Talk:Einstein and Eddington

Very funny...
"before moving back in time to 1914" on an article with David Tennant who played the Tenth Doctor. It is somehow funny, but not very professional, I think. 47.64.222.185 (talk) 19:15, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

FEATURING
No need to keep on repeating Serkis and Tennants names constantly (78.149.136.221 (talk) 16:17, 9 July 2008 (UTC))

Historical acccuracy

 * 1. It is unlikely that the anguished episode on the failure to declare of love happened at all like that. However, Eddington lived with his sister until his death: he never married. Attitudes to homosexuality have changed to markedly that a modern audience is unlikely to understand an accurate depiction.
 * 2. I am told Dyson presented the Eclipse findings, not Eddington.
 * 3. Probably quite a few other exaggerations and story-enhancing twists.

Vernon White '''. . . Talk''' 17:44, 30 November 2008 (UTC) But it should be an accurate depiction based that periods thinking and cultural views. Anything less would be whiggish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.104.3.164 (talk) 21:49, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Lot more historical inaccuracies than this, but rather fun to watch (if you knew what was wrong). See also here (a review in New Scientist). Carcharoth (talk) 15:43, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the errors are more serious than that. I just checked a biography of Einstein and it says that Eddington only learned about Einstein's work when it was finished. Also that Einstein was well aware that the anomaly in Mercury's orbit was a possible test, but his initital calculations did not explain it. Only the more developed theory predicted accurately the actual pattern observed.

It seems unlikely that Einstein and Eddington could have sent each other letters during the war. In fact Eddington heard about General Relativity from Willem de Sitter, who was Dutch and thus a neutral in World War One.

It is also factually wrong to say that the simple occurance bending of light near the sun proved Einstein. It had been assumed that light was not touched by gravity, but this wasn't essential to Newton - who anyway believed light to be particles, not waves. The amount of distortion was different, which made it a much harder test. It was also not just Eddington who measured the eclipse.

The first large-scale use of poison gas was indeed at Ypres and the Cambridgeshire Regiment fought there, but were they gased? The Wikipedia account says it was French Territorial and colonial Moroccan and Algerian troops who were the first victims, and later some Canadians were gased. There was an existing convention against it, though not against tear-gas, which the French had used in 1914 with little effect.

Eddington's later work included a grand cosmology, which was unfortunately quite wrong. But I don't think it had any relgious implications.

Should we add a section detailing the departures from historic fact? --GwydionM (talk) 18:00, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Might have to tread carefully on WP:OR. Neddyseagoon - talk 00:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Photos
I feel that the photos of Serkis and Tennant are out of place and irrelevant - it is unusual to have pictures of the actors out of role in articles on films. -- Beardo (talk) 04:41, 24 July 2011 (UTC)