Article ID: CBB772698936

The 1919 Eclipse Results That Verified General Relativity and Their Later Detractors: A Story Re-Told (2020)

unapi

Einstein became world famous on 7 November 1919, following press publication of a meeting held in London on 6 November 1919 where the results were announced of two British expeditions led by Eddington, Dyson and Davidson to measure how much background starlight is bent as it passes the Sun. Three data sets were obtained: two showed the measured deflection matched the theoretical prediction of Einstein's 1915 Theory of General Relativity, and became the official result; the third was discarded as defective.At the time, the experimental result was accepted by the expert astronomical community. However, in 1980 a study by philosophers of science Earman and Glymour claimed that the data selection in the 1919 analysis was flawed and that the discarded data set was fully valid and was not consistent with the Einstein prediction, and that, therefore, the overall result did not verify General Relativity. This claim, and the resulting accusation of Eddington's bias, was repeated with exaggeration in later literature and has become ubiquitous.The 1919 and 1980 analyses of the same data provide two discordant conclusions. We reanalyse the 1919 data, and identify the error that undermines the conclusions of Earman and Glymour.

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Authors & Contributors
Tirapicos, Luís
Steele, John M.
Crato, Nuno
Keith John Treschman
Sara Bacchini
Luís C. B. Crispino
Concepts
Eclipses; transits; occultations; conjunctions
Astronomy
Observation
Relativity, general
Physics
Solar eclipse
Time Periods
20th century
Ancient
20th century, early
17th century
21st century
19th century
Places
Brazil
China
São Tomé and Príncipe
Lisbon (Portugal)
London (England)
South America
Institutions
Lick Observatory
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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