Sky & Telescope - May 2019 - 33

up a number of doubts about Eddington's interpretation of
the eclipse results that had been whispered through physics
departments for decades.
The whispers suggested that Eddington fudged the results
in favor of Einstein's predictions by discarding contradictory
measurements from one of the Sobral telescopes. He did this
for two reasons: He was an obstinate believer in relativity,
and he wanted scientists in Britain and Germany to reconcile after the hostility of war. The former led to confirmation bias, while the latter predisposed him to forcing a
British proof on a German theory.
Since Earman and Glymour's paper, these rumors have
taken on a life of their own, painting Eddington as a master manipulator, everywhere from online forums to popular
science books. But Kennefick, who published an exhaustive
study of the data-fudging allegations in 2012, is adamant that
Eddington didn't "cook the books." He assessed the reasoning
behind the eclipse team's rejection of data from one of the two
telescopes in Brazil, finding their arguments "very convincing."
He also re-examined an obscure paper from the Greenwich
Observatory in the 1970s in which a team remeasured the
1919 photographic plates and confirmed Dyson and Eddington's conclusions. But one of his most persuasive arguments is

also his simplest: "Eddington didn't make those data analysis
decisions," he says. "Dyson did, and he was skeptical about the
theory and thought it was probably going to be wrong." Why
would a skeptic fudge results in favor of relativity?
Arguments about Eddington's status as the hero or villain
of the 1919 eclipse story will no doubt rumble on. But what is
clear is that the 1919 eclipse was one of those rare occasions
in science where something big happened at one decisive
moment. Though it didn't truly confirm relativity - no single
experiment could - it brought Einstein and his ideas to the
attention of the world, and for that we should all celebrate
the centenary of the eclipse that opened our eyes to how the
universe truly works.

¢ BENJAMIN SKUSE is a science writer based in Somerset,
UK, just a few miles down the road from Weston-super-Mare,
Eddington's childhood hometown.
FURTHER READING: To learn more about the 1919 eclipse
expeditions and their enormous impact in greater detail, read No
Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse that Confirmed Einstein's
Theory of Relativity, by Daniel Kennefick (Princeton University
Press, 2019).

M. DRUCK M ÜLLER / P. A NIOL / K . DELCOURTE / P. HOR Á LEK / L. CA LÇA DA / ESO

Celebrating the 1919 eclipse
Other than the fact that the
July 2, 2019, eclipse will mark
the centenary of the 1919
eclipse, it's also unusual in
that it passes over professional
astronomy facilities - the
U.S.-run dark-energy-surveying
Cerro Tololo Inter-American
Observatory (CTIO) and the
European Southern Observatory's exoplanet-hunting La Silla
Observatory in Chile.
Unlike CTIO, which will be
closed to visitors, La Silla is inviting thousands of people from
the scientiÀc community and
public to witness the 2-minute
event. The observatory also

plans to repeat Eddington's observations using the small Rapid
Action Telescope for Transient
Objects (TAROT) telescope. CCD
images from TAROT's wide-Àeld
camera might offer a glimpse of
the light-bending effect, which
could not be seen from the photographic plates in the original
experiment.
And both La Silla's main
telescope and CTIO's telescopes
will be commemorating the
1919 eclipse in a way that both
Einstein and Eddington would
have approved, concentrating
on solving some of today's astronomical mysteries.

DREAMING OF THE DARK This artist's impression shows an
ideal view of the western sky during the total solar eclipse of
July 2, 2019, from ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile.

s k y a n d t e l e s c o p e . c o m * M AY 2 0 1 9

33


http://www.skyandtelescope.com

Sky & Telescope - May 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - May 2019

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