Science Friday - Biomedical Espionage, Einstein’s Eclipse, Transit Of Mercury. Nov. 8, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

The FBI, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other agencies who oversee federal research grants are currently asking if the open culture of science in the U.S. is inviting other countries to steal it. The FBI has been warning since 2016 that researchers could be potentially sending confidential research, and even biological samples, to other countries. On Monday, a report in the New York Times outlined the scale of ongoing investigations: nearly 200 cases of potential intellectual property theft at 71 different institutions.  New York Times health and science reporter Gina Kolata, who broke the story, explains the investigations, and why China is featuring so prominently. Then, on May 29, 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington and his scientific team photographed the stars during a total solar eclipse. The resulting images displayed stars that seemed slightly out of place—an indication that the mass of the sun had caused starlight to veer off course, as Einstein’s general theory of relativity had predicted. Six months later, on November 6, 1919, Eddington’s team presented their findings before a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society—and skyrocketed Einstein to worldwide fame.  Science writer Ron Cowen, author of Gravity’s Century: From Einstein’s Eclipse to Images of Black Holes, joins Ira to tell the story. Watch the Mercury transit! On Monday, November 11th, Mercury will slice a path across the sun—an occurrence that happens only about 13 times a century. These days, it’s fairly easy to observe a transit of Mercury—many local observatories or science centers hold viewing parties. But several centuries ago, transit chasers sailed the globe to observe these relatively rare events, in an effort to use them to calculate the size of the solar system. Find out how you can view the transit. Researchers are collecting snapshots of Acadia National Park to supplement satellite data on fall leaf colors. Listen and learn more about this citizen science project.  And, the Trump administration has begun a year-long process to exit the agreement—which would complete the day after the next presidential election. Listen to this week's science news roundup. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, we'll talk about why dozens of research institutions are investigating potential cases of espionage and stolen research. But first, the U.S. has officially started to process to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, with the Trump administration saying the accord would put too big a strain on the U.S. economy. Joining me to talk about that and other selected short subjects in science is our own Charles Berkwist, director and contributing producer at Cy Frye. Good to have you on this side of the mic. Yeah. Let's talk about this climate policy.

This week, President Trump followed through on this promise? Yeah, I mean, this comes as a surprise to basically no one. He's been saying that this is going to be happening, and this week basically was the first time under the process that they could start this withdrawal process. They've formally notified the UN that they plan to exit the climate accords in Paris. And it would not begin, what, for another year? Right. This kicks off a year-long process. If it all comes to fruition, it would go into effect the day after the next presidential election in November 2020.

So if the president is reelected, that's when it would happen. And then a lot of scientists, thousands of them are saying, don't do this, right? So, yeah, in other climate news, there was a big letter published this week in the journal Biosciences from over a thousand scientists calling climate change a threat to the fate of humanity and saying, you know, really action needs to be taken now. Let's talk about flu research. Scientists are deliberately infecting people with the flu.

I imagine there's a good reason for doing that. Well, you know, this is sort of basic science. scientific research. The NIH is funding this project, which will be run at four centers around the country, and they're looking for 80 volunteers to participate in what they call a human challenge study. Basically, they take these volunteers and deliberately squirt a specific strain of the flu up their nose, and then they live in a clinic for a week and give blood samples and cheek swabs and all of that to monitor how the immune system progresses over the course of the infection. And do they get renumerated? They do. If you go through with this, you know, you're accepting the risks of, A, you will get the flu, and who knows, there may be other follow-on effects. But you do get a couple thousand dollars. A couple of grand for this. Yeah, but you've got to live in a clinic for a week with the flu. So, you know, toss up, right? It's a borderline. All right, let's move on to. Last week we talked, we talked a lot about on the program about PFAS chemicals. And now research is finding that they're showing up in an unexpected place, a.

a Nordic ski slope. Right. So, as you said, we talked about these a lot last week. Some people call them forever chemicals. They're industrial chemicals that are used in manufacture of things from Teflon pans to fire retardants. But it turns out one of the uses

that I wasn't aware of is in ski wax. And so researchers found looking at this ski resort in Trondheim, Norway, that along the ski slopes, there were elevated levels of these chemicals. And What's even more concerning, they also found the chemicals in the earthworms living there

and in a kind of rodent called a bank vol that feeds on the earthworms. And they found that the levels in the rodents were higher. So the fear is that it's bioaccumulating as it moves up the food chain, so to speak. So are they thinking that people are putting it in the wax and the wax is getting on the skis? It is an ingredient in the sort of lubricating wax that people put on the skis. Yeah, to make them glide better on the snow. So the wax thing comes off. Comes off, right, into the snow.

And the worms eat it. It ends up in the soil and the water. It ends up in the worms. It ends up in the foals. And probably then, you know, foxes or whatever are going to eat the voles and it will end up in the foxes. That is the food chain, the plastics food chain now. There's some news this week in Space Flight. The company is developing new vehicles for taking humans to space.

Sure. A couple of developments, right? Yeah, Boeing and SpaceX are both competing to be part of what's called the commercial crew program, the people that are basically going to take humans into space to the International Space Station now that we don't have a shuttle or any other way of getting there. So on Monday, Boeing had a test of its Starliner capsule and abort test, where they fired their capsule about a mile up into the air and pretended that it was suffering some kind of problem and forced to abort and parachute back. emergency escape system during launch.

Right. You don't want to put people in something with no way of aborting, right? Right. So they were testing this abort system and found that their parachute system mostly worked. There are three shoots on the craft. One of them apparently wasn't fastened on correctly. And so there was a problem with that one shoot, but two other shoots were able to carry this capsule back to Earth safely. So, yeah, so they assume that no one would have been heard if there had been people.

They're calling it a successful. test and they're going to keep going with their timeline towards maybe early next year sometime trying it with people on board. Might have been a little harder landing than... Yeah, I don't know how that works. Than they expected. Yeah, another thing about that, that'd be the first time we land on land. All our other capsules used to land in the ocean.

Well, I mean, you've also got the SpaceX with their crazy, you know, boosters landing back down. And they had a very successful test also, right? Right. So they released footage of one of their parachute. tests and they say that this is the 13th successful test of their parachute system. And they didn't rocket it up into space, did they? They brought a mock-up of their capsule called Crew Dragon up in an aircraft and kind of shoved it out the door with the parachutes on to see what would happen.

But it was successful, too, so that's a good sign. Yeah, I saw the beautiful pictures of the shoots opening a lot cheaper to do it that way than sent it up. Finally, how could we let the week go by without mentioning the cannibal ants in a nuclear bunker? Right. So this is a heartwarming study published in the Journal of Hymenoptera this week. And it goes back to 2013 when researchers found this colony of ants living in a Polish munitions bunker. And it appeared that the ants had fallen down some kind of ventilation pipes. But they were living there with no source of food or light or heat. And the question was, well, how is this happening? So the researchers followed them, followed the ants. And in 2015, went back, found that the colony was doing really well. There were like a million. ants living there. Again, the question how? The answer is cannibalism. The ants were eating the bodies of other fellow ants that had also fallen into the bunker. But there is a heartwarming end of the story. Yes. So in 2016, the researchers gave the ants a ladder. Back to the ventilation

pipe and went back in 2017, a year later, found that the bunker was empty. The ants had all returned to their host colony. And they lived happily. All that's missing is the harp music. Exactly. All right. Thank you, Charles. Charles Berkwist is Science Friday's director and contributing producer. Now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News.

Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. Fall is busting out all over. The rich pastel of red, yellow, brown color, spark long Sunday drives into the country. Full foliage is a big industry in the news. Northeast. So researchers are working to better understand how climate change may be affecting fall colors, changes that may affect the bottom line for those tourism-rich areas. But to tease out the factors involved with the timing of peak leaf color, the researchers need data. Joining me to talk

about one innovative way they're collecting that data is Heather Goldstone, executive producer and host of Living Lab Radio. She's based at WCAI in Woods Hall. Welcome to Science Friday. Welcome to Science Friday. Excited to be with you, Ira. How's the leaf season going? Well, you know, it looks pretty good where I am. That's just one indication, but, you know, it's been an interesting fall. Just temperature dropped last night. We're getting our first taste of winter here. And at least on Cape Cod, southern New England, some of the leaves are starting to fall off. But it's been a pretty beautiful fall. And that's good for the tourism industry, right? Yeah, I mean, leaf peeping, as you noted, is a billion dollar industry in New England. So when we talk about the impacts of climate change

on this tourism, on changes in fall foliage. It's maybe not the untold suffering that 11,000 scientists were warning about in that climate emergency. You mentioned a few minutes. Climate emergency declaration you mentioned a few minutes ago, but it does have pretty huge potential ramifications in an economic sense. Researchers understand the mechanism for the color change, but the cues that they're using to start the process are a little murkier. You spoke to a researcher named Stephanie Spira. The two cues that trees get to stop really making that green chlorophyll is day length and temperature. And once those cues become unsinked, which one could imagine with temperature increasing,

we don't actually know what's going to happen on the broader level with fall foliage. So there's a lot of different variables that we're going to try and disentangle at a very broad scale because we're looking at Acadia National Park as a whole. Yeah, so Stephanie Spara is an assistant professor at the University of Richmond, but she's a New England native really interested in how climate change is playing out in New England. And as she said there, they're trying to untangle all of these things. They're looking at temperature, at precipitation records over time. They've actually had researchers out in Acadia National Park where they're really focusing up in Maine this fall, asking people if the quality of fall foliage is something they even consider in making their decisions because fall visitation to Acadia National Park has actually doubled since the 1990s.

So they want to know if that's part of their decision. And then in the middle of that is the. actual fall foliage piece connecting changes in climate to changes in tourism. They're trying to figure out if fall foliage has changed and that's where people's photos come in. So tell us about that. You have a piece where she's asking people to send in old photos? Yeah, well, because one thing they've been looking at is satellite data, right? That gives them a really consistent record since about 2000 of being able to look at fall foliage from space. But that only gets them back to 2000 and they want to be able to go back a lot farther than that and start to really piece together

a longer trend because, of course, fall foliage can vary from year to year hugely. So for that, that's where they're turning to their leaf peep for science crowdsourcing mechanism, just asking anybody who's been to Acadia National Park to send in their photos of fall foliage. So everybody's got shoeboxes full of old photos. We used to have them printed out back in the day, right? How do people participate in this? Well, so most people are participating, I think, at this point, through social media. You can find Leafpeep for Science or ANP for Acadia National Park Fall Foliage on Instagram,

and people are just sending photos digitally. You know, that's easy for the pictures from the cell phone era. But as you mentioned, it would be great. They would love to go further back. And in fact, you know, one of the things she and I talked about is some of the challenges, at least when you've got satellite data, that's consistent. You know how that photo was taken, what the settings were, that, you know, that color looks the same across all those photos. But they're going to have some work cut out for them, trying to figure out everybody's photos from decades past.

Yeah, we'll help them out. We have a link on our website if you want to help send in those photos. Thank you, Heather. Yeah, my pleasure. Heather Goldstone, executive producer and host of Living Lab Radio at WCAI in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. We're going to take a break and we'll come back, a tale of espionage in the biomedical lab. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

Science, as many have said on this show over the years, is driven by collaboration and cooperation. Researchers review each other's proposals for new projects, get close-up views of confidential data before new results are published. But the FBI has been warning that this culture of openness is leaving U.S. research open to an unexpected consequence, theft, and espionage. And new reporting from the New York Times this week revealed that dozens of research institutions are investigating individual scientists for potentially offering confidential intellectual property to China. Here to explain the reporter who broke that story, Gina Kalata, medical reporter for the New York Times. Always happy to talk to you, Gina. It's great to talk to you, Ira. We go back a long time.

It's the beginning of our careers. That's a long time. I know. Don't even mention it, right? Yes. Well, unpack this story for us. Why are institutes so concerned about potential spying right now? Well, I think they hadn't really even thought about this as an issue.

As the administrator at the NIH said, he took them a while to even sort of grasp the fact that this was actually happening. And what happened was the FBI came to them in 2016 and said, we came to the NIH and said, well, we want to know how science works. How does peer review work? What are the rules? what are the regulations. How does this all happen? And apparently they had somehow seen things that they thought might be disturbing,

but they wanted to know what is required of scientists and how, if at all, are things shared. So this went on for a little while, and then the FBI and the NIH started identifying situations where it looked like there were things, there were transgressions. And from there, they tried to say, who are the scientists? So a lot of people say this is like they're attacking Chinese scientists. They said, no, we look for something that looks fishy, and then we look for the scientists.

So the fact that they are Chinese seems to fit into a pattern in a way. But most ethnic Chinese in this country, like the vast, vast, vast majority, have nothing to do with this. This is a relatively very few people, considering how many are out there. But what they're doing, when you look at what they've been passing along, it's hard to say, oh, it was no big deal. It's just an accident. It kind of wasn't. For some of those cases that they've been investigating. Yeah, I mean, the things that they were. Give me an idea. Give me an example. Okay. Well, you know, I always say, why do people keep putting things in emails, Ira? I mean, honestly, how many times have emails been just so damning for people? But for example, they had one person who had a confidential research proposal that he was here, she was reviewing, and it is a felony to reveal what you see. So this person sends it off to a colleague in China saying, here are the bones and meat of what you want, spelled meat, M-E-E-T, and we didn't spell it right, but that's what you were saying.

Then we have other ones where somebody said, I should be able to spring the whole set of primers you. If I can figure out how to get a dozen tubes of frozen DNA onto an airplane, the primers are used as a diagnostic test. This was not his to take. It belonged to the university that was supporting them and doing the research. And the taxpayers paid for the research. So what would seem to be happening is some of these people were getting grants from the Chinese government. and as part of their, and you're supposed to report outside sources of income, they were not reporting this.

And as part of this grant, they were required to provide information to the government. There have been companies set up in China. People have done research. It's been taken to China, and people there have gotten patents on it. So, you know, I was telling your researcher who called me earlier. I said, it's like, it's not a great analogy, but it's like, suppose I wrote a book, and I gave it to my editor at a book, at a publisher, my publisher. And before they could even copyright it or anything, my publisher had some friend

at some other organization or whatever, gave them the book, and somebody else published it and copyrighted it. You feel like, what can you do? Now it's not mine anymore. These, you know, these are data that don't belong. These are data, reagents, medical tests that do not belong to the people who have been stealing them. They belong to the institutions, the U.S. taxpayers, and they're gone. And who alerted the FBI that this was happening?

You know, the FBI will never talk about their investigations. I do know that one of the early things that happened, and I don't know if it was the first. People said it was the first. Other people said, no, it was an early thing, was there was a scientist who was caught in an airport. with a suitcase full of hard drives full of data that he was trying to sneak off to China. I don't know how they knew that was in a suitcase, but that was kind of an alarming thing. Now, I also understand why Chinese scientists in the U.S. worry that they're going to be targeted, because there have been cases where people have been

erroneously accused. And once you're accused, even if it's wrong, your life can be ruined. I mean, just ruined. So I understand that. But on the other hand, I also understand the point of view of the universities and the NIH. You say, wait a minute, this does not belong to the people who are stealing it. And once it's gone, it's gone. I mean, it's like your best idea.

You have this great idea for a story. You go tell your editor. Your editor tells his friend it's published by the New York Times. I mean, who knows? And then you say, wait a minute, that was my story. Well, too late. It's gone now. But China has a long history of incentivizing intellectual property theft, right?

Right. So this should not be a surprise, should it? Well, the problem is that this is a system of biomedical research that has always prided itself on trust and honesty and sharing. And that doesn't mean that trust hasn't been breached. I mean, I can think of examples in the U.S. where people have taken nothing to do with China. just within the U.S. or people have taken somebody else's ideas that they saw in a grant proposal, even though it's a felony to do this, and gone ahead and tried to develop them themselves. So it's not like, you know, it never happens. But the system has to, it's hard to have a system like ours

and put the kind of controls in place that would prevent this. I mean, their ideas for how to do it, and they make a lot of sense, but they're going to change the system. So were some of the scientists trying to cover up what they were doing saying, oh, I'm just taking a vacation, you know, and bring over material with that? Well, they were saying things like this is totally unfair. I didn't do anything. Or I didn't know that I wasn't allowed to do this. They have lawyers who say they're totally innocent.

Some of them, you know, some of them who were under suspicion just went off to China and established labs there. So they're gone. But others are have lawyers who say, wait a minute, you know, they didn't do anything wrong. And maybe they didn't. See, that's the other thing. People say, well, why don't we have all the names? And we do have due process in this country.

And it takes a long time to do an investigation and get an indictment and get a conviction. And I understand why the universities and the FBI are being very careful about releasing these people's name. Some people identified themselves. They identified themselves. they identified themselves and said, I didn't do anything I'm being accused. But those who were still under investigation, there's quite a few of them. I understand why their names and all the details about them were not released. Let's go to the phones, 844724-8255.

Tom and Castor Valley, California. Hi, welcome, Tom. Yes, hi. I just wanted to ask on individual NPR programs and in the news, different things keep popping up about, you know, China stealing this, China, you know, counterfeiting that, China doing that. And, you know, there's stuff happening out here in California and Silicon Valley, you know, and universities that have research grants with our large companies, autonomous vehicles is another area, where when we look at these events one-on-one,

but then you spread it over, you know, many, many, many different things. One starts to wonder about the entire relationship with China and whether a single trade agreement resolve any of this. You know, what are the answers to, on a broader, you know, to apply what your guest is saying is happening in one area to, you know, broader intellectual property theft across companies. and universities nationwide. That's a really good point.

And I was told that, as you pointed out, it's not just the biomedical field. I'm a medical reporter. So that was, so I went after the medical, I looked into the medical field. But the National Science Foundation, the Office of Science and Technology, everybody is concerned about this.

And everybody's asking, what are we supposed to do? I don't think that anybody, people have, like I said, they have recommendations, they have advice. but I don't think we have a policy in place that would stop any of this yet. So do you think the discussion about this is going to stifle then the intellectual discourse that scientists have with each other?

Are you asking me? Yeah. Your guest? Well, actually, some of the ideas are not, I can't imagine them stifling things, but they would prevent some of the thefts. For example, if you were reviewing a grant proposal, you, You can only do it if you're using a secure computer and you are not allowed to copy anything you see, print anything you see. You sit in the room and you read it.

Now, you might remember it. You might take notes, but it's going to be a little bit harder to hand it off after that. There's at MD Anderson, they got rid of things like thumb drives and stuff. So you can't so easily download stuff and pass it on. You know, it's hard, because science is a collaborative enterprise, I can't imagine that they would put controls in place that would prevent science from, researchers from talking to each other, collaborating with each other, cooperating with each other, sharing reagents when everybody understands that that's what's going on. And that even includes people in China. I mean, it doesn't mean, just because you're in China, it doesn't mean you're trying to steal something. for the government. And there are how many cases, hundreds of cases, a potential bad behavior?

Being being investigated. See, that doesn't mean it's going to go further. Maybe they'll find out it was a mistake. So I just want to be fair to the people who are being investigated. And to be fair, it may not only be Chinese or. Well, what they told me, I said, well, what other countries? And they said, basically, it just keeps coming back to China. We haven't seen it with other countries. So far. So far. Let's go to the phones to Alex and New York. Alex? Hi. Go ahead.

Yeah, so I actually want to just share a quick story. My aunt was working for Brown University back in the 90s. And, you know, her very close co-worker was involved in something like this. She, you know, they had worked together for many, many years. And the co-worker's husband was also a retired scientist. And he got involved in something similar to this where he was in. leaking a lot of this research back to, you know, folks that he had in contact with. And, you know, his wife, my aunt's co-workers, she got in a lot of trouble.

This was back in the 90s. So this has been going on for a while. And, you know, unfortunately, it's basically human nature that we're dealing with. You know, it's happening in all verticals, not just research. Okay. So where do we go with this, Gina? Are we going to see prosecution, indictments coming down the line? Well, probably, but there have been a few.

They haven't involved NIH-funded research, but they have involved people who are doing biomedical research and we're getting funds in other ways. But the NIH things are still winding their way through because you go from a university finding something that concerns them. They send it to the NIH. The NIH investigates. They send it to the Office of Inspector General.

The Office of Inspector General investigates. If they think the crime was committed, they send it to the FBI. Then the FBI looks at it. And then it can go to a grand jury. I mean, it does take a while. And it hasn't been that much time yet, and not that much time yet has passed. Are we fearful? You mentioned this a little bit in passing,

hoping that it doesn't turn into a racial issue for all research who might be Chinese, for example. Well, I think that what I heard is a lot of people who are of Chinese ethnicity worry about that. I do trust, only because I've known them probably as long as I've known you, Ira. Some of the people at the NIH, you say, look, we don't know the ethnicity of the person we're investigating. We see what it looks like a transgression. And then we find the person. And if you trust them, then you have to, and I do, then you, you. have to say, well, it's not that they're going after Chinese. There's so many Chinese scientists

anyway. If you started going after them and looking at everything they do, you could never, never go, you couldn't get anywhere. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking with Gina Collada, medical reporter for the New York Times about espionage in universities and intellectual property. Do you think universities are going to be cracking down or giving more secrecy to what they're doing or trying to keep it private? I think what they're going to be doing. And once again, nobody, I think universities don't want to talk too openly about this because they're so afraid of being accused of racial profiling.

But I think what they're doing, what they might be doing is some of the things that MD Anderson at least admits that they're doing. And some of the things that they're doing is, like I said, they got rid of, you, when you When you travel, you can't just take your normal laptop. They don't have any external hard drives. They got rid of their thumb drives. They have so much security. They show me some redacted emails, and boy, were they heavily redacted?

And it was in a system called Box. They gave me a password to look at these things. And, of course, I didn't know the names of anybody. And, boy, there was a lot of black on those pages. But anyway, in order to get into Box, I got to have a password and get in and look at this stuff. I couldn't copy it. I couldn't print it or anything. And then my password expired. So I went to look at it again. I had to say, wait a minute, I can't get back into box. I had to get another password. It doesn't even last long. It was so secure. You feel like,

you know, you couldn't, it would be very hard to export anything unless you just sat there manually writing down everything you saw. Well, we're very happy that you could take time to be with us today and to always continue your great work. And as a medical reporter, we're always following your stuff. Thank you, Gina. Well, thank you, Ira. It's always good to talk to you. Thanks for having me on the show.

You're welcome. Gina Collada, medical reporter for the New York Times. We're going to take a break, and we're going to talk about a very famous moment that made Albert Einstein an overnight celebrity. It happened 100 years ago this week. You remember the famous story about, you know, watching the total solar eclipse and the bending of starlight around the sun and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, it's been 100 years.

I can't believe it either. We'll come and talk about that anniversary after the break. Stay with us. Hey there, Ira here, coming at you with some great news about how you, yes, you can make a big impact right now. Science Friday has a dollar-for-dollar donation match in effect, which means that if you make a donation right now, it will be doubled. Yes, I said doubled. You heard me say this before. Any size donation makes a difference,

and that's never been more true than now. I know you care about Science Friday, so don't wait on this opportunity. Go to ScienceFriety.com slash give and double your impact. Thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

Did you catch that 2017 total solar eclipse? I saw it up there in Casper, Wyoming, and I know many others who pilgrimageed far and wide to watch it. But 100 years ago, a total solar eclipse was much more than just an amazing sight to see. It was a chance to test one of the most controversial concepts of the day, Einstein's idea of warped space. If you could actually observe a total eclipse, of course. Many early scientific expeditions were foiled by war or bad luck or bad weather.

But finally, in May 199, scientists were blessed with a clear view of the blackened disk of the sun and the stars around it. And on November 6, 1919, 100 years ago this week, they presented their observations to the world. And that forever changed our view of Einstein and his theories in Albert Einstein became an international celebrity, literally overnight. Joining me now to tell the story is science writer Ron Cowan. He's author of Gravity's Century, from Einstein's eclipse to images of black holes. He joins me from London. Welcome back to Science Friday, Ron.

Thanks, Sarah. Take us back to those early days of May of 1919. You have Sir Arthur Eddington has gone out to observe the eclipse. What's he looking for? What's happening? That's right, right. So he went, he and one colleague went to Pransipe, which is off the west coast of Africa. Another team went to northern Brazil.

I mean, they were looking to see when the sun is present, will stars get deflected by the mass of the sun? And you can only see that during a solar eclipse, at least at that point they didn't have the technology, because it would be folly otherwise. The sun would swamp the bright light of the sun would swamp the faint light of the stars. You needed an eclipse. but there was a lot of drama because, first of all, this was just after the end of World War I. This was British astronomers daring to test a theory of a German-born scientist when there was still a lot of hostility. And there was drama at the two sites because there were clouds. In fact, in Prancepe, Eddington could just have three stars that he could look at,

on photographs to see the deflection. In northern Brazil, at Sobral, one of the instruments just did not work properly, probably due to the heat of the sun before the eclipse. So they had to scramble.

And a lot was at stake. Was Newton Wright? Who was, my God, I mean, the planets revolved around the sun because of the way Newton explained it. Or was this upstart? Or was this upstart Einstein with his crazy theory, right?

Mm-hmm. And then they finally published the result a hundred years ago this week. And it confirmed what Einstein had predicted about just where those stars should be, right? Right. They announced it in November 6, 19, in London at the Royal Astronomical Society. That's right. Yeah. And, you know, some people were skeptical, but most people were welcoming.

And then the next morning, you know, November 7th, the front page of the Times of London. It was interesting. On one side of the front page, there was a note about King George IV, issuing an invitation for all workers to take two minutes out of the day to remember and honor the glorious dead, as he put it, for War I. But to the right of those articles also on the front page, and a triple-decker headline that normally stayed Times wrote,

Revolution and Space, New Theory of the Universe, new toning ideas overthrown. It is the news set off a chain reaction around the globe. New York Times followed suit with front page story on November 10th. Lights all askew in the heavens. Einstein theory triumphs. And how did Albert react to all of this? Well, you know, it was interesting.

There were two ways. He had learned that most likely the measurements were going to confirm his work. And he sent a note in the fall. of November, sorry, in the fall of 1990 to his mother who is dying of stomach cancer and basically said, Mother Joyous News Today, you know, because they have demonstrated the deflection of light. And he quickly sent a note to a notable German journal, very brief note. On the other hand, his assistant Ilsa Rosenthal Schneider asked him, you know, what would you have if they had found a deflection of light that was not correct with your theory.

And he said, well, then I would feel sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is correct. Yeah. And they've been testing this out for a hundred years, haven't they? Any chance they get that a body can warp the space around it is just constantly being looked at. Absolutely. And of course, has been, you know, the Nobel Prize was won in 2017 for the discovery of gravitational waves, these ripples in space time that Einstein predicted. We have the iconic image of the region right around a black hole from the eventorizing telescope, which is actually an array of hundreds of radio telescopes and working on concert to get, you know, this image. And the size and shape of the halo of light around the shadow of the black hole indicated Einstein again, once again, was right.

One of the great ironies of this issue is that there was an expedition that went out, right, in 1914 as the war was broken out. And they got arrested, didn't it? Yes, yes, because they went to the Crimea in August 1914. and the team was promptly arrested as spies, their equipment confiscated. That was Erwin Finlay Freundlich, and he never had good luck. He tried several times.

Other times it was too cloudy, and he, yeah. So that's true. But you know, it was lucky for Einstein that those earlier expeditions failed because Einstein, when he first calculated, how much light would be bent, he made a mistake. He didn't fully perfect his theory yet.

And by 1915, late 1915, he realized it was twice the amount that he had originally calculated. So if these measurements were done before then, they would have found Einstein wrong. Yes. Just quickly, one other point I want to ask you about some recent confusion over how fast the expansion of the universe is happening. The Hubble constant controversy. So you know about that? Yes, a little bit. Now, first of all, the fact that the universe is expanding and even expanding at an accelerated rate is something that Einstein's equations predict.

But, yeah, it's interesting. It's not clear if it's really a crisis or not. I happen to think that they will work it out and figure out one value for the Hubble constant, which tells you about the... expansion to universe. But again, this goes back to Einstein. Interesting. Ron Cowan, science writer and author of Gravity Century from Einstein's eclipse to images of the Black Hole's great book. We have an excerpt of it on our website at Science Friday.com slash gravity. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Ira.

Next up, it's time to talk about another object eclipsing the sun, only this one's much smaller, talking about the planet Mercury, because this coming Monday, November 11th, astronomy enthusiasts will be able to catch a so-called transit of Mercury. It only happens about 13 times a century, making it what? It's really rare, and it too, like total solar eclipses, are crucial for early astronomers trying to make sense of the mechanics of the heavens. Joining me to talk about the history and how to see. You want to see the transit of mercury for yourself?

Dean Riggis is here to tell us, astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory. Welcome back, Dean. Oh, great to be with you. All right, just tell us exactly what the transit means. Well, this is when the little planet Mercury goes between us and the sun. It's exactly lined up just perfectly where you'll look up and see a little black dot going across the sun. I'll spare you my sting impression. But it is super tiny, and I consider this the nerdy eclipse.

This is very small and very subtle, and it also takes a lot of safety to be able to see. So how long does it last for? Well, so it will begin precisely at 7.35 a.m. Eastern time. That's when Mercury will be in silhouette in front of the sun. And so Mercury will still be about 47 million kilometers from the sun. And so just be right in between us. So they look like they're touching. But 735 is when it starts.

And then it'll go across the disk of the sun for about five and a half hours and exit at 104 p.m. Eastern time. Now, how easy would it be for me to see it? I can't see it, you know, with my backyard telescope, can I? Is it dangerous? Well, that is definitely dangerous to do this without the right equipment, because if you were to just be outside, you would not notice anything different. The sun wouldn't dim noticeably. You couldn't just use the eclipse glasses and look at it with the naked eye safely.

You wouldn't even see the dot. It's that small. So you do need a telescope. You need to magnify maybe about 30 to 40 times to be. be on the safe side to be able to make it out. And then you definitely have to have a filter on your telescope to be able to see it safely. So the best place to go is like, let's say, oh, to Dean Regas's place at the Cincinnati Observatory or other observatories. Absolutely. This is the kind of stuff that we get excited about because astronomers really love

to share the universe with folks. And so, yeah, check with your local science club and astronomy observatory and see what they're doing. Most likely they're doing something. The weather forecast in the Midwest is not looking great. So, Ira, I'm looking for places to go. Any of your listeners have want to host me, I'm looking for places to go on Monday. Well, we'll have to see what happens. What can be learned about this? Why is this such a, why are astronomers so excited about this?

Well, so for me, I like the history of it. This was first viewed in 1631, and this was something that it really lets us know how the solar system works. Johannes Kepler predicted that he figured out the, motions of the planet so well that he could figure out when Mercury was going to cross in front of the sun. This is some detailed math to be able to figure out. And only one person saw it in 1631, a French astronomer named Pierre Gascendi. And he couldn't even fathom what he saw because Mercury looks so small, he didn't believe it when he saw it.

He thought it was just a sunspot. And so then future expeditions thought this is something to do to be able to triangulate the distance to the sun. If you can measure mercury going in front of the sun from different places on the Earth, You can actually compute the distance to the sun. And this was a big thing that nations around the world tried to do. And this is, you know, I was surprised to see how rare this event is because mercury zips around the sun so much faster than we do. I thought there might be more opportunities, but there aren't. No, getting these three bodies lined up, the earth, mercury, and the sun is a rare thing.

So, yeah, mercury goes around the sun every 88 days, and we take a year to go around the sun. And so we all have to be in the same place at the same time. And Mercury's orbit is the most tilted of any of the planets. So it's sometimes too high or too low. And on the 11th, it's going to be just right. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with Dean Regis, astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory,

about the event, the Transit of Mercury coming up next week. You know, we were just talking in a segment before about Einstein and the 100th anniversary of him talking about the experiment, the proved warp space. But that was very much involved. Einstein was very much involved in explaining, right, mercury going around the sun. Well, that was one of the problems was that Newtonian physics wasn't explaining where mercury should be. It was kind of not in its place where we were expected it to be. And it was, yeah, things like observing the solar eclipse in 1919 and other things where Einstein's theory really took hold.

And it turned out to explain exactly where Mercury goes. And so now we can watch where Mercury is. We know where Mercury will be, you know, every day from now until centuries. The transit of Venus is also that, right? It's much more elusive. It happens very rarely. and there's a good story about a scientist in the 1700s who pretty much risked everything to see it, right?

Yes, I mean, we've talked about solar eclipses where the moon blocks the sun. We've talked about mercury going in front of the sun, and Venus is the only other thing that can do that. And we had one, a transit of Venus in 2004 and 2012, and I hope, Ira, you saw one of those, because the next one won't be until 2119. I better eat my vitamins.

Yes, that's right. Start sleeping pretty well. well. I mean, this is, it's going to be tough to make that one. And there was a fellow in the 1700s, a French astronomer named Guillaume, Le Gentile, who made a journey to the Indian Ocean to see the transit of Venus in 1761. He missed it because of war politics and they wouldn't let him land. And he decided, I'm going to stay around here for eight more years till the next transit instead of going all the way back home to France. He stays another eight years. and guess what happens?

He got clouded out. So 11 years after leaving France, he comes back home and finds himself declared legally dead. His family divided up as a state, his wife remarried. And so Le Jeontia is the tragic victim of the transit of Venus. I'm hoping that won't happen to me with a transit of mercury here coming up. Wow. So he stayed the whole time. He misses it, stays the whole time for 11 years, comes back, finds out he's declared dead, and loses theirs.

It's his fortune and everything. He lost everything because of the stupid transit of Venus. And you got to think it's, you know, it makes me think of travel in the 1700s, you know, going from Europe to Asia and Australia, that was like, that was more difficult than us going to the moon today. It was quite a journey. That's great. Well, we'll look forward to it, Dean. And we'll see how many people can get out to an about. observatory and hope, you know, you have good luck.

And the weather breaks for you. I'm hoping so, too, because the next one won't happen in the United States until 2049. So I'm a patient man, but that's tough. Dean Riggis, astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory. And if you want more information on the transit of Mercury, how to see it for yourself, including some live web streams. Yeah. Visit science friday.com slash mercury.

Thank you, Dean. My pleasure. Charles Berkwis is our director, our senior producer, Christopher in Taliatta, Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor and Katie Feather, and we had technical and engineering help from Rich Kim and Kevin Wolfe. BJ and Leadman composed our theme music. And on the Science Friday Vox Pop App, or here's the question for this week. We're asking for your stories about coral reefs.

Have you witnessed coral reefs dying or disappearing? Now, you know that snorkel spot you used to go to? Is it now dead and bleached? We've talked about rebuilding reefs on an upcoming show. We'll talk about that. and want to know what you've been seeing. Let us know in a Science Friday Vox Pop app wherever you get your apps.

What have you been seeing? And as you snorkel, we will talk about building, rebuilding reefs on an upcoming show. We want to know what you have been seeing. I know I have been seeing some very unsettling stuff of reefs. I used to snorkel and dive on, and they are gone. Tell us what you have seen on a Science Friday Vox Pop app. You can download the app wherever you get your apps.

Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato in New York.