Idaho Skies Transcript for April 17th and 18th

Idaho Skies
17 - 18 April

RACHEL
Welcome to Idaho Skies for April 17th and 18th. We’re your hosts, Rachel...

PAUL
...and Paul.

RACHEL
Albert Einstein passed away on April 18th, 1955.

PAUL
Einstein was a mediocre student, but mostly in classes that he wasn’t interested in. He did well in other subjects, like Mathematics. His first job after graduation was working for the Federal Office for Intellectual Property in Bern, or the Swiss patent office. There he worked as a technician examining patent claims. This job gave him time to work on his passion - physics. 

RACHEL
1905 was an extraordinary year for Einstein. He published papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special relativity. The first two papers described events in the atomic world, while relativity explained the effects of traveling near the speed of light. Einstein was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics, but he wasn’t happy with the conclusions it eventually reached. 

PAUL
Special relativity, it turns out, is very limited. So Einstein went on to expand it to include gravity and acceleration. The result was the General Theory of Relativity. His general theory taught us that the universe was more amazing then we imagined. And it has led to the discovery of new phenomena and ways to observe the universe.

RACHEL
Black holes were first hypothesized by John Michell in 1783. It wasn’t until Einstein’s General Relativity in 1915, however, that we could actually determine the properties of black holes. Not only that, but we can use the gravity waves Einstein predicted to detect events like colliding black holes.     

PAUL
That’s Idaho Skies for the 17th and 18th of April.

RACHEL
Be sure to read our blog for additional information. It’s at idahoskies.blogspot.com.
For Idaho Skies this is Rachel...

PAUL
...and Paul.

RACHEL
Dark skies and bright stars.