An Infinite Monkey's Guide to General Relativity
Discovery
BBC
4.3 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It is 100 years since the publication of Einstein's great theory, and arguably one of the greatest scientific theories of all time. To mark the occasion, Brian Cox takes Robin Ince on a guided tour of General Relativity. With the help of some of the world's leading cosmologists, and a comedian or two, they explore the notions of space time, falling elevators, trampolines and bowling balls, and what was wrong with Newton's apple. It is a whistle stop tour of all you will ever need to know about gravity and how a mathematical equation written 100 years ago predicted everything from black holes to the Big Bang, to our expanding universe, long before there was any proof that these extraordinary phenomena existed.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:08.9 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.1 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by |
| 0:23.1 | their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism |
| 0:27.8 | with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:35.3 | For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, |
| 0:39.4 | go to BBCworldservis.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:45.2 | Hello, I'm Robin Ince. |
| 0:46.8 | And I'm Brian Cox. |
| 0:47.7 | And we spend most of our time presenting the science panel show, |
| 0:50.1 | The Infinite Monkey Cage. |
| 0:51.4 | But today we're doing something different. |
| 0:53.0 | We're presenting a documentary |
| 0:54.6 | about one of the most wonderful ideas |
| 0:56.9 | to come out of a human mind. |
| 0:58.5 | So like all documentaries, |
| 1:00.3 | we are going to take you on a journey. |
| 1:03.0 | Though in this case, it's quite a short journey |
| 1:04.6 | falling down a lift shaft. |
| 1:06.2 | Or more correctly, |
| 1:07.1 | according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, |
... |
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