Einstein and Eddington Page #2

Well, less Jewish

than the last time I saw you.

I'm a Christian now

in a Christian country.

I have renounced my Jewish faith.

So what are you working on?

- I'm looking at gases.

- Which?

Ammonia.

What about it?

Its conversion into nitrate.

Explosives?

What use is science

if it has no practical application?

We should go.

We're late.

For what?

There's someone I want you to meet.

Mr Koppel.

Thank you.

Who is this "someone"?

He who makes it all possible.

The 12,000 marks a year?

Mm-hm.

And he wants to have

a good look at his investment.

Max, I thought it was

part of my contract

that I would have total freedom.

Just keep what you say

clear and simple.

You're late.

I was invited precisely at the time

I was supposed to arrive here,

therefore it was impossible

for me to be here when I left.

What?

The energy which an object has because

of its motion will increase its mass.

The increase in mass makes it harder

for the object to increase its speed.

Try as he might,

the brilliant scientist setting out

to meet the fat industrialist

was always going to be late.

If the sun were to disappear now,

according to Isaac Newton

and his laws of gravity,

we feel it now.

Instantaneously.

The force of gravity moves faster

than the speed of light.

How can that be?

This is what I'm paying for?

What are you saying?

W-W-What is he saying?

Thank you very much for all

the money you're giving me.

Goodbye.

This is the Einstein

you speak so highly of?

Yes.

What does he offer us?

He has a truly original,

probing mind.

Questions don't win wars.

You have plenty of scientists

who can help you practically.

He is a theorist.

What good is theory to me?

After two centuries,

he might just prove Isaac Newton,

the greatest ever English scientist,

the man who set down the laws

that describe the workings

of the whole universe, wrong.

That's what he can give us.

Slow down! Wait!

You're going too fast.

So...

We have done exactly 1,500

in the first nine months of this year.

So, if we keep going at the current

rate, and building a variant for

poor weather, shorter daylight hours

and possible illness,

then we should have filled in

the whole map

by mid-afternoon of December 25th.

Otherwise known as Christmas Day.

Well,

Quakers don't celebrate Christmas.

I should be back by then.

"Over by Christmas"

is what everyone says.

William...

There's something I want to say.

When do you go?

Seven days' training, then France.

That wasn't what

you wanted to say, was it?

No.

I know what it is.

Do you?

Your religion is

against what I'm doing.

Which is why I was afraid

to talk to you about it.

I'm truly sorry, forgive me.

Here.

A token of our friendship.

We were saying, it's been years.

Ten.

A nephew out of the ether.

Hasn't my Elsa grown?

She was still a child

when you left Germany.

Why did you leave?

I have no attachment

to any country or place.

We all belong to the country

we're born in.

I renounced my German nationality.

I was German, now I'm Swiss.

What difference does it make?

And there's no such thing

as the ether.

If it existed, light would be

slowed down by it and it isn't.

Light always travels

at the same speed.

There's no such thing as the ether.

What else is there, nothing?

Freedom.

Imagination.

I think your imagination

is a little over-excited.

Not excited enough.

I intend to excite it

a great deal more.

Shall I take the top off the egg?

Arthur?

There you are.

There's something in this.

That's good, isn't it?

I don't know if it is or not.

I'm delighted English science

is taking such an enlightened

approach towards Germany.

How did you get in?

You left the door open.

I brought you some things.

Thank you.

I love Schubert.

- Do you?

- Yes.

Good.

Who else?

Beethoven?

Too personal.

He makes me feel...

Yes?

Nothing.

What does he make you feel?

Naked.

Music and physics are nourished

by the same sort of longing.

I don't know anything about physics.

Good!

Good.

That is, what I mean to say is...

...that it will have to be music...

Between us.

It's only noon.

Your lecture's not until two.

- I know.

- Where are you going?

- My friend William, his train is leaving.

- When?

Now. You were right about friends

and how one must say things.

Ah, not so fast!

May I have a light, sir?

Eddington!

Come to see the regiment off?

Yes.

This is my son, Raymond.

Hello.

- Lady Shirley, you know.

- Yes.

It's a proud day to be English.

And to be in England.

- Yes, good luck.

- Won't need luck.

On you go, my boy. Go on, Raymond.

I'll get the door. On you get.

I wasn't given

much time to prepare this.

We have, I think, most of us, been

the victims of Sir Oliver's requests.

Albert Einstein

has no regard for the conventions of

scientific presentation.

Even his mathematical symbols

are all of his own making.

To be frank, it might as well

be a foreign language.

But I decoded some of it.

He's suggesting that time is

at different speeds in the universe,

depending on how fast you're moving.

The faster you move,

the more time... slows down.

Time isn't the same everywhere?

That's what he says.

Yes, time isn't shared.

It's not an absolute.

What are his references?

None, but...

Acknowledgements?

None.

Does he propose how

any of this might be tested?

No, but that's not the point.

What is the point of theory

if it can't be tested?

What does he say about gravity?

Um...

Nothing.

What holds everything together?

What dictates

the motion of the planets?

What controls the life

of the universe as a whole?

Gravity.

Newton's laws.

Our map for everything.

So this Einstein, in other words,

has nothing to say

about the real world?

Eddington?

That's right, no.

It's not real.

Left them happy.

Was that your intention?

MAN:
Dirty Germans!

Germans make me sick!

Stop this!

Argh!

Leave these people alone!

Winnie, these are the Mullers,

a German family who need our help.

Let me clean you up.

It was horrible.

But it's over.

No, no, no, it's not that.

One of them asked a question

I didn't answer.

Who?

At the lecture.

He does say something about gravity.

Einstein?

He doesn't mention it, but if

you look properly, it's obvious.

He poses a question.

Turn this way a little.

Newton says that gravity

is instantaneous,

but Einstein says

that the speed of light

is the speed limit of the universe,

so gravity can't be instantaneous.

They can't both be right.

Einstein or Newton,

that's the question he's asking.

Well then, the truth

is all that matters.

And you must go after it.

Our supper?

I thought you were

arriving tomorrow.

Hans wants to know...

Go on, ask your father.

Is your work nearly finished?

Let me show you

what I've been working on.

What is it made of?

Where does it come from?

What is it?

Gravity.

That's what I'm struggling with, Hans.

I can't make sense of it.

You have changed the way

that you do everything.

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