Episode 1
The Infinite Monkey Cage
BBC
4.7 • 9.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2015
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's 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's a whistle stop tour of all you'll 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 | This is a download from the BBC to find out more visit bbc.co.uk |
| 0:05.8 | slash radio for |
| 0:08.4 | Hello, I'm Robin in and I'm braincocks and we spend most of our time on radio for presenting the science panel show the infinite monkey cage |
| 0:14.8 | But today we're doing something different. We're presenting a documentary about one of the most wonderful ideas to come out of a human mind |
| 0:21.9 | So like all documentaries we are gonna take you on a journey |
| 0:26.4 | Though in this case, it's quite a short journey falling down a lift shaft or more correctly accordion to Einstein's theory of general relativity a |
| 0:33.0 | Journey floating in an inertial frame of reference waiting for the bottom of the lift shaft to hit us |
| 0:49.3 | Are you being served is and was always meant to be I think a tutorial on general relativity? |
| 0:55.6 | Good so 10 years ago we celebrated the centenary of special relativity, which is e equals mc squared the most famous equation to |
| 1:05.5 | Exist in the history of human civilization which gives me some hope actually popular culture because the fact that there is |
| 1:12.1 | Amos famous equation means that we're not floating in an all-inveloping |
| 1:17.4 | Darkness of trivia. So that's the problem though. It's very easy |
| 1:21.2 | When you get one of those shows the count down on the top 10 equations |
| 1:23.9 | We always know e equals mc squared is gonna be number one, but no one knows the position of |
| 1:29.1 | Any of the other equations f equals m a |
| 1:31.6 | All that probably would be number two wouldn't it anyway, so e equals mc squared Brian. What does that mean? |
| 1:37.1 | Well, it really means the energy and mass are interchangeable |
| 1:40.1 | But it comes from special relativity, which is a theory of space and time space and time are no longer to be considered |
| 1:47.6 | Separate entities they merge together into a structure called space time. So 10 years after e equals mc squared |
| 1:55.3 | Now we celebrate |
| 1:57.7 | General relativity. I think majority people wouldn't necessarily know the equation for general relativity |
| 2:03.4 | So that is well the equation is g mu nu equals t mu nu with a few pies and Newton's gravitational |
... |
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