Albert Einstein’s ‘most splendid work’'I have just completed the most splendid work of my life.'
Albert Einstein to his son Hans Albert, 1915
It is now 100 years since Albert Einstein told his son and later the world about his theory of gravity called General Relativity. It had not had an easy gestation. War was raging in Europe, millions were dying and Einstein, a pacifist in Berlin, was doing what he could for the cause of peace. Einstein had graduated with a degree in physics in 1901 and worked in the Swiss Patent Office from 1902 to 1909. Now 36 years old Einstein, he had left the patent office and moved successively to professorships in Zurich, Prague and Berlin. As he grappled with his theory, Einstein was also dealing with domestic problems. He was a demanding person to live with and his 1903 marriage to classmate Mileva was in trouble. They had two children to whom he was never close. By 1914 Einstein and Mileva were living apart and he was in a relationship with his cousin Elsa. He was not a lonely genius! Einstein was in constant discussion and correspondence with students and his two closest collaborators, mathematician and college friend Marcel Grossmann and Michele Besso, an engineer in the Patent Office. Grossmann helped Einstein create the mathematical formulation of his theory and Besso remained a lifelong friend. In the midst of these turbulent times, Einstein continued to struggle with his masterwork. In 1914 he and Grossmann presented a paper in two parts: Einstein’s section had the physics, Grossmann’s gave the mathematics. Finally in November 1915, Einstein presented the full theory of gravity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Einstein’s theory, called General Relativity, was soon described as ‘one of the greatest – perhaps the greatest – achievement in the history of human thought’. General Relativity has passed a century of testing. It still inspires and remains ‘young in spirit’ . Physicists around the world are struggling to test the key prediction of his theory – the gravitational waves that are thought to carry vast amounts of energy across the universe at the speed of light. Einstein’s masterpieceMatter tells spacetime how to curve,
spacetime tells matter how to move -John Archibald Wheeler In 1687 Isaac Newton revolutionised our way of thinking. He discovered that the universe was ruled by universal laws – laws of motion and gravitation. In Newton’s thinking, space was an unchangeable universal set of imaginary gridlines, time was perfectly regular, and gravity was a mysterious force of attraction between masses. One mystery of gravity was that it acted exactly the same on apples and iron, feathers and hammers. Hammer feather on moon In 1915 Einstein created a new revolution. He replaced Newton’s laws with new laws. He said that mass changes the shape of space and the speed of time. He said that gravity is a fiction. You cannot feel gravity while you are falling. You only feel gravity when something stops you from falling. The mystery of gravity disappears when falling is just a property of space. In Einstein’s theory the Earth takes the shortest path through the curved space and time around the sun. A stone thrown upwards also takes the shortest path in space and time. Curved space orbits If you stop something from falling you must apply a force and this slows down time. This effect is called the Principle of Maximal Aging: freely falling objects age fastest: applying a force slows down time and you age slower. Gravity is mainly due to the time differences with height. On Earth it is about 3 microseconds per year for every kilometre of altitude. This tiny effect on time was too small to measure until atomic clocks were invented in the 1960s, but today it is an intrinsic part of every GPS navigator. Einstein is inside your mobile phone! The Challenge 'Einstein’s theory is like a magician’s bag. There seems to be no end to the queer things that can be pulled out of it. The more it is studied the more paradoxical it appears.' - Edwin Slosson, 1922 Einstein challenged scientists. Because light beams follow the shape of space, starlight passing near the sun should be deflected. In a solar eclipse the sun is completely blocked out by the moon. Stars can be seen but their positions should be altered. If Einstein’s theory was correct, the stars would appear to have moved away from the sun by about 1/2000th of a degree. LIGHTS ASKEW IN THE HEAVENSTesting Einstein: Triumph and Disbelief
'One of the greatest – perhaps the greatest – of achievements in the history of human thought.'
Sir J J Thomson, President of the Royal Society of London, 1919
Arthur Eddington saw the significance of Einstein’s work. He rallied Britain’s science community send expeditions to observe the total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919. One expedition went to Brazil, the other to Principe Island off west Africa.
In Principe they met torrential rain and cloud. In Brazil they had problems with telescopes and distortions caused by the solar heating of the telescope and the atmosphere. Eddington compared the position of the stars in eclipse images with photographs of the night sky taken previously. The images were blurred. He made significant corrections to some of the measurements and he only measured a few stars. On 6 November 1919 the British Astronomer Royal announced that results did not support Newton’s theory of gravity. Instead they confirmed Einstein’s predictions. There were three messages: Newton was wrong, Einstein was a genius and ordinary people could not understand it! Einstein became a celebrity overnight but the message was out that the theory was too difficult to understand.
Within months Karl Schwartzchild had found the first mathematical solution to Einstein’s equations. Within a few years science writers like Edwin Slosson were writing books to explain the theory. The great wallal expedition of 1922The Road to Wallal
Despite public acclaim, many scientists were suspicious of Eddington’s claims. It did not help that Einstein was a German and Germany had lost the war. The 1919 eclipse results do not stand up to modern standards of proof. Some stars actually appeared to have shifted in the wrong direction. More data was needed to find out if Einstein was really right!
In 1922 Wallal, an isolated site on the coast of Western Australia, 1500 kilometres from Perth was chosen as ‘the most favourable site on earth’ to further test Einstein’s theory. ‘An isolated and lonely outpost’
- Daisy Bates, 1922 'Wallal, where many of the world’s astronomers will gather to view the eclipse of the sun ….. is one of the most isolated telegraph repeating stations in the Commonwealth.' - Geraldton Guardian, 14 September 1922 'Tropical insects abound throughout the year in myriads, including flies and mosquitoes, which cling to man and beast with savage tenacity. ' - J H Cormack, pearler Wallal, around 300 kilometres south of Broome on the Eighty Mile Beach, is said to mean ‘sweet water’ after the Aboriginal fresh water source located there. The soak was identified in 1879, a government well was sunk and Wallal became a vital watering point on the Kimberley-De Grey stock route. The waters off Wallal were known for numerous sharks and severe storms and cyclones. They were also lucrative pearling grounds. Wallal became better known as a post and telegraph station on the overland telegraph line connecting Perth to the North. In 1901 Surveyor Alfred Canning surveyed the line for the rabbit proof fence and nominated Wallal as the end point. Wallal Downs pastoral station was established around five kilometres from the telegraph station in 1900. By 1922 Wallal had seen a sensational murder, many bodies washed up during cyclones and wreckage from ill-fated ships. At that time the little settlement comprised one building for four or five operators and linesmen and along the low ridge on which the building stood were the huts and shelters belonging to more than 100 Aboriginal people. The location of choice 'At Wallal, Western Australia, where the eclipse path strikes the north-west coast there will be the happy combination of the best astronomical and meteorological conditions; the longest duration of totality and greatest altitude of the sun coinciding with the clearest skies and the lowest rainfall. ' - H A Hunt, Government Meteorologist, 1922 In March 1920 the Royal Astronomical Society published the path of the next solar eclipse, to take place on 21 September 1922. It would begin on the east coast of Africa, cross the Indian Ocean, passing the Maldives and Christmas Island and reach Australia in the early afternoon. Astronomers were informed that: 'the eclipse track reaches Australia at Ninety-Mile Beach, a hopeless part of the coast, and strikes into the great desert. There are no facilities for landing. The desert is inaccessible, except to camels. There are no railways within hundreds of miles, and motor cars are out of the question.' - Charting the eclipse path, H A Hunt, The Total Eclipse of the Sun, 1922 Those intent on testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity saw the 1922 solar eclipse as an ideal opportunity. ‘there seems only one way to achieve success. Know first what you want, and then go after it.’ - Dr William Campbell, Director of the University of California’s Lick Observatory Leading an expedition to Wallal was for Campbell going after it. He sought further information on the location and found that the September climate would be mostly dry, the atmosphere clear and the eclipse would last longer than anywhere else. By the end of 1920 Campbell’s preparations for Wallal were well underway. Eclipse hunters
Who were the sun watchers?
'If the astronomical expeditions bring home confirmation of the eclipse of 1919 we may have to get used to all sorts of queer ideas, beside crooked beams of light in empty space. . . We may get to talking about the curvature of time, the weight of heat, kinks in space, atoms of energy, four dimensions, world lines and a finite universe. We may be called upon to come to . . . conceive of arrows that shrink and bullets that get heavier the faster they travel; of clocks that go slower the faster they travel, and of a future that turns back and tangles itself up in the present.' - Dr Edwin Slosson, journalist, chemist and populariser of science, 1922 Seven international teams set off for four locations, all hoping to catch the upcoming eclipse, and all hoping for much better results than those of Eddington. A British expedition from the Greenwich Observatory went to Christmas Island to try to improve on their 1919 results. A joint Dutch-German expedition joined them. Four teams headed for Wallal. The Lick Observatory team led by William Campbell, included his assistant Robert Trumpler, Dr C Adams, the New Zealand Government Astronomer, J. Hosking, a Melbourne Observatory member and Professor Alexander Ross, Foundation Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Western Australia. Perth Observatory sent another team. The Toronto University team was led by Professor C A Chant. The Indian team comprised of astronomers John and Mary Evershed of Kodaikanal Observatory in South India. A photographer, a filmmaker, two self-funded British amateur astronomers and the Australian Navy team under Commander H L Quick made a Wallal group of more than thirty. Across Australia, Adelaide Observatory sent a group to Cordillo Downs in South Australia while Sydney Observatory sent a team to Goondiwindi, near the southern border of Queensland. Dr Campbell assisted these Australian astronomers with their eclipse plans and equipment so that results could be compared. Australia assists
‘In the interests of and for the credit of Australia, it is considered desirable that every possible assistance should be given by the Commonwealth government.’
John Dumaresq Commodore Australian Navy to the Prime Minister, 1921
In June 1921 Father Edward Pigot, Director of Sydney’s Riverview College Observatory, wrote to Australian naval authorities on behalf of William Campbell asking for a suitable ship and help of ‘a party of blue jackets’ to transport Campbell and others to Wallal for the 1922 solar eclipse. Pigot highlighted the advantages of Wallal, but also its isolation and lack of accessibility.
The Australian Navy assured the Prime Minister that a vessel could be made available to transport men and gear. Cabinet approved the request. A group of ten naval officers under Lieutenant Commander Harold Leopold Quick were to be vital to the expedition’s success. A Grand Tour to Wallal
'The trek to Wallal has been a scientific adventure. Almost all kinds of transport had been used before the party arrived at its destination. The earlier portion of the journey to Broome was made by rail, liner and coastal steamer.'
Daily Standard, 19 September 1922
The expedition began with Swiss astronomer Robert Trumpler, from Lick Observatory, sailing to Tahiti with three ‘Einstein’ cameras weighing over 10 tons. There over 3 months he photographed the stars that 5 months later would be visible at Wallal when the Sun was eclipsed. He arrived in Sydney in late July 1922.
Dr Campbell and his wife arrived in Sydney by boat a few days later. From the start of their journey across Australia, accompanied by Lieutenant Commander Quick the astronomers were treated like royalty. At Australian government expense they travelled by train to Melbourne, then Adelaide. There they were joined by the Canadian team under Professor Chant. At each stop they were met by government and scientific representatives and entertained at state receptions. The Perth Observatory team and Professor Alexander Ross of the University of Western Australia joined the party in Perth on 16 August 1922. The media reported every detail. By the time they left for Broome on the coastal steamer SS Charon Australians were well aware of the Einstein connection and the importance of the scientific expedition. The eyes of Australia and the world were on them. Broome to Wallal
'A quick run down the coast brought us to Wallal. At least someone said that it was Wallal. All we could see was a stretch of golden beach that disappeared to nothing to right and left while on it the great rollers crashed their way only to be broken up in a smother of white foam.'
E Brandon Cremer, United Theatres, cinematographer on the expedition, 1922
In Broome the sun watchers met up with the Indian team Dr Evershed and his astronomer-wife Mary, who had sailed from Madras. They were assisted by Donald Everson from the University of Western Australia’s Physics Department. Broome Magistrate Colonel Mansbridge helped them buy timber and cement and had moulds made for concrete piers that they would use to support their telescopes at Wallal.
Now the party had grown to 30 scientists and their wives, 2 filmmakers, a photographer, a Broome policeman and ten naval officers. With 35 tons of luggage it was very cramped aboard the schooner Gwendolen so the ladies were accommodated on the steamer Governor Musgrave, which towed the Gwendolen south to Wallal, 300 kilometres away. The Landing
The landing was rendered very difficult by the surf, which was heavy, and bumped the whale boat badly as it came to shore. . . a number of cases were swept away by the surf and were badly soaked.
Daily Examiner, 5 September 1922
The Gwendolen arrived off Wallal at sunrise on 30 August. Landing on 80 Mile Beach involved transferring everything to land using a lifeboat. A combination of the large tidal range (up to nine metres) and surf, made it even more difficult. Dr Campbell, ‘the greatest living observer of eclipses’, was the first off the boat with Lieutenant Commander Quick, keen to get preparations underway.
When the lifeboat grounded they jumped into the water and waded to shore carrying the chronometer and other delicate instruments. They were greeted by a group from the Wallal Downs pastoral station, the Wallal postmaster/telegraph operator and, around ‘two scores of aborigines.’ All were put to work carrying the precious packages through the water to shore. Camp Life
'The camp is anything but a picnic place . . . the ground is loose grey sand, and, with the clearing operations and the passage of the donkey teams, the air is filled with powdery dust, which finds its way into the food and everything else.'
The Argus, 1 September 1922
Campbell chose a suitable flat site for the observation station and camp west of the Government well and surrounded by low trees and scrub. The Navy team set up the camp, selecting sites for the twelve sleeping tents, two mess tents, two store tents and the cook’s galley, adjacent to the four observing stations. They unloaded the schooner ‘manfully and efficiently’, assisted with the erection of instruments and their shelters and generally took over camp operations. The Perth team used Wallal Downs station, about three kilometres away, as the base for their accommodation and instruments.
Food and meals were provided by the Navy with ‘near fine dining’ offered. At 6.30am each day the camp was roused by a naval officer who walked amongst the tents ‘shouting an old getting-up call used on board ship.’ Work started after a quick breakfast. They had only three weeks to prepare for the big day. Making Ready
'The making ready of the instruments was an arduous task, the work for everybody lasting from sunrise to darkness, with many extensions into the night for the purpose of securing star photographs needed in adjusting and testing the instruments.'
W W Campbell, October 1922
Everybody had an allotted task. From early morning until nightfall scientists could be seen ‘using pick, shovel, or astronomical instruments with equal enthusiasm.’ The women supported the scientists in a range of roles. Although the main emphasis was on testing Einstein, coronal studies of various kinds were also to be undertaken. A variety of auxiliary devices providing temperature, pressure, humidity and wind measurements were set up and tested. Time signals came from Bordeaux to Wallal Downs via telegraph and were then relayed by wireless to Campbell at the top of the 40 foot camera tower.
Dust was the major drawback with the living area soon dubbed ‘Dust Camp’. The instruments were located among the trees, but the living quarters were in an open area. Strong winds and feet stirred up dust that blew into everything. Aboriginal people assisted by covering the ground with sand and branches and sprinkling water near the instruments. The Tower of Babel and the Heavenly Twins
The Lick Observatory camera pointed skyward like some huge cannon trained for distant bombardment.
Daily Standard, 19 September 1922
The chief task was the erection of structures to hold the instruments, then their alignment. The ‘Tower of Babel’, so named by the naval officers because it was “constructed in five different languages” supported the 40 foot Lick Observatory coronal camera. More supports were needed for the “Heavenly Twins” - Lick’s twin 15 foot and 5 foot Einstein cameras. These cameras with precision lenses were specially designed for the eclipse by Lick Observatory. Each camera required a canvas shelter for shade as well as protection from strong winds and dust.
The main Canadian Einstein camera with a focal length of 11 foot was smaller than those of the Lick Observatory but it too required protection with a high wall and a roof that could be pulled aside for observations. The two amateur English astronomers, dubbed ‘the British Cavemen’, created interest by setting up most of their instruments underground. The Indian team built three large concrete piers for their 21 foot focal length camera and other equipment, protecting them with tents and a wooden structure. The Perth Observatory team a few kilometres away determined the longitude of the Wallal site from radio signals. Their small twin cameras and twelve inch reflector were also set up to photograph the corona and investigate shadow bands, those thin streaks, light and dark, that move across the ground before and after totality. Countdown The weather was perfect in the lead up to the eclipse with the clear nights needed for adjusting observations. The second week saw numerous rehearsals for the big day:
'Mr James Kean, one of the naval party, would stand on a box with a chronometer before him. A certain second would be chosen for the beginning of the total phase, the zero hour, and at precisely six minutes before that epoch Mr Kean would call out ‘Six minutes before!’ Everyone would assemble be at his post. Four minutes later he would call ‘Two minutes before!’ – Then ‘thirty seconds before!’ Director Campbell would be looking through the finder of his Einstein camera and when he would (in imagination) see the moon just cover the sun and the corona flash out he would shout ‘Go!” Then Mr Keane would count the seconds, One! Two! Three . . . Fifty-nine! One Minute! One! Two! etc until some seconds after the time totality was supposed to end. This practice continued until the fateful day arrived.'
Professor Clarence Chant, Toronto University
At last the big day
Two minutes before totality. The landscape assumed in turn a yellowish tinge then a greenish blue, then a purple colour, and the shadows cast by the narrow crescent sun were sharp and harsh.
Alexander Ross, University of Western Australia
The weather was perfect. At 13.40 hours, on 21 September 1922, ten minutes before the moon’s silhouette passed across the sun, the signal for action sounded. After final adjustments to instruments, slides for cameras were placed in position, shutters tested and retested and all gathered around their allotted instruments to await totality. The Aboriginal people, it is said were frightened and kept out of sight.
The temperature dropped by about eight degrees, there was an absence of bird life and even the flies ‘appeared to become quite paralysed, so that one could pick them up as if they were dead.’ At the moment of totality the eclipse program started and it was progressed ‘with clockwork precision’. There was only five minutes and 15.5 seconds to obtain the evidence that would prove or disprove Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Dr Adams, New Zealand Astronomer assisted by his wife took exposures from inside the Lick 40 foot camera, the navy’s Mr Keane provided audio time signals and Campbell was in charge of the smaller Lick Einstein twin cameras with two naval officers changing the glass plates. Trumpler guided the 15 foot cameras with assistance to operate the plate holders. Not one second was wasted. At the end of the day Campbell, Chant and the Perth Observatory team all expressed satisfaction. The British amateurs were disappointed because their self-recording magnetic instrument had failed to register. The Indian team later expressed regret that they had been unsuccessful under such ideal conditions and all their plates had failed ‘for one reason or another.’ Campbell was confident that the photographs that they had collected would be ‘of great value to science’ but he could not as yet say more. Leaving Wallal
'Men of science feel the necessity of absolute conviction before venturing public expression of results.'
W W Campbell
The most important phase in the project was yet to come. Hopes for an announcement in Broome were dashed. The development of the huge glass photographic plates was started at Wallal but temperatures in the darkroom tent could not be controlled, night air was often moist and dust was an issue.
They decided to take the plates to Broome where suitable space could be found to develop them as well as a source of ice for cooling. The camp was dismantled and the instruments and plates carefully packed and taken by donkey team to the shore. Getting the luggage through rough seas and onto the schooner moored some miles off shore caused delays. The Wallal sun watchers returned to Broome on the 28 September. The plates were developed in Broome but the large number of stars recorded meant that more time was needed to study, measure and compare them with those that Trumpler had photographed in Tahiti. The 270 kilograms of glass plates were packaged for transport to Sydney and would not be shipped to the United States until 19 November 1922. All that remained of the eclipse expedition at Wallal were the cement pillars that had held the instruments and Campbell’s promise to send a plaque to mount in memory of the project. The world waits
'After the results of the photographs then taken have been measured we may perhaps know whether Einstein is to be ranked with Copernicus and Newton, among those who have revolutionised man’s conception of the universe, or whether he will be regarded merely as the author of an ingenious mathematical theory of limited applicability to reality.'
Edwin Slosson
The British, Dutch and German expeditions to Christmas Island all failed due to cloud. So it was on the Wallal results that Einstein depended to prove his theory of general relativity.
The media clamoured for news and the scientists were under intense pressure. Campbell reiterated that there would be no hasty announcements. They did not start work on the plates for some time. The precious cargo arrived at the Lick Observatory in December 1922 but Trumpler did not return home until February 1923. It was only then that both he and Campbell could throw themselves into processing the plates. Predictions Sustained
'We not repeat Einstein test next eclipse.'
Cable from W W Campbell to Sir Frank Dyson, Astronomer Royal, 12 April 1923
Campbell and Trumpler independently selected and measured three pairs of Wallal plates showing from 60 to 80 stars. They then compared them with those plates taken by Trumpler in Tahiti, three months before the eclipse. They found that the displacements of the stars close to the eclipsed sun had a mean value of 1.74 seconds of arc. The value expressed in Einstein’s theory was 1.75, almost exact agreement.
On 12 April 1923 Campbell cabled Einstein in Berlin to say that the Lick Observatory team had confirmed his prediction. A cable to the Astronomer Royal expressed Campbell’s confidence that there would be no need to repeat the Einstein test at the upcoming September 1923 eclipse. Chant’s Toronto team also released its results. Although not as definitive, they also confirmed Einstein’s prediction. Einstein’s quest for truth was over. It had been proven at Wallal, with the support, interest, generosity and hospitality of the Australian people.
In October 1922 the University of Western Australia awarded Wallal expedition leader and Lick Observatory Director Dr W W Campbell an honorary degree of Doctor of Science as ‘a foremost representative of astronomers in the world.’
'There was a huge cardboard telescope on the platform, and an original type of wireless labelled ‘The Umbrella Type’. The wireless was made up of empty bottles as batteries, a frying pan, the lid of a dustbin and a gramophone horn.'
Daily News, 15 May 1925 describing the student float shown opposite
Curved Space, Warped Time
The 1922 Wallal Expedition proved Einstein was right: space is curved by matter. Nobody beat the Wallal results for 50 years.
In 1916 Einstein made another revolutionary prediction: that space can have ripples. If curving space is like the curving of an elastic sheet then surely it can also ripple like the surface of a drum. Ripples in space diagram Einstein predicted that gravitational waves would carry energy away from orbiting bodies, making them spiral together. Einstein’s waves were immediately controversial. People could not understand the mathematics. In 1922 Eddington claimed that gravity waves travelled at the speed of thought. Einstein thought gravity waves would be undetectable. It would be 50 years before black holes and neutron stars were discovered….bodies so dense that they could emit gravity waves with more power than that of all the stars in the universe. In 1957, two years after Einstein’s death, Richard Eeynman proved that Eddington was wrong: Einstein’s waves carried energy…they must be real. In 1976 Bob Vessot used an atomic clock in a NASA Scout Rocket to prove that time depends on height above the Earth, beautifully proving the link between gravity and time as predicted by Einstein. From the 1970s to today physicists have been building better and better gravitational wave detectors. The NIOBE detector build in Perth was one of many exquisitely sensitive detectors that detected nothing! In 2011 NASA measured the shape of space around the Earth, proving that the geometry of space does not follow the school text book formulas. The circumference formula for a circle around the Earth is wrong by 28mm! In 2015 the Advanced LIGO gravitational wave detectors began operation in the USA. These are the first detectors that have reached enough sensitivity to directly detect predicted waves from neutron stars. Australia is a partner in this project. Detecting gravitational waves will be a landmark in human exploration of the universe. Suddenly we will be able to listen to the universe, hearing black holes colliding, neutron stars forming and maybe the big bang itself. Today we use general relativity every time we use a GPS navigator…Einstein is inside our phones! Search for gravitational lens images and you can see curved space as we see it throughout the universe. |
Marcel Grossmann, Albert Einstein, Gustav Geissler and Marcel’s brother Eugen during their time as students at ETH Zurich.
As he was completing his theory Einstein was working with a small group of scientists trying to end the war raging around them. The group published a Manifesto to the Europeans which called for a just end to what we now call the First World War.
For Einstein life without music was inconceivable, even as he grappled with his theory. He never travelled without his violin, ‘Lina’. Einstein commented ‘I have my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.’
Einstein and his first wife Mileva early in their marriage.
If space is curved as shown light beams will be deflected as they pass through the curved space near the sun.
Einstein’s Zurich Notebook 1913, showing his equations linking space, time, matter and gravity. He grappled for seven years with what was to become his 1915 theory of general relativity.
Courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh The New York Times said ‘lights all askew in the heavens’ but Eddington’s photo of the 1919 eclipse, showed that if stars were out of place it was barely detectable.
The deflections measured on an A4 image were typically 1/40th of a millimetre - about 1/10th of the width of a fine pencil line. The stars are visible between the horizontal lines.
Courtesy Edward Wechner What Eddington’s team would have hoped to see when they compared two photos, was the stars having moved away from the sun. But the deflections were smaller than the star images and some went in the wrong direction.
Courtesy of the BBC Signpost Broome-Wallal
Courtesy of the State Library of Western Australia 112585PD Map of Western Australia, 1893
Courtesy of the State Records Office, Cons 4912, CD0769 Charting the eclipse path, H A Hunt, The Total Eclipse of the Sun, 1922
The Lick Observatory team at Wallal. From left to right: Dr Adams, Mrs Adams, Dr Moore, Mrs Campbell, Dr Campbell, Dr Trumpler, Lieut.-Com. Quick, Professor Ross, Mr Hosking.
Courtesy of the State Library of Western Australia, 4131/B/3/24 The scientific teams from the United States, Canada and New Zealand crossed Australia on the Trans-Australian Express; a train similar to that pictured above at Tarcoola, South Australia. En route a state reception was held at the Kalgoorlie Town Hall.
Well-wishers farewell the Wallal expedition team as it leaves Fremantle for Broome, 20 August 1922
Courtesy State Library of Western Australia 4131B/1/1 The schooner Gwendolen at Broome before departure to Wallal on 29 August 1922. The ladies travelled on the Governor Musgrave, a Commonwealth Government lighthouse vessel which towed the Gwendolen south.
Courtesy State Library of Western Australia 4131B1/14 The S S Charon at Geraldton en route to Broome with the scientists for Wallal on board.
Other coastal stops were Carnarvon, Onslow, Point Sampson and Port Hedland. Courtesy State Library of Western Australia 4131B/1/2 Landing freight from the Gwendolen was a slow process over nearly three days with the schooner anchored several kilometres from the shore.
Courtesy of the State Library of Western Australia 4131B/1/31 Wallal Beach, unloading the Gwendolen’s lifeboats
Courtesy State Library of Western Australia 4131B/1/32 The first night or two at Wallal after 30 August 1922 were spent camped on the beach. Teams worked hard to unload, erect tents and other facilities and build stands and protectionfor telescopes, cameras and other equipment.
Courtesy State Library of Western Australia 4131B/1/34 Donkey transport - ‘slow but sure’. Once a load was on the shore one donkey team hauled it over the sand ridge behind the beach. There the equipment was transferred to a large wagon and pulled by a team of donkeys along a two kilometre sandy track to the selected observation site.
Courtesy State Library of Western Australia 4131B/1/40 At the end of the first week the scientists, including Robert Trumpler depicted here ‘after a dip’ were able to spend a day at the beach, swimming and shell collecting. Dr Evershed spent much time catching and classifying lizards, moths and butterflies.
Courtesy State Library of Western Australia, 4131B/5/17 The departure from Wallal was delayed when rough seas after a storm made loading difficult.
Courtesy of the State Library of Western Australia 4131B/5/28 Sydney Morning Herald, 13 April 1923
In May 1925 the student body also remembered the expedition. The 19 float student Procession to the Graduation Ceremony at Government House Ballroom included a float entitled ‘Who went to Wallal?’
Courtesy UWA Archives 45P courtesy of Illustrations Limited.
Gravity Waves from orbiting bodies
The shape of space around the earth as measured by NASA's Gravity Probe B space mission
A Galaxy shown through a gravitational lense
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