[Music] they are Misfits arrogant Rebels they scorned conventional wisdom and each conceived a radical new vision of the cosmos Galileo galile Isaac Newton Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking have all had tumultuous lives filled with great TR triumphs and humbling failures these are the people who would dare to challenge they often run into opposition and they generally don't deal very well with that there was a kind of a demon within them that wouldn't let them do anything else it does take a strong ego to say well I can solve this I can figure out some little
piece of the universe who were these brilliant Rebels and what secrets of their minds allowed them to think the unthinkable and reveal the beauty and strangeness of the [Music] [Music] universe in 16th century Europe life has a certainty that later generations can only Envy everyone knows that the Earth Earth is the center of the universe but this reassuring vision is beginning to crack and one of those who does the most to overturn it is a self-style genius Galileo galile gal of course was this cocky individual who had an attitude the sort of person who makes
very close friends and who makes lots of enemies but he had a very sharp wit a very sharp mind and with that he was able to probe some of the deep Mysteries of the universe this ambitious overconfident scientist will remake the world but pay a harsh [Music] price Galileo is born in 1564 in Pisa [Music] Italy his father a loot player is well known for rejecting convention to create a new form of musical Harmony Galileo inherits his father's rebelliousness at age 25 he becomes a professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa but he'll grow
scornful of his colleagues who are still teaching the scientific theories of the Greek philosopher Aristotle almost 2,000 years after his death we forget the fact that before Galileo there really was no science as we know it according to the Aristotelian Philosophy for example objects moved and came to rest not because of friction but because they got tired and objects fell to the ground not because of gravity but because they longed to be United with the Earth to Galileo such explanations seem absurd these Grand personages who set out to discover the great truth and never quite
find it give me a pain he later writes they can't find it because they're always looking in the wrong [Music] place now Galileo is about to shatter thousands of years of belief his intuition tells him that objects move not because of desires but because of deep mathematical [Music] laws and his Unthinkable step is to find them through experiments something few people have done [Music] before he begins by studying falling bodies physicist Steven Hawking Galileo pointed out that simple observation s like dropping weights from a height show things do not work the way the ancient Greeks
said this must have been seen by many people but they had put it down to imperfect observations for the first time ever Galileo begins to work out basic laws of motion such as how speed is determined by time and acceleration it was one of the the Geniuses of Galileo to slow down the acceleration of gravity he got an incline plane and had a ball roll down the plane and then you could see with your own eyes the fact that an object speeded up as it went down so he introduced the concept of acceleration to us
that seemed so obvious and logical that was a major mathematical breakthrough to understand Motion in those terms for his role as the first experimentor Albert Einstein will later call him the father of modern [Music] physics Galileo has pioneered the path that Newton and Einstein will follow the search for mathematical laws that lie behind all motion but progress is slow only at the end of his life will they finally be published at age 45 Galileo is still a poorly paid mathematician but ambitiousness and arrogance will soon catapult him to fame and be his undoing in 1609
Galileo hears rumors of a toy like spy glass that makes distant objects appear near resolving to capitalize on it he quickly learns to grind [Music] lenses within a few weeks he arrives in Venice with a telescope he Champions as his own invention he impresses venice's Navy so much that officials double his salary Galileo did not bother to tell them that this was an instrument that was being exhibited and sold in many other places there was considerable Chagrin uh when they discovered uh that in fact this was not Galileo's unique invention uh well what can you
say uh he was obviously uh uh being a good businessman there to the freethinking Galileo the telescope also offers an opportunity to ask questions few others dare 60 years earlier the astronomer cernus proposed the radical idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun but cernus had little evidence for his theory and it contradicts passages in the Bible in the time of the Inquisition such speculation Treads close to heresy [Music] but Galileo is unfazed he is the first astronomer to train a telescope on the heavens and he sees the universe as never before he was thrilled
by the fact that this telescope is opening whole worlds he draws pictures and diagrams then he couldn't draw fast enough [Music] Galileo Works feverishly night after night and he makes a startling find he discovers four moons orbiting Jupiter Galileo's evidence that not all objects orbit the earth lends strong support to the theory that the Earth itself could revolve around the Sun but contradicting the Bible is theological [Music] Dynamite for those who cast doubt on his new theories Galileo has no patience he's seen the universe in a new way with his own eyes how can I
do this and not be merely wasting my time he writes when those parapatics who must be convinced show themselves incapable of following even the simplest and easiest of arguments Galileo used his cutting wit to cut people down and that didn't necessarily win him a lot of friends in 1615 at age 51 Galileo goes to Rome to argue his case it may be his greatest mistake the church orders him to cease teaching that the Earth orbits the Sun but Galileo pushes his luck 9 years later he asks to State his case again this time a new
pope is a personal friend and Galileo wins permission to write a book ever scornful of opponent Galileo writes a dialogue and places Arguments for the two sides in the mouths of characters who are thinly disguised when he wrote his books it was very clear who was the smart one who was the standin for Galileo while the restian come out as the fools in 1633 Galileo is arrested by the Inquisition the church accuses him of [Music] heresy but perhaps the real reason that Galileo is brought to trial is that he has gone too far in his
efforts to persuade Galileo has put one of the Pope's favorite arguments into the mouth of a foolish character in his dialogue the pope was told by people around him that Galileo had tried in the book to make the Pope a fool and it was his personal decision to prosecute Galileo to the hilt and and have him in house AR rest for the rest of his life it was not really a Church decision it was the Pope's personal decision out of solid anger toward a friend Galileo expects a simple compromise instead he is threatened with torture
bowing to the inevitable he falls to his knees and recants for his last8 years Galileo lives under house arrest a broken man he will gain Immortal Fame for championing the view that the Earth moves around the Sun but to the scientists who succeed him his greatest achievement is different in his final years he writes a book that completes the work that he began while young he shows how it is possible to use mathematics to analyze [Music] motion ironically the year Galileo dies a boy is born 800 miles away who will bring Galileo's ideas to completion
he will also be one of the strangest scientists of all [Music] time perhaps no scientist has ever worked so hard without regard for food sleep or human relations as Isaac Newton Isaac Newton was a much darker figure he was a loner he was pathologically incapable of small talk we would use the term Obsession I would say he's the closest example I can think of of someone who was consumed by his work he may also be the greatest scientist of all time when he is Born the physical world is barely understood yet by the time he
dies he's worked out the precise laws that describe all motion from the fall of an apple to the orbits of planets there just hasn't been another human being we know of quite like Newton in 1642 Isaac Newton is born in a remote English Village his childhood is an unhappy one his father dies before he's born and when he is just three his mother Farms him out to a Stern Puritan grandmother when his mother remarried and left him with his grandmother Newton felt betrayed and isolated and I think he never quite got over that he will
later write that his childhood sins included threatening to burn his mother and stepfather in their house Newton does not always do well in school but he becomes a curiosity in his village for building extraordinary mechanical devices such as windmills a school Master convinces his mother to send him to University [Music] at Trinity College Cambridge most students drink and carouse more than they study Newton prefers to be isolated and alone here looking around him were a lot of people who had not the least interest in books who came from well off families he must have felt
terribly out of place and also I suspect knowing the way the students work he must have been regarded as an oddball Newton a Puritan is obsessed with sin he adopts strict emotional and sexual limits and lives a reclusive monk-like existence Newton was so different from Galileo because Newton was one of the most private people uh that you would ever know about he didn't take pains to make friends and somehow he didn't relate easily to people he just pulled back from them throughout his entire life he has no love affairs and few [Music] friends some Scholars
speculate that Newton was homosexual others that he simply decides he has no time for anything but work it is believed he dies a [Music] virgin in School Newton pours all of his passion into his studies like Galileo he's captivated by [Music] mathematics he learns advanced math on his own and then he begins to create a new mathematics to analyze motion he invents calculus Newton is fascinated by the way the sun RIS es and sets in an unbroken Arc Newton's brilliant Insight was the fact when objects move they can be viewed incrementally piece by piece tiny
little increments at a time and when you add up this motion you get beautiful spirals you get ellipses you get circles and just remember that when Isaac Newton was scribbling down all his notes he was creating calculus at the rate at which freshman in college learn it had he told anyone he would have been recognized as the greatest mathematician in Europe but Newton keeps his discoveries to himself preferring to work out the details [Music] alone several years later at age 24 Newton is living in his mother's house house here he has an inspiration that will
revolutionize all of physics he will unlock the mystery of what makes the planets move Isaac newon viewed the world pictorially geometrically and one day while walking down his estate he saw an apple fall and then he gazed up and he saw the moon and then he asked the key question the question that unlocked the secret of the heavens if an apple Falls does the moon also fall and then perhaps one of the greatest flashes of insight he realized that gravity which then takes an apple and makes it fall to the Earth is the same force
that could grab the Moon the Moon in the heavens and make the moon fall around the earth while G Alo began the study of how gravity acts on Earth Newton is the first to recognize that gravity also moves the planets and stars this was an absolutely world shaking change Newton essentially showed that the laws of the heavens were the same as the laws down here on Earth [Music] but when he tries to work out the details the complex mathematics eludes him he will keep his great breakthrough to himself for almost 20 [Music] years Newton soon
becomes a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University with few teaching responsibilities he works on math and physics Around the Clock his colleagues will soon recognize his Brilliance as well as his prickly and strange nature in 1672 Newton's invention of a new telescope wins him admission to the Royal Society England's Association of greatest scientists flattered Newton allows them to publish a brilliant paper paper on Optics but when the Great physicist Robert Hook erroneously challenges his theory Newton flies into a rage and threatens to withdraw from the Royal Society his reaction to criticism is almost always to
carefully explain why what the other person has just said is out and out foolish he was an extraordinarily fragile personality as one of his biographers had said his motto is rule or sulk and he spent a lot of time sulking some historians speculate that Newton's vindictiveness inordinate sensitivity to criticism and obsessive work reveals symptoms of a mental illness such as manic depression we will never know if he does have a mental illness it does not slow him [Music] down at the age of 42 Newton is asked to solve a problem that is baffling England's greatest
physicists what mathematics describes the orbit of planets around the Sun seized by inspiration Newton shuts his door and begins work on his greatest [Music] masterpiece like Galileo he is Guided by strong intuition now he sets out to crack the complex mathematics of gravity that he began years [Music] earlier for almost 2 years he communicates with almost no one his only form of exercise is pacing he would sleep very little that he would work 18 20 hours a day that he would skip meals and simply right he had the power the power to sit in his
chair undistracted focusing obsessed obsessed with one problem for years at a time until finally cracked at last Newton reemerges with a masterpiece that will change the world the prinkipia a ruthless simplifier Newton strikes at the fundamentals he uncovers how Mass interacts with Force inertia and [Music] acceleration but his greatest in sight is to define gravity he is the first to call gravity a force acting at a distance and through breathtaking mathematical breakthroughs Newton lays out the precise laws that determine the motion of all objects Newton's principia published in 1687 was a scientific revolution in it
Newton gave the first precise description of the laws that govern the motion of bodies from Canon balls to [Music] planets when you look at the prinkipia and the number of mathematical problems solved in it doing that in an 18-month period this is not a normal human being in any sense of the [Music] word Newton has completed Galileo's quest to mathematize motion but over 200 years later another arrogant Rebel will discover that at very high speeds Newton's Laws fail and the universe is Stranger than anyone ever [Music] imagined at the age of 16 Albert Einstein asks
a simple question what would happen if he ran as fast as a wave of light would the light wave appear to stand still when he returns to this image less than 10 years later he will revolutionize our understanding of space and time he L to imagine worlds that didn't exist that was his power the power that he could see things physically in a picture things that other people couldn't see the man who makes these breakthroughs is an absent-minded Professor a twinkle-eyed lover of humanity but he's also selfish has two failed marriages and confesses himself an
emotional failure Albert Einstein is born in 1879 in southern Germany to middleclass Jewish parents as a child he is quiet and withdrawn his parents began to think maybe he was because it took so long before he began to speak uh but uh he was just busy thinking apparently as a young boy he is fascinated by puzzles and games and shows remarkable perseverance at age nine he builds a tower of cars 14 stories high by all accounts Einstein as a child was a nerd and as a consequence the other kids would make fun of him he
was aart he lived in the world of books the world of ideas in 1896 the 17-year-old Einstein wins admission to the eth the MIT of Switzerland like Galileo he is witty and sharp with a sense of humor and is also a rebel Einstein has resolved to become a theoretical physicist but he feels styed his physics Professor har Weber has no interest in the latest cuttingedge theories of light and electricity he passes his exams only by borrowing a friend's class notes and graduates with unexceptional grades his behavior has not gone unnoticed all of Einstein's applications for
jobs at universities are rejected after Einstein graduated from the University he became a loser in every sense of the word his Professor Weber actively disliked the Young Einstein he wrote letters recommendation which we now know undermined his chance at any kind of academic appointment even before he became a physicist his life as a physicist was over 2 years after leaving University Einstein finally finds a job as a clerk in a Swiss patent office his work is far removed from theoretical physics but this seemingly dead end job will be his salvation in burn the 23-year-old clerk
quickly settles into a bouro existence he marries Mala Merit a fellow student from the University luckily his job is undemanding enough that he can steal time to Grapple with cuttingedge questions in physics such as the nature of light others in such circumstances would have just thrown in the towel and would have given up on a career in physics you get the sense that this is someone who just uh was possessed by an intellectual demon and couldn't do other than what he [Music] did now Einstein returns to a simple image he first imagined in high school
what would happen if he ran as fast as a wave of light both Isaac Newton and Einstein shared this uncanny ability to create simple pictures that children could understand and extract from that images which change the universe according to Newton the speed of a light beam should appear slower to someone who runs alongside it but light does not seem to obey Newton's Laws Einstein says the light beam moves away from you at the speed of light no matter how fast you move you can never catch up the the light beam you hit the accelerator you
Gunn the engine the Light Beam still moves away from you at the same rate how's that possible how is it possible you can never catch up to a light beam now like Galileo and Newton before him Einstein ruthlessly questions assumptions that no one else dares if the speed of light never changes then something else must give then he had it time is relative time is relative to the speed at which you move and that idea shook the universe Einstein has discovered that Newton's Laws only hold true for the world of everyday experience when objects travel
its speeds close to the speed of light Common Sense breaks down distances stretch and clocks tick more slowly Newton forgive me Einstein writes later at the age of just 26 he topples Newton's Laws of Motion with his theory of special [Music] relativity with childlike questions and simple pictures Einstein changed the [Music] world in 1907 Einstein turns to new scientific challenges but newly published letters reveal a little known personal side as he creates his greatest work he will withdraw within himself and those closest to him will suffer Einstein's wife Mala was once a physics student who
dreamed of her own scientific achievements but now as Einstein lectures and collaborates with others Mala hardly sees him she fears she is losing both her husband and her dream then in 1914 Mala discovers that she has a romantic rival Elsa lenthal Einstein's cousin Einstein's marriage falls apart you know I'd love to have a beer with Einstein but I wouldn't introduce him to my sister there was a sense where the the rules didn't necessarily have to apply to him Einstein will marry Elsa who's willing to keep house for him with fewer expectations he's given up on
love in marriage His science comes before all else by age 35 Einstein is pursuing a goal many physicists believe is impossible his intuition tells him that there must be a more general theory of relativity that also explains the force of gravity like Newton Einstein is obsessed for years he grapples with mathematics of horrendous complexity unsure whether he is on the right path or a Fool's errand he famously would worry a problem for years on on on end almost like a dog with a bone uh wouldn't let go of the problem when he was working out
general relativity he almost had a nervous breakdown he would concentrate to the point that he lost an enormous amount of weight he wouldn't eat he he focused on a problem the same way that Isaac Newton focused on a [Music] problem at last in the fall of 1915 Einstein realizes he's solved it his great Insight is so strange even physicists will struggle to comprehend it he proves mathematically that mass and energy curve space and time a massive object like the sun warps space and time so much that a nearby Planet moves in a curved path around
it to Newton they appeared to be attracted by a force but this is just an [Music] illusion the same phenomena holds true on Earth objects that appear to be pulled by a gravitational force are actually traveling through warped SpaceTime Einstein's general theory of relativity changed forever our ideas about space and time it is so beautiful it has to be right Einstein arrives at a set of equations governing space-time curvature these simple lines describe the motion of galaxies and the destiny of the universe when we physicists look at the equations of Albert Einstein we cry we
cry because they are so gorgeous realize that the motion of the heavens with all the curves spaces and time warps and what have you can be summarized in an equation about an inch long that is power that is incredible that is beautiful although Einstein will continue working until the day he dies by the time he is 40 he has completed his greatest work Galileo Applied Mathematics to motion Newton perfected these laws for everyday experience but Einstein's search for a deeper Theory revealed laws that govern the entire universe today another brilliant Rebel is searching for an
even broader Theory a theory of [Music] everything no living scientist has shaken the foundations of physics like Galileo Newton or or Einstein but among those who have advanced cosmology's Frontiers is a once lazy student named Steven Hawking today he holds the same chair in mathematics at Cambridge University as Isaac [Music] Newton I was born 300 years after the death of Galileo I hold the same job at Cambridge as new did and I work on Einstein's general theory of relativity of the three I feel closest to Galileo he followed his nose and was a bit of
a [Music] rebel Steven Hawking is born in 1942 in Oxford England like Galileo Newton and Einstein as a child he is fascinated by how things work yet at Oxford University Hawking hardly works at all instead he relies on his extraordinary facility with mathematics to Coast through Hawking spends most of his time socializing and on the river with his rowing team by all accounts Steven Hawking was not the kind of person Des ined for greatness at College Steven was not the hardest of workers Steven himself says that his entire undergraduate period at Oxford he only worked
about 1,000 hours which is an hour a day or on average Hawking is bored and apathetic nothing seems worth working for yet a tragedy is about to strike that will turn a Bor intellect into a passionate mind in 1962 Steven Hawking has just begun to study cosmology as a graduate student at Cambridge University but signs of illness are becoming too difficult to ignore a slight speech impediment difficulty pouring a beer doctors tell Hawking he has Al Les commonly known as Lou Garrick's disease the regions of his brain that control motion are wasting away there is
no [Music] cure the 20-year-old student learns that his body will become paralyzed his breathing muscles will eventually seize up suffocating him doctors say he has just 2 years to live Hawking falls into a deep depression when Stephen was first diagnosed as being ill he he really didn't expect to live more than than a year or two and therefore they didn't see much point in even completing a PhD but inexplicably his disease progresses more slowly than predicted he meets Janee wild the woman who will become his wife and he finds a purpose I dreamt that I
was going to be executed he writes I suddenly realized that there are a lot of worthwhile things to do if I were [Music] reprieved now Hawking begins working hard for the first time in his life and to his surprise finds that he likes it by the early 1970s Steven Hawking is a well-established cosmologist he is also in a wheelchair yet he is remarkably stubborn nothing will keep him from Living a normal life he has children he works intensely and he is about to make a great breakthrough that will extend Einstein's theory in an unexpected Direction
Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts the motion of very large objects such as galaxies but it cannot explain the behavior of the tiniest subatomic particles that are the building blocks of the universe their motion is only predicted by a different Theory called quantum mechanics and to the frustration of Einstein and every physicist since the two theories appear completely incompatible yet Hawking is Brash enough to tackle The Impossible when Steven Hawking was doing his pioneering work there were two armed camps they hated each other they never talked to each other on one side were the true
blue loyalists the ones who held the flame of Albert Einstein burning bright on the other Camp were the quantum theorists they dealt with the world of particles subatomic particles hundreds of them thousands of them and they didn't talk to each other they had different mathematics they had a different language a different physical picture and here comes step Hawking saying I'm going to try to marry the two together well well that was heresy no one had done that before now Hawking asks what happens if you look at a black hole a massive object but zoom in
to its smallest scale Hawking also like Einstein has an incredibly good nose that he has an intuitive feel for interesting questions to ask and how to ask them black black holes are the most bizarre and extreme prediction of Einstein's theory of gravity theoretically if a mass is extremely concentrated for instance if a star were compressed into a ball just miles wide the space around it will become so warped that gravity will keep everything from escaping including [Music] light a black hole is a region of space in which gravity is so strong that light can never
Escape it's like a one-way membrane in which things can go in but nothing ever comes out including light and that's why it's called black now Hawking attempts something his colleagues assume is impossible he uses the equations of quantum theory to analyze what happens to tiny particles trapped by gravity on the edges of black holes by now he can no longer write if he was an experimentalist his career would long be over but Hawking has rarely even looked through a telescope and for Theory all he needs is his brain like Newton and Einstein Hawking has great
powers of concentration he reruns long torturous equations again and again in his head checking and rechecking his calculations he tends to think in pictures and he tends to start with some idea that he thinks he is right and he and he goes from there he has to rely upon Keen insight and leaps of logic to compensate for the fact that he cannot check every single line he just has a tremendous drive a tremendous determination to to get to the bottom of things [Music] Hawkings results shock him black holes are not completely cut off from the
rest of the universe as once believed instead their edges shed tiny particles now called Hawking radiation the arguments are so compelling everyone now agrees that black holes must give off Hing radiation the radiation will carry away energy and mass and the black holes will slowly evaporate and eventually disappear Hawking has shown that like water in a boiling kettle black holes slowly evaporate [Music] away just as importantly he's proven that in one particular case general relativity and quantum theory can be fruitfully combined my discovery that black holes are not completely black but should glow like hot
bodies was the first example of an effect that depended on both the large and small scale theories when the result came out it it was so beautiful it just had that feel about it just talking about it was like rolling candy on the tongue finding a Theory of Everything a deeper theory that unifies Einstein's equations and quantum mechanics is now the Holy Grail of physics it would explain the origin of the universe and Hawking has created New Hope that this Ultimate Puzzle can be solved it's clear that Steven's discovery of black hole radiant was was
an important piece of the final jigsaw even though we don't really know what the final jigsaw is yet [Music] who were the greatest physicists they were ugly ducklings Rebels and nerds consumed by Deep intuition and unafraid to question the most basic assumptions it does take a strong ego to say well that's not so tough I can crack that I mean the odds are really against you there's no guarantee that there are any answers out there that that science actually works you're really taking a huge chance their stubborn persistence revealed deep laws of nature but their
Quest remains unfinished and such Brilliant Minds come along only once in a great while yet who knows it's possible that the next brilliant Rebel is already Among Us [Music] [Music]
