 1921, while he was based here in Berlin, Einstein was nominated for the Nobel Prize, 205 00:23:21,613 --> 00:23:25,438 not for his theories of relativity, but for another piece of work 206 00:23:25,809 --> 00:23:29,433 also completed in his 1905 miracle year. 207 00:23:38,629 --> 00:23:40,795 It was about the nature of light. 208 00:23:45,874 --> 00:23:50,279 It had been believed that light was made up of smooth, continuous waves. 209 00:23:54,478 --> 00:23:57,293 But Einstein saw things very differently, 210 00:23:57,885 --> 00:24:01,939 he said light could also be thought of as tiny, individual particles. 211 00:24:02,437 --> 00:24:07,106 Einstein upset the apple cart by introducing an entirely new radical concept 212 00:24:07,637 --> 00:24:09,621 called a quantum particle of light. 213 00:24:10,289 --> 00:24:12,059 Light is not just smooth and continuous 214 00:24:12,517 --> 00:24:17,009 it occurs in small little packets or bullets that today we call the photon. 215 00:24:26,728 --> 00:24:31,662 His discovery that light was not only a wave but also tiny, individual particles 216 00:24:32,374 --> 00:24:35,301 revolutionised the whole of physics. 217 00:24:37,140 --> 00:24:40,307 And it would give birth to Einstein's demon. 218 00:24:54,709 --> 00:25:01,147 This breakthrough would become a cornerstone of a new field of science known as quantum mechanics. 219 00:25:05,780 --> 00:25:10,755 Quantum mechanics describes the behaviour of the fundamental particles of our universe. 220 00:25:12,228 --> 00:25:15,340 The sub-atomic particles that make up every atom. 221 00:25:20,018 --> 00:25:24,408 As it developed, people started noticing how, at this fundamental scale, 222 00:25:25,245 --> 00:25:30,365 everything behaved in a very different way to Einstein's elegant universe. 223 00:25:30,667 --> 00:25:34,065 People had been working for about twenty-five years trying to understand the puzzles of quantum theory, 224 00:25:34,683 --> 00:25:38,397 when out of the blue a young Graduate Student from Germany, Heisenberg, 225 00:25:39,181 --> 00:25:42,027 came along and produced essentially a complete theory, 226 00:25:42,670 --> 00:25:46,167 but based on ideas which are so radically different from what people had been thinking about 227 00:25:46,796 --> 00:25:48,359 that it was entirely shocking. 228 00:25:50,479 --> 00:25:53,712 Werner Heisenberg proposed a whole new law of physics. 229 00:25:54,470 --> 00:25:58,987 He said that it was impossible to measure both the speed and the position of a particle 230 00:25:59,769 --> 00:26:05,990 because strangely, the mere act of observing these tiny objects radically affected their behaviour. 231 00:26:08,381 --> 00:26:11,369 But if that was true, it had profound implications. 232 00:26:13,089 --> 00:26:16,060 If you couldn't be precise about a particle's speed and position, 233 00:26:16,681 --> 00:26:20,381 then it would be impossible to make accurate predictions about its movements. 234 00:26:21,242 --> 00:26:24,026 And Einstein believed that everything should be predictable. 235 00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:28,456 The forecast said it would be cool. So much for prediction. 236 00:26:29,094 --> 00:26:31,105 Maybe God changed his mind. 237 00:26:33,612 --> 00:26:36,871 Maybe you're right, maybe he hates to be second-guessed. 238 00:26:37,746 --> 00:26:41,343 I sometimes feel he dislikes being observed. 239 00:26:42,370 --> 00:26:47,463 Colleagues of mine would have it that we influence God's world merely by observing it. 240 00:26:48,044 --> 00:26:48,948 How can that be? 241 00:26:49,385 --> 00:26:55,603 How can it be? How can you observe something and at the same time change its nature just by observing it? 242 00:26:57,019 --> 00:27:01,452 Sometimes I don't think we need God to make us look foolish, 243 00:27:02,145 --> 00:27:05,359 we do that very well for ourselves. 244 00:27:05,689 --> 00:27:07,834 Maybe just God doesn't want us to know everything. 245 00:27:08,395 --> 00:27:14,675 Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht. 246 00:27:14,957 --> 00:27:16,125 I'm sorry? 247 00:27:16,365 --> 00:27:19,319 God is subtle, but he is not malicious. 248 00:27:20,526 --> 00:27:24,088 I don't believe he would put anything beyond our reach. 249 00:27:25,336 --> 00:27:28,930 I do not think God is hiding anything from us. 250 00:27:30,644 --> 00:27:36,435 He is just asking us to search a little harder. 251 00:27:42,858 --> 00:27:44,247 If Heisenberg was right 252 00:27:44,885 --> 00:27:50,090 and it was impossible to measure precisely the speed and position of a particle at the same time, 253 00:27:50,999 --> 00:27:54,173 it meant that some things would always be uncertain. 254 00:27:57,349 --> 00:28:03,084 For the quantum theorists the best you could hope for was a science based on probabilities. 255 00:28:05,626 --> 00:28:10,172 For Einstein, though he could see great value in some aspects of quantum theory, 256 00:28:11,205 --> 00:28:14,501 this just wasn't how God would have built his universe. 257 00:28:15,258 --> 00:28:18,160 I think Einstein's major objection to quantum mechanics 258 00:28:19,230 --> 00:28:21,795 is something that didn't fit into his world. 259 00:28:22,999 --> 00:28:29,641 He could not accept the fact that if you do an experiment twice in exactly the same way, 260 00:28:30,041 --> 00:28:34,036 that in one, one time you may get result 'A' 261 00:28:34,964 --> 00:28:36,399 and the other time you may get result 'B'. 262 00:28:37,447 --> 00:28:42,491 He really hated the idea that you were surrendering to the world of probabilities. 263 00:28:51,257 --> 00:28:52,827 If quantum mechanics was right, 264 00:28:53,616 --> 00:28:58,289 then theoretically some truly strange things could happen. 265 00:29:00,189 --> 00:29:02,634 Everything about the quantum theory revolted Einstein. 266 00:29:03,514 --> 00:29:06,741 The quantum theory makes even bizarre events possible. 267 00:29:07,256 --> 00:29:11,418 For example walking across the street we expect to wind up on the other side, 268 00:29:12,051 --> 00:29:17,596 however there is a finite calculable probability that you will dissolve and wind up on mars, 269 00:29:18,474 --> 00:29:20,639 dissolve and wind up on the earth again. 270 00:29:22,002 --> 00:29:26,801 Of course you will have to wait longer than the lifetime of the universe but in principle it could happen. 271 00:29:28,056 --> 00:29:32,535 But Einstein's concerns went beyond these strange concepts; 272 00:29:33,534 --> 00:29:36,319 there was a much more crucial scientific issue at stake. 273 00:29:37,796 --> 00:29:42,024 The birth of quantum mechanics meant there were two mutually exclusive sets of rules 274 00:29:42,424 --> 00:29:44,346 operating within the universe. 275 00:29:46,379 --> 00:29:52,399 Einstein's, governing whole solar systems and galaxies, in which everything could be predicted, 276 00:29:53,101 --> 00:29:57,980 and quantum mechanics describing the tiny fundamental building blocks of all matter 277 00:29:58,564 --> 00:30:02,745 in which everything could only be described in terms of probabilities. 278 00:30:03,110 --> 00:30:05,165 Einstein had been a sort of grandfather of quantum theory. 279 00:30:05,588 --> 00:30:07,390 But he came to hate his grandchild 280 00:30:07,837 --> 00:30:11,082 and he hated his grandchild because he wanted to think about the world 281 00:30:11,558 --> 00:30:14,523 essentially in the same way that Newton had thought about the world. 282 00:30:16,322 --> 00:30:18,358 As a world that was clear and determined 283 00:30:18,905 --> 00:30:22,234 where you knew exactly what was happening everywhere and all the time. 284 00:30:25,799 --> 00:30:29,284 Quantum mechanics offered a view of the world that could not be more different 285 00:30:29,751 --> 00:30:32,626 from Einstein's spiritual predictable universe. 286 00:30:33,344 --> 00:30:35,294 And he loathed the idea. 287 00:30:40,094 --> 00:30:44,431 The debate reached a head when a series of arguments exploded between Einstein 288 00:30:45,734 --> 00:30:49,206 and one of quantum mechanic's great advocates, Niels Bohr. 289 00:30:53,132 --> 00:30:55,255 After general relativity and after he's become a world figure 290 00:30:55,867 --> 00:31:00,335 Einstein is getting quite cocky and he thinks that he can read the mind of God. 291 00:31:00,884 --> 00:31:02,523 And when quantum mechanics comes around 292 00:31:02,935 --> 00:31:06,081 he just knows that this is not the way that God would have made the universe. 293 00:31:07,201 --> 00:31:08,929 And he's very vocal about it. 294 00:31:09,572 --> 00:31:12,490 It was a clash of the scientific titans. 295 00:31:14,117 --> 00:31:17,203 The philosophical debate between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein 296 00:31:17,803 --> 00:31:23,307 ranked as perhaps one of the greatest philosophical debates ever in the history of science. 297 00:31:30,868 --> 00:31:34,306 What was at stake was the nature of our very existence. 298 00:31:39,408 --> 00:31:41,971 Einstein and Bohr respected each other very much 299 00:31:42,612 --> 00:31:44,905 but they were very different characters. 300 00:31:47,130 --> 00:31:48,947 Einstein was the paradigm of clarity. 301 00:31:50,923 --> 00:31:55,049 He felt at ease talking to kings and queens as well as little children. 302 00:31:57,775 --> 00:32:00,671 Bohr was a famously bad talker. 303 00:32:01,041 --> 00:32:03,348 Sometimes it was impossible to understand what he was saying. 304 00:32:05,412 --> 00:32:08,864 And their science was as different as their personalities. 305 00:32:10,977 --> 00:32:14,991 Bohr believed that the world was no more predictable than the throw of a dice. 306 00:32:16,412 --> 00:32:20,283 So Einstein dismissed this view with his killer one liner. 307 00:32:21,891 --> 00:32:24,768 God does not play dice. 308 00:32:27,785 --> 00:32:33,253 What he means with that is that at a fundamental level physics cannot be probabilistic. 309 00:32:33,830 --> 00:32:37,295 God does not play dice. 310 00:32:38,312 --> 00:32:41,967 However Niels Bohr thought he saw a flaw in all of Einstein's reasoning 311 00:32:42,537 --> 00:32:46,317 and Niels Bohr said 'stop telling God what to do with his dice'. 312 00:32:50,528 --> 00:32:52,099 This was the crucial issue. 313 00:32:53,083 --> 00:32:54,258 Was Einstein so brilliant 314 00:32:54,765 --> 00:32:59,680 that he could just dismiss the unpredictability at the heart of quantum mechanics out of hand? 315 00:33:00,583 --> 00:33:03,424 Or was the great genius just plain wrong? 316 00:33:11,938 --> 00:33:15,914 Einstein thought that the best way to rid physics of this unpredictability 317 00:33:16,632 --> 00:33:20,956 would be to extend his greatest work of all, general relativity. 318 00:33:24,292 --> 00:33:28,456 His aim was to come up with a brand new theory that would combine gravity, 319 00:33:29,167 --> 00:33:31,885 the strength holding whole solar systems together 320 00:33:32,108 --> 00:33:37,903 with electromagnetism, a force binding one atom to another. 321 00:33:43,629 --> 00:33:49,589 Einstein hoped that by combining these two forces the unpredictability at the heart of quantum mechanics 322 00:33:50,166 --> 00:33:52,416 would simply be explained away. 323 00:33:52,549 --> 00:33:54,509 Now what Einstein was looking for, 324 00:33:55,218 --> 00:33:58,522 could actually be explained just by the throw of a dice. 325 00:34:01,410 --> 00:34:05,796 Now in real life when you throw a dice, although the results appear to be unpredictable, 326 00:34:06,373 --> 00:34:08,332 actually in principle they're not. 327 00:34:08,894 --> 00:34:12,483 If you knew exactly the speed the dice, you knew the air resistance, 328 00:34:12,926 --> 00:34:18,312 you knew everything about the dice throw, then in principle you can predict where the dice is going to land, 329 00:34:18,677 --> 00:34:21,274 whether it's a 6 a 5 a 4 or whatever. 330 00:34:41,621 --> 00:34:46,320 The ambition of what Einstein was trying to do cannot be overstated, 331 00:34:52,236 --> 00:34:58,316 for if he was successful he would show that all natural phenomena were founded on predictability. 332 00:35:01,887 --> 00:35:04,562 From the motion of stars and planets across the sky 333 00:35:05,521 --> 00:35:08,143 to the fundamental building blocks of the world. 334 00:35:09,682 --> 00:35:13,006 Quantum unpredictability would just be swallowed up. 335 00:35:14,141 --> 00:35:18,312 It would become known as his theory of everything. 336 00:35:23,756 --> 00:35:27,803 The theory of everything would have been the holy grail of science. 337 00:35:28,377 --> 00:35:29,576 It would have been the philosopher's stone, 338 00:35:30,058 --> 00:35:33,632 it would have been the crowning achievement of all scientific endeavours 339 00:35:34,070 --> 00:35:36,183 ever since humans walked the face of the earth. 340 00:35:37,102 --> 00:35:40,434 He wanted an equation perhaps no more than one inch long 341 00:35:41,030 --> 00:35:43,838 that would allow him to read the mind of god. 342 00:35:44,148 --> 00:35:47,683 Read the mind of God? I thought that would have been kind of complicated. 343 00:35:48,359 --> 00:35:49,962 Why should it be complicated? 344 00:35:50,794 --> 00:35:57,981 I have a deep faith that the rules of the universe will be beautiful and simple. 345 00:35:58,688 --> 00:36:00,097 But aren't they impossible to know? 346 00:36:00,693 --> 00:36:02,274 Why should it be impossible? 347 00:36:02,982 --> 00:36:05,505 An answer to everything. 348 00:36:05,794 --> 00:36:08,513 Even you, even someone as clever as you. 349 00:36:08,821 --> 00:36:11,730 I am not clever, I am merely curious. 350 00:36:12,830 --> 00:36:18,480 I believe that if you keep asking questions then the answers will come. 351 00:36:19,349 --> 00:36:23,964 And when the solution is simple, God is answering. 352 00:36:28,045 --> 00:36:31,536 Einstein worked on his new theory throughout the 1920's. 353 00:36:35,363 --> 00:36:40,472 During this period he became ill, but far from let this get in the way of his progress, 354 00:36:41,092 --> 00:36:43,748 he covered his bed sheets in calculations. 355 00:36:45,131 --> 00:36:49,185 And then news started leaking to the press that he was onto something. 356 00:36:49,709 --> 00:36:53,535 In November 1928 the New York Times published a headline 357 00:36:53,997 --> 00:36:57,142 "Einstein on verge of great discovery resents intrusion". 358 00:37:05,883 --> 00:37:10,374 The rumour that Einstein was gonna publish some grand new theory of everything 359 00:37:10,614 --> 00:37:14,681 led to such a media frenzy that Einstein actually had to go into hiding. 360 00:37:26,229 --> 00:37:32,835 And then, after years of work, on January 30th 1929 it was published. 361 00:37:34,699 --> 00:37:36,690 The news exploded across the world. 362 00:37:39,037 --> 00:37:44,277 It was such a sensation that Selfridges store in London posted the six pages in its windows. 363 00:37:45,181 --> 00:37:46,381 If Einstein was right 364 00:37:46,878 --> 00:37:52,123 then it would be a massive blow to the unpredictability lying at the heart of quantum mechanics. 365 00:37:56,653 --> 00:38:00,075 But on publishing, Einstein started to back-track, 366 00:38:01,153 --> 00:38:02,812 worrying that he might have got it wrong. 367 00:38:04,184 --> 00:38:07,578 If Einstein himself was cooling to, to the idea 368 00:38:08,038 --> 00:38:11,324 certainly the physics community was somewhat harsher in dealing with him 369 00:38:11,624 --> 00:38:15,439 and especially Wolfgang Pauli who said that, 370 00:38:15,841 --> 00:38:18,632 "he had seemed to have been abandoned by the dear Lord". 371 00:38:25,164 --> 00:38:30,499 The awful truth was that his new theory didn't just fail to deal with quantum mechanics 372 00:38:31,689 --> 00:38:34,245 it was at odds with his greatest work of all, 373 00:38:35,690 --> 00:38:36,986 general relativity. 374 00:38:45,809 --> 00:38:49,649 After the publication of the paper, Einstein's colleagues were very critical of it, 375 00:38:50,715 --> 00:38:56,805 they complained that Einstein went back on some of the fundamental ideas of general relativity. 376 00:38:57,534 --> 00:39:00,372 Einstein himself pursued it for another year or so 377 00:39:00,603 --> 00:39:05,549 but eventually he too admitted that it was a wrong approach. 378 00:39:22,777 --> 00:39:25,469 Einstein had been publicly humiliated. 379 00:39:33,933 --> 00:39:35,747 For him though, the battle wasn't over, 380 00:39:36,645 --> 00:39:40,735 it would last until the very final day of his life. 381 00:39:57,534 --> 00:39:59,842 For Einstein these were turbulent times. 382 00:40:00,621 --> 00:40:05,849 In 1932 with the rise of Nazism, he left Germany for the final time. 383 00:40:06,742 --> 00:40:09,723 As a famous Jew he had a price on his head. 384 00:40:11,813 --> 00:40:14,517 His work would be some of that burned in the street. 385 00:40:20,181 --> 00:40:22,592 In 1933 he arrived in America 386 00:40:22,892 --> 00:40:28,053 and later took up residence at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. 387 00:40:31,167 --> 00:40:34,583 Finally here was a place where Einstein hoped he would have the space and time 388 00:40:35,124 --> 00:40:39,492 to defeat the quantum theorists and complete his theory of everything. 389 00:40:41,342 --> 00:40:44,168 Einstein's expectations in coming to the Institute for Advanced Study 390 00:40:44,727 --> 00:40:50,506 were that he would find here the creative isolation that would allow him to complete his life's work, 391 00:40:51,182 --> 00:40:56,032 to put the final, the final seal 392 00:40:56,504 --> 00:40:58,439 on his Theory of Everything. 393 00:41:06,447 --> 00:41:08,664 But as he continued working in solitude, 394 00:41:09,384 --> 00:41:12,515 the world of physics was moving on without him. 395 00:41:13,307 --> 00:41:16,690 Einstein is working on various theories of, of everything 396 00:41:17,349 --> 00:41:22,247 meaning combining gravity and electro magnetism, 397 00:41:22,779 --> 00:41:25,641 he's missing out on a, on a number of great discoveries. 398 00:41:30,811 --> 00:41:35,787 During his years in Princeton quantum mechanics was becoming the most important movement in physics. 399 00:41:38,215 --> 00:41:40,716 The world was coming to accept its strangeness, 400 00:41:41,218 --> 00:41:44,980 indeed its insights were leading to fantastic technological breakthroughs. 401 00:41:48,196 --> 00:41:53,442 The transistor, a device that would one day deliver the computers that would transform our world, 402 00:41:53,862 --> 00:41:55,802 relies on quantum mechanics. 403 00:42:00,274 --> 00:42:04,140 Particle accelerators would uncover yet more sub atomic particles 404 00:42:04,826 --> 00:42:09,666 that behaved just as unpredictably as quantum mechanics said they should. 405 00:42:11,837 --> 00:42:14,430 And all the while Einstein ignored it, 406 00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:19,332 hopeful that his theory of everything would eventually replace it. 407 00:42:19,810 --> 00:42:23,044 So in his, in his later years the rest of the physics community 408 00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:27,115 looked upon Einstein as you know somebody who had completely lost touch 409 00:42:27,650 --> 00:42:32,498 with modern research and almost you know like an old fuddy-duddy, like a relic. 410 00:42:33,128 --> 00:42:38,108 To be revered and of course as a political figure of, of some importance 411 00:42:38,893 --> 00:42:43,683 but somebody who was not worth the time was almost you know like a like a 19th century thinker. 412 00:42:50,873 --> 00:42:56,366 He continued his fight with quantum mechanics until his very last day. 413 00:43:03,754 --> 00:43:05,272 Professor, you should stop working now. 414 00:43:05,524 --> 00:43:08,424 If I did not work, I would not want to live. 415 00:43:08,724 --> 00:43:10,757 You shouldn't say that. 416 00:43:11,633 --> 00:43:14,071 What other purpose is there to carry on living? 417 00:43:15,052 --> 00:43:18,114 There is no reason to life without purpose. 418 00:43:18,741 --> 00:43:21,631 And when you still have a task to fulfil. 419 00:43:23,589 --> 00:43:25,635 Well perhaps you can fulfil it tomorrow. 420 00:43:28,037 --> 00:43:32,099 Yes, maybe tomorrow. 421 00:43:33,612 --> 00:43:36,598 I think I may have finished for today. 422 00:44:05,047 --> 00:44:08,580 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my sad duty to announce the death of Professor Albert Einstein... 423 00:44:08,722 --> 00:44:10,943 On April 18th 1955 424 00:44:11,668 --> 00:44:13,889 his body finally gave out, 425 00:44:14,679 --> 00:44:17,417 his grand design unfinished. 426 00:44:22,884 --> 00:44:25,953 So what are we to make of Einstein's final years? 427 00:44:27,204 --> 00:44:30,776 Some have suggested that Einstein, the greatest mind of his age, 428 00:44:31,453 --> 00:44:34,446 wasted the second half of his life on folly. 429 00:44:35,305 --> 00:44:38,183 His inability to accept the nature of quantum mechanics 430 00:44:38,828 --> 00:44:42,917 and loosing touch with modern physics meant that his theory of everything 431 00:44:43,213 --> 00:44:45,048 never stood a chance. 432 00:44:45,387 --> 00:44:46,855 In hindsight it's very clear that, 433 00:44:47,584 --> 00:44:51,434 that Einstein could not succeed at this, at this project. 434 00:44:52,302 --> 00:44:56,573 He was ignoring quantum mechanics and all sorts of other discoveries. 435 00:44:57,188 --> 00:45:00,401 And so it, it was clear that this project was doomed from the start. 436 00:45:02,505 --> 00:45:05,497 But while those final years may be viewed as a disappointment, 437 00:45:06,334 --> 00:45:09,864 most of us can only dream of matching Einstein's achievements. 438 00:45:11,190 --> 00:45:15,156 Einstein's output in the, in the last years of course was disappointing. 439 00:45:15,703 --> 00:45:20,612 On the other hand he had by the age of 40 produced perhaps the seminal papers of the, of the twentieth century 440 00:45:21,249 --> 00:45:27,274 and it allowed him the luxury of what you, what you could call failures in the, at the end of his life. 441 00:45:38,087 --> 00:45:44,300 Today there is an idea that may yet salvage his dream of a theory of everything. 442 00:45:45,845 --> 00:45:51,342 Modern times people are, are still trying to produce some sort of unified theory of all the forces. 443 00:45:52,038 --> 00:45:57,723 Which in a sense is the natural descendent of the work of Einstein in the last century. 444 00:45:58,475 --> 00:46:03,791 And at present, it's certainly my belief that the, the best candidate we have is the string theory. 445 00:46:05,354 --> 00:46:08,911 The sad irony is that right at the heart of string theory 446 00:46:09,499 --> 00:46:15,704 lies the very thing Einstein had been unable to accept, quantum mechanics. 447 00:46:17,304 --> 00:46:22,223 My suspicion is that as things stand at the moment Einstein would not particularly have liked the string theory. 448 00:46:22,797 --> 00:46:28,710 Simply because it does incorporate quantum mechanics in a way which he expressed great distaste of. 449 00:46:29,639 --> 00:46:33,399 So even though in some, we feel that it continues his dream, 450 00:46:33,633 --> 00:46:35,529 he may not have been so happy with it. 451 00:47:03,652 --> 00:47:06,687 Einstein's was a life full of ironies. 452 00:47:08,125 --> 00:47:10,761 He was a key figure in the growth of quantum theory, 453 00:47:11,686 --> 00:47:14,249 yet he could not accept its consequences, 454 00:47:15,328 --> 00:47:17,375 he was a pacifist, 455 00:47:17,662 --> 00:47:23,203 but his equation E=MC^2 was intimately linked to the atomic bomb. 456 00:47:24,141 --> 00:47:29,670 And as a great communicator he seemed loathe to listen to the advice of his peers. 457 00:47:47,526 --> 00:47:52,453 But above all Einstein's battle with quantum mechanics showed that even the greatest scientist 458 00:47:52,670 --> 00:47:59,461 could not on his own achieve the objectivity needed to read the mind of God. 459 00:48:01,685 --> 00:48:04,753 As a result, though beautiful in its intention, 460 00:48:05,373 --> 00:48:12,522 Einstein's version of the theory of everything would remain his unfinished symphony.