![]() Unauthorized use is prohibited.Īs he trains his telescope on the sun, he sees a round object on the face of the Sun. He’s preparing the third of four papers he delivers to the Prussian academy, and he does a calculation to see what his new theory predicts for the orbit of Mercury. ![]() There’s this marvelous story about Einstein, as he’s just at the point of the single greatest breakthrough of his career, the Theory of General Relativity. I came to Vulcan from Einstein’s perspective. Why did you decide to pluck it from obscurity? Today, the story of the ‘planet’ Vulcan barely registers as a footnote in the history of science. Speaking from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is Professor of Science Writing, the author explains how a provincial doctor in France triggered “Vulcan-mania” how Einstein’s theory of relativity offered a totally new explanation of the universe and why Vulcan still has lessons to teach about the nature of truth and illusion. Enter Vulcan-the so-called “other” planet-first observed in 1859 confirmed by the greatest astronomer of the day, Urbain Le Verrier and hailed by The New York Times as one of the great discoveries of the century. In The Hunt For Vulcan: … And How Albert Einstein Destroyed A Planet, Discovered Relativity, And Deciphered The Universe, Tom Levenson reveals how this revolution could not have happened without disproving an obscure astronomical calculation.Īccording to Newton, Mercury’s wobble was caused by the gravitational pull of some other planet. One hundred years ago today at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Albert Einstein gave the first in a series of lectures that rewrote Newton’s laws of gravity and changed the world.
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