0:00:02 > 0:00:05Mention the name "Einstein" and most people will immediately picture
0:00:05 > 0:00:10a wrinkly faced old man with a massive shock of white hair.
0:00:10 > 0:00:14However, there is much more to this iconic thinker
0:00:14 > 0:00:17than simply an interesting barnet.
0:00:17 > 0:00:23For example - how did Einstein become a celebrity pin-up?
0:00:23 > 0:00:27What does E=mc2 actually mean?
0:00:27 > 0:00:32And what happened to his brain?
0:00:32 > 0:00:35Luckily for me, you don't have to be a genius to figure out
0:00:35 > 0:00:39the Things You Need To Know About Einstein.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43Right, let's kick off with a really obvious question -
0:00:43 > 0:00:47did Einstein spend seven years as a cobbler?
0:00:47 > 0:00:54Germany, 1879. Mr and Mrs Einstein gaze upon their newborn baby -
0:00:54 > 0:00:57concerned about his large, misshapen head.
0:00:57 > 0:00:58They needn't have worried.
0:00:58 > 0:01:02This head contained one of the greatest brains in history.
0:01:02 > 0:01:07But as a young boy, little Albert was slow to talk.
0:01:07 > 0:01:10The maid even called him "the dopey one."
0:01:10 > 0:01:12So his parents took him to see a doctor.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16It turned out he just preferred speaking in complete sentences.
0:01:17 > 0:01:18Einstein, as a young boy,
0:01:18 > 0:01:22started to query the world he was living in.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26He was fascinated by natural phenomena.
0:01:26 > 0:01:30One of these was when he was given a compass at the age of five
0:01:30 > 0:01:34and he was mesmerised by the needle that would move around
0:01:34 > 0:01:38and these mysterious forces causing it to move.
0:01:38 > 0:01:40The other thing that he loved was his geometry book
0:01:40 > 0:01:42which he was given when he was 12.
0:01:42 > 0:01:44He devoured this book.
0:01:44 > 0:01:52His understanding of science was perhaps different to most other children.
0:01:52 > 0:01:55You'd think that for a budding genius like young Einstein,
0:01:55 > 0:01:57school would be an absolute doddle.
0:01:59 > 0:02:01But you'd be wrong.
0:02:01 > 0:02:04Einstein certainly wasn't a dummy in the classroom.
0:02:04 > 0:02:07But he didn't like being told what to do
0:02:07 > 0:02:10which often got him in trouble with his teachers.
0:02:10 > 0:02:12In fact, he called the schools "barracks"
0:02:12 > 0:02:14and the teachers "lieutenants".
0:02:16 > 0:02:20To make matters worse, when Einstein was just 15 years old,
0:02:20 > 0:02:24his entire family moved to Italy - leaving him behind in Munich.
0:02:24 > 0:02:27So he got himself a doctor's note
0:02:27 > 0:02:29and he quit school more than a year early.
0:02:30 > 0:02:32Genius!
0:02:32 > 0:02:34Without a single qualification to his name,
0:02:34 > 0:02:38Private Einstein became a teenage high school dropout.
0:02:38 > 0:02:41He also flunked the entrance exam to Zurich Polytech,
0:02:41 > 0:02:44but tried again at 17 and aced it
0:02:44 > 0:02:47only to become a bit of a rebel,
0:02:47 > 0:02:49skipping classes and arguing with teachers.
0:02:50 > 0:02:56He would be not paying attention, he would be questioning
0:02:56 > 0:02:58some of the things that the teachers would be telling him.
0:02:58 > 0:03:01He didn't like rules,
0:03:01 > 0:03:05and that doesn't go down well in schools - still doesn't.
0:03:05 > 0:03:07Or at least, it didn't when I was at school!
0:03:07 > 0:03:10One professor was so miffed by Einstein's disobedience
0:03:10 > 0:03:14that he did his best to sabotage his academic career.
0:03:14 > 0:03:19Which is why at the age of 22, Einstein was unemployed,
0:03:19 > 0:03:23with no prospects, and a pregnant girlfriend.
0:03:23 > 0:03:27Luckily, he landed a junior post at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern,
0:03:27 > 0:03:31doing the sort of work he referred to as his cobbler's trade.
0:03:31 > 0:03:36So, no. Einstein didn't spend seven years mending stilettos.
0:03:36 > 0:03:40But he DID do plenty of what he loved best - thinking.
0:03:40 > 0:03:43In fact, during his years at the Patent Office,
0:03:43 > 0:03:49this humble clerk did some of the finest thinking in the entire history of science,
0:03:49 > 0:03:55which begs the question - what was Einstein's big idea?
0:03:55 > 0:03:57Imagine you're chasing after a bus.
0:03:57 > 0:04:02It's doing 30 miles an hour, but you only manage 29.
0:04:02 > 0:04:05The bus is faster than you by one mile an hour.
0:04:05 > 0:04:09Speed up just a bit, and you'll catch it.
0:04:09 > 0:04:11But if the bus were a beam of light,
0:04:11 > 0:04:14then no matter how much you speed up,
0:04:14 > 0:04:20it's always faster than you by the same amount - the speed of light.
0:04:20 > 0:04:21This doesn't seem to make much sense,
0:04:21 > 0:04:24but by the start of the 20th century,
0:04:24 > 0:04:28experiments had shown that it was true.
0:04:28 > 0:04:29What on earth was going on?
0:04:31 > 0:04:34No matter whether you are moving towards it or moving away from it,
0:04:34 > 0:04:37you will always perceive light to be moving at the same speed.
0:04:37 > 0:04:40It's always 300,000km/s or thereabouts,
0:04:40 > 0:04:43and this is a little bit odd.
0:04:43 > 0:04:46It's not what we experience in everyday life.
0:04:46 > 0:04:49That flies in the face of common sense.
0:04:49 > 0:04:52I mean, it sounds like the statement of a lunatic.
0:04:52 > 0:04:55It really is a ridiculous thing to suggest.
0:04:55 > 0:05:00It took one of Einstein's famous "thought experiments" to sort it out.
0:05:00 > 0:05:04Let's say Mr and Mrs Einstein each have identical "relativity" clocks.
0:05:04 > 0:05:07These super-accurate timepieces work
0:05:07 > 0:05:12by bouncing a photon of light between two mirrors a few feet apart.
0:05:12 > 0:05:17Now, if Albert hurtles past at near the speed of light,
0:05:17 > 0:05:22Mrs Einstein would say that his photon has to travel much further
0:05:22 > 0:05:24between ticks than hers.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27So to keep the clocks ticking together,
0:05:27 > 0:05:30his photon would have to speed up.
0:05:30 > 0:05:33Except we already know that light doesn't do that!
0:05:34 > 0:05:38Einstein reasoned that time itself, not light, changes speed.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44He simply took this idea seriously - that the speed of light IS constant
0:05:44 > 0:05:51and that means that the very notion of what space and time is has to give.
0:05:51 > 0:05:55So this meant that time itself was no longer absolute.
0:05:55 > 0:05:56It had to be relative,
0:05:56 > 0:05:59and this is the big breakthrough that Einstein made.
0:06:00 > 0:06:04This fundamental shift in the way we see the universe
0:06:04 > 0:06:10meant that different clocks could show different times and still be right.
0:06:10 > 0:06:15Relative to Mrs Einstein, Albert's clock ticks slower than hers.
0:06:15 > 0:06:18The faster he goes, the slower it ticks
0:06:18 > 0:06:22until, at the speed of light, it would stop altogether.
0:06:22 > 0:06:27Bingo! Einstein had shown how nothing travels faster than light -
0:06:27 > 0:06:30not even celebrity gossip!
0:06:30 > 0:06:35Einstein published his universe-shattering theory in 1905,
0:06:35 > 0:06:38followed by a small postscript.
0:06:38 > 0:06:40This contained a tiny little equation,
0:06:40 > 0:06:47one that just about everybody knows, but almost no-one fully understands.
0:06:47 > 0:06:52So what does E=mc2 actually mean?
0:06:52 > 0:06:56The world's most famous equation simply states that E,
0:06:56 > 0:07:04or energy, equals mass - m, times c - the speed of light, times itself.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07And because c squared is a really big number,
0:07:07 > 0:07:12even a really small piece of matter like a paperclip equals a lot of energy.
0:07:13 > 0:07:1718 kilotons of TNT's worth to be exact.
0:07:17 > 0:07:20Or - one atom bomb.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23It doesn't even matter what that matter is.
0:07:23 > 0:07:28Marmalade, moon-rock, or a monkey's earwax - it's all atoms,
0:07:28 > 0:07:31which, in theory, can be converted to energy.
0:07:31 > 0:07:35So why can't we power our cities with paperclips
0:07:35 > 0:07:37and heat our homes with earwax?
0:07:37 > 0:07:43The problem is - releasing that energy requires an awful lot of well, energy.
0:07:44 > 0:07:48One way to do it is nuclear fission.
0:07:48 > 0:07:51Take one large atomic nucleus like uranium.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55Split it in two, and a little bit gets converted to energy,
0:07:55 > 0:07:58along with some nasty radioactive by-products.
0:07:58 > 0:08:00Then there's fusion.
0:08:00 > 0:08:03Take two hydrogen nuclei and stick them
0:08:03 > 0:08:07together to produce one helium nucleus.
0:08:07 > 0:08:08And some energy.
0:08:09 > 0:08:13But, first you'll need about 100 million degrees Celsius.
0:08:13 > 0:08:17Which is why stars like the sun can do it.
0:08:17 > 0:08:19If we could crack it here on earth,
0:08:19 > 0:08:22controlled fusion would give us unlimited clean energy.
0:08:24 > 0:08:27Einstein's equation raises this possibility, the possibility
0:08:27 > 0:08:31to use nuclear fusion to generate energy.
0:08:31 > 0:08:35It means that if we crack fusion, we can actually generate
0:08:35 > 0:08:38a huge amount of energy with a small amount of matter.
0:08:38 > 0:08:42A fusion power station in one day would use about one kg of fuel.
0:08:42 > 0:08:45That's like a big bag of sugar, whereas a coal-fired power station
0:08:45 > 0:08:49every day uses hundreds of truckloads of coal.
0:08:49 > 0:08:51So it gives you an idea
0:08:51 > 0:08:55of the amount of energy that we can get from fusion.
0:08:55 > 0:08:58Sounds too good to be true? Well, so far, it is.
0:08:58 > 0:09:01The only energy-efficient fusion we have achieved is
0:09:01 > 0:09:06the hydrogen bomb - and that's most definitely not controlled!
0:09:06 > 0:09:12If all this can be explained by one tiny equation containing just three numbers,
0:09:12 > 0:09:17then Einstein's next big idea would really shake things up.
0:09:22 > 0:09:27Einstein knew that his first theory of relativity was missing something.
0:09:27 > 0:09:28Gravity.
0:09:28 > 0:09:33So he relabelled it "Special" and got cracking on a new version,
0:09:33 > 0:09:37which he called "General Relativity".
0:09:38 > 0:09:42If I'd just overthrown hundreds of years of scientific thinking,
0:09:42 > 0:09:45I think I'd probably settle down, have a bit of a nap.
0:09:46 > 0:09:50But then again, I'm not a genius.
0:09:51 > 0:09:54The story goes that Einstein was sitting in his office
0:09:54 > 0:09:58when he saw a man fixing a roof.
0:09:58 > 0:10:00He imagined the poor chap falling off
0:10:00 > 0:10:04and had what he called the happiest thought of his life.
0:10:05 > 0:10:09As the man starts to fall, he is effectively in zero gravity.
0:10:12 > 0:10:15Put him inside a large windowless box that's also in free fall,
0:10:15 > 0:10:19and he has no way of knowing that he's moving.
0:10:19 > 0:10:22That is, until he hits the ground.
0:10:23 > 0:10:28Einstein realised that gravity is actually an illusion.
0:10:28 > 0:10:30Although its effects were still as real as ever.
0:10:30 > 0:10:34If you think about how you feel on a roller coaster,
0:10:34 > 0:10:37for example, when you're going up and down,
0:10:37 > 0:10:40that just like having gravity turned on and off.
0:10:40 > 0:10:43So if you just jump off the top of a building,
0:10:43 > 0:10:48then as you're falling down, it's like somebody's just turned gravity off.
0:10:48 > 0:10:52And Einstein had come up with a profound new understanding
0:10:52 > 0:10:55of how the universe behaved.
0:10:55 > 0:10:58It took him ten years to work out the details,
0:10:58 > 0:11:06but in 1916 he produced a brand-new picture of time, space and gravity.
0:11:06 > 0:11:12And in this new universe, gravity slows time.
0:11:12 > 0:11:16He took space, 3D space, and merged it with time,
0:11:16 > 0:11:18and came up with the concept of space-time.
0:11:18 > 0:11:22Four-dimensional space-time is something that is impossible to visualise
0:11:22 > 0:11:24because we live in a three-dimensional world.
0:11:24 > 0:11:27There's up/down, left/right, forward/back,
0:11:27 > 0:11:31and then there's another direction which I can't point in,
0:11:31 > 0:11:34unfortunately because I can only ever point in space,
0:11:34 > 0:11:36but this other direction if I could point in it -
0:11:36 > 0:11:38it's the time direction.
0:11:38 > 0:11:42So we get this curved four-dimensional space-time,
0:11:42 > 0:11:46and this is actually equivalent to gravity.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50If I have a planet and I put it in my space-time,
0:11:50 > 0:11:53it deforms space-time, and that is my gravitational well.
0:11:53 > 0:11:55So we're not just thinking of it as a force,
0:11:55 > 0:11:59we're thinking of it as a perturbance in space-time.
0:11:59 > 0:12:01Because Earth's gravity gets weaker
0:12:01 > 0:12:04the further away from its centre you are,
0:12:04 > 0:12:07your head ages faster than your feet
0:12:07 > 0:12:11by a hundredth of a billionth of a second every day.
0:12:11 > 0:12:13By your 80th birthday,
0:12:13 > 0:12:18your cranium has gained a good 300 nanoseconds on your tootsies.
0:12:18 > 0:12:22Or, about a millionth of the time it takes to blink.
0:12:22 > 0:12:25Einstein's brilliance may have changed the universe,
0:12:25 > 0:12:28but it didn't actually make him a lot of money.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32Apparently, he once quipped that his thought-experiments
0:12:32 > 0:12:35placed clocks all over the cosmos,
0:12:35 > 0:12:39and yet he couldn't actually afford to buy one for himself!
0:12:45 > 0:12:48It's Einstein's 72nd birthday party.
0:12:48 > 0:12:53A photographer asks him to smile for the camera.
0:12:53 > 0:12:59Instead, the ageing professor engages in a cheeky spot of glossal protrusion.
0:12:59 > 0:13:01This snapshot became so famous
0:13:01 > 0:13:09that in 2009 an autographed copy sold at auction for nearly 75,000.
0:13:09 > 0:13:13So just how did a wrinkly old physicist
0:13:13 > 0:13:15become such a bankable icon?
0:13:15 > 0:13:21Ironically, Einstein's meteoric rise to fame began with the stars.
0:13:22 > 0:13:28In 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington photographed them during a solar eclipse,
0:13:28 > 0:13:31and confirmed that gravity bends light.
0:13:31 > 0:13:35So Einstein was right and just about everything we thought we knew
0:13:35 > 0:13:39about space, time and the universe was wrong.
0:13:40 > 0:13:45Almost overnight, Einstein's mug became global front-page news.
0:13:45 > 0:13:46When it hit the newspapers
0:13:46 > 0:13:50Einstein became an overnight celebrity throughout the whole world,
0:13:50 > 0:13:52not just among scientists.
0:13:52 > 0:13:56The Newtonian view of the world was utterly shattered.
0:13:56 > 0:14:00This was something completely new and something that people weren't expecting
0:14:00 > 0:14:05so when this theory was actually shown experimentally to be correct,
0:14:05 > 0:14:08it caused a lot of excitement.
0:14:08 > 0:14:11At first, he didn't exactly welcome the attention.
0:14:11 > 0:14:14He told a friend, "I dream I'm burning in Hell
0:14:14 > 0:14:19"and the postman is the Devil, eternally roaring at me."
0:14:19 > 0:14:23But he soon got used to the glare of the spotlight.
0:14:23 > 0:14:27By the time the Einsteins relocated to America in 1933,
0:14:27 > 0:14:30they were hobnobbing with the rich and famous.
0:14:31 > 0:14:35Albert's wild hair and drooping moustache were a cartoonist's dream,
0:14:35 > 0:14:38as instantly recognisable as Mickey Mouse
0:14:38 > 0:14:41and almost as easy to draw.
0:14:41 > 0:14:46Which is why ever since, just about every absent-minded professor
0:14:46 > 0:14:49and mad scientist looks a bit like you-know-who.
0:14:50 > 0:14:56Today, anybody as famous as Einstein would have their own chat show, they'd have a private jet
0:14:56 > 0:14:59and a temper shorter than a yardstick in a black hole.
0:14:59 > 0:15:03Frankly, they'd be unbearable.
0:15:08 > 0:15:11During his girlfriend Mileva's pregnancy,
0:15:11 > 0:15:14Einstein wrote her a soppy letter.
0:15:14 > 0:15:21"I am filled with such happiness and joy", he wrote, "that I must share it with you".
0:15:21 > 0:15:24Aw, sweet - except the previous line of her Valentine read,
0:15:24 > 0:15:30"I have just read a wonderful paper on the generation of cathode rays".
0:15:32 > 0:15:36Albert and Mileva did tie the knot, and had two more children,
0:15:36 > 0:15:39but you'd hardly call them love's young dream.
0:15:41 > 0:15:44A few years into their nuptial arrangement,
0:15:44 > 0:15:47they shared a passion for physics, but not much else.
0:15:49 > 0:15:52He once said, "Marriage is the unsuccessful attempt
0:15:52 > 0:15:55"to make something lasting out of an incident."
0:15:56 > 0:16:01And called Mileva an employee he couldn't sack.
0:16:01 > 0:16:05He even drew up a kind of legal contract,
0:16:05 > 0:16:08ordering her to do his cooking and laundry,
0:16:08 > 0:16:10prohibiting any sort of intimacy,
0:16:10 > 0:16:15and demanding that she stop talking to him if he requested it.
0:16:15 > 0:16:19Sounds more like a Hollywood pre-nup!
0:16:19 > 0:16:21This marriage probably didn't get off to a good start.
0:16:21 > 0:16:25The work that Einstein was doing required intense concentration.
0:16:25 > 0:16:27He spent a lot of time lost in thought,
0:16:27 > 0:16:30which is kind of incompatible with having a young baby around,
0:16:30 > 0:16:31which is very distracting.
0:16:31 > 0:16:33He was having to earn money,
0:16:33 > 0:16:35he was having to do his physics in the evening
0:16:35 > 0:16:40and he was having to be a father as well as a husband.
0:16:40 > 0:16:44Hardly surprisingly, it ended in divorce -
0:16:44 > 0:16:47partly because Einstein had at least one affair -
0:16:47 > 0:16:53with his first cousin Elsa, who then became his second wife.
0:16:53 > 0:16:55But despite many rumours to the contrary,
0:16:55 > 0:16:59he didn't have an affair with screen goddess Marilyn Monroe.
0:17:00 > 0:17:02The two never even met.
0:17:07 > 0:17:14Talking of goddesses, we know that Einstein developed a deep and philosophical sense of wonder
0:17:14 > 0:17:16at the beauty of the cosmos,
0:17:16 > 0:17:19and he obviously had an eye for a heavenly body,
0:17:19 > 0:17:23but he wasn't exactly a big fan of organised religion.
0:17:23 > 0:17:27So how did this born-again atheist end up bringing the Almighty
0:17:27 > 0:17:30into one of his most famous arguments?
0:17:34 > 0:17:39Einstein spent his last 30 years attempting to pull off
0:17:39 > 0:17:40his greatest trick yet -
0:17:40 > 0:17:47a Unified Field Theory to explain just about everything in the universe.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51His own Relativity Theory described a sort of "clockwork" universe.
0:17:52 > 0:17:56Measure it accurately enough, and you could work out the past
0:17:56 > 0:17:58and even predict the future.
0:17:58 > 0:18:02Relativity was great at big stuff like universes,
0:18:02 > 0:18:05but rubbish at little things, like atoms.
0:18:05 > 0:18:11Quantum Theory did this brilliantly, but said some really crazy things -
0:18:11 > 0:18:15objects could be in many places at once.
0:18:15 > 0:18:21A cat in a box could be both alive and dead until someone takes a peek.
0:18:22 > 0:18:29Worst of all, it said the fabric of reality is essentially fuzzy.
0:18:29 > 0:18:30When I say "fuzzy",
0:18:30 > 0:18:34I mean that by the time you get down to the level of subatomic particles,
0:18:34 > 0:18:36things stop being actual things,
0:18:36 > 0:18:39and they become probabilities -
0:18:39 > 0:18:42which means they might be where you think they are,
0:18:42 > 0:18:46but then again...they might not.
0:18:46 > 0:18:53Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle said we can never be 100% sure of absolutely everything,
0:18:53 > 0:18:56including the past and the future.
0:18:56 > 0:19:01Quantum mechanics is definitely weird, and very counter-intuitive.
0:19:01 > 0:19:07The most twisted and surreal imagination would never have come up with quantum physics
0:19:07 > 0:19:12if we weren't battered into it by the weight of the experimental evidence.
0:19:12 > 0:19:16Electrons can be in many different places at once.
0:19:16 > 0:19:20We've got a particle travelling from A to B.
0:19:20 > 0:19:21In the quantum world,
0:19:21 > 0:19:24it can take many different paths at the same time.
0:19:24 > 0:19:29So the object itself may or may not be there!
0:19:29 > 0:19:31Einstein hated this idea,
0:19:31 > 0:19:36rejecting it by saying "God does not play dice with the universe."
0:19:37 > 0:19:41Niels Bohr, the champion of this disturbing new science, replied,
0:19:41 > 0:19:43"Stop telling God what to do!"
0:19:45 > 0:19:50It was more than 50 years before quantum mechanics could be tested by experiment,
0:19:50 > 0:19:52and Einstein was finally proved wrong!
0:19:54 > 0:19:58Yes, it's official. The world IS essentially uncertain.
0:19:58 > 0:20:01God, it seems, DOES play dice after all.
0:20:03 > 0:20:07But if Einstein made a mess of that, what else did he get wrong?
0:20:07 > 0:20:08Or in other words...
0:20:13 > 0:20:17Some might argue that Einstein's work gave us the atom bomb,
0:20:17 > 0:20:20which is a pretty big faux pas in anyone's book.
0:20:21 > 0:20:25But it seems his worst mistake was one of even greater gravity.
0:20:27 > 0:20:32Einstein used his equations to build a model of the universe,
0:20:32 > 0:20:37only to find that it should be expanding, or contracting,
0:20:37 > 0:20:42but not remaining static as everyone at the time knew it was.
0:20:42 > 0:20:46For once, Einstein wasn't thinking weird and far out.
0:20:46 > 0:20:48He was maintaining conventional wisdom
0:20:48 > 0:20:51that the universe was static, as we all expected.
0:20:51 > 0:20:53I think he thought the universe was static
0:20:53 > 0:20:56because there wasn't anything really to convince him otherwise.
0:20:56 > 0:20:59So the idea was, he'd made a mistake somewhere.
0:20:59 > 0:21:02Einstein bodged up a last-minute fix, adding a number
0:21:02 > 0:21:07he called the Cosmological Constant into his equations,
0:21:07 > 0:21:09a kind of "negative gravity"
0:21:09 > 0:21:12to counterbalance the effects of regular gravity.
0:21:12 > 0:21:16Even at the time, he knew this was very dodgy science.
0:21:16 > 0:21:20He had to introduce a fudge factor,
0:21:20 > 0:21:25and the fudge factor stopped him from having an expanding universe.
0:21:25 > 0:21:29And this was like a mysterious repulsive force that
0:21:29 > 0:21:30went against gravity,
0:21:30 > 0:21:35and actually stopped the universe collapsing, and kept it static.
0:21:35 > 0:21:38He had to introduce a fudge factor into his mathematics,
0:21:38 > 0:21:41which turned out to be a mistake.
0:21:41 > 0:21:4512 years later, Edwin Hubble discovered that due to the Big Bang
0:21:45 > 0:21:48the universe IS expanding.
0:21:48 > 0:21:53Hubble worked out that all the galaxies in the universe are flying apart from each other,
0:21:53 > 0:21:55exactly like...
0:21:58 > 0:22:02..the spots on the surface of an inflating balloon.
0:22:04 > 0:22:07So Einstein had been right about the expanding universe,
0:22:07 > 0:22:11and wrong to add his Cosmological Constant,
0:22:11 > 0:22:14the so-called biggest blunder of his life.
0:22:15 > 0:22:17Einstein then realised that in fact
0:22:17 > 0:22:18he had the solution all along.
0:22:18 > 0:22:21He actually had the solution of an expanding universe.
0:22:21 > 0:22:26His equations, taken at face value, actually predict an expanding universe,
0:22:26 > 0:22:28so he kind of missed that trick.
0:22:28 > 0:22:32The universe was actually expanding, so there was no need for this
0:22:32 > 0:22:33Cosmological Constant to keep it static.
0:22:33 > 0:22:35And this was his biggest blunder.
0:22:35 > 0:22:38But as recently as 1998,
0:22:38 > 0:22:42scientists discovered that the universe isn't just expanding.
0:22:42 > 0:22:43It's speeding up, too.
0:22:45 > 0:22:51Shocked by this result, they had to quickly invent a repulsive force to explain it away,
0:22:51 > 0:22:54and they called it "Dark Energy" -
0:22:54 > 0:22:57basically another name for the Cosmological Constant.
0:22:59 > 0:23:05So, even when Einstein got it wrong, he ended up being right.
0:23:07 > 0:23:13OK, so once in a blue moon Einstein stuffed up, dropped the ball, made a boo-boo.
0:23:13 > 0:23:15But at least he was honest about it.
0:23:15 > 0:23:18And scientists are good at that - admitting they're wrong
0:23:18 > 0:23:21when somebody comes up with a better idea.
0:23:21 > 0:23:23Unlike that other bunch.
0:23:23 > 0:23:25You know - politicians.
0:23:25 > 0:23:27Which makes me wonder...
0:23:30 > 0:23:35They say that politics is just show business for ugly people.
0:23:35 > 0:23:38Well, Einstein certainly never won any beauty contests -
0:23:38 > 0:23:43maybe that's why he became so interested in the affairs of state.
0:23:43 > 0:23:46In Zurich, when he should have been studying physics,
0:23:46 > 0:23:50he was often found at the Odeon Cafe - a notorious hang-out
0:23:50 > 0:23:54later frequented by the likes of Trotsky, Lenin, and Mussolini.
0:23:58 > 0:24:02Perhaps inspired by this free-thinking atmosphere,
0:24:02 > 0:24:07Einstein soon proved he wasn't one to shy away from a political argument.
0:24:08 > 0:24:10Maybe he should have laid off the coffee.
0:24:13 > 0:24:16After the outbreak of World War One, nearly 100 prominent scientists
0:24:16 > 0:24:21signed a paper supporting Germany's military aggression.
0:24:21 > 0:24:27Outraged, Einstein added his John Hancock to a pacifist counter-petition,
0:24:27 > 0:24:32bringing the final number of signatures to a total of...four!
0:24:32 > 0:24:35Before the next war, Einstein - who was Jewish -
0:24:35 > 0:24:38had a reward placed on his head by the Nazi Party.
0:24:38 > 0:24:43And his work became the target of their infamous book-burning campaign,
0:24:43 > 0:24:47which might explain why he decided not to stick around.
0:24:47 > 0:24:50But even after he settled in the Land Of The Free,
0:24:50 > 0:24:52things weren't much better.
0:24:52 > 0:24:55Wary of Einstein's socialist views and political influence,
0:24:55 > 0:25:00the FBI opened a file on him collecting 1,800 pages
0:25:00 > 0:25:03of so-called "derogatory information".
0:25:03 > 0:25:09They tapped his phone, opened his mail, and even went through his bin.
0:25:10 > 0:25:13But while America treated Einstein like the enemy,
0:25:13 > 0:25:17other countries were a little more welcoming.
0:25:17 > 0:25:20In 1952, the newly formed State of Israel
0:25:20 > 0:25:25asked him if he'd like to have a bash at being their President.
0:25:25 > 0:25:26He turned it down.
0:25:28 > 0:25:34If the thought of President Einstein strikes you as maybe a little bizarre,
0:25:34 > 0:25:39it's nothing - nothing! - compared with what happened after his death.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42What happened to Einstein's brain?
0:25:44 > 0:25:49Sadly, Einstein departed these four dimensions in 1955.
0:25:49 > 0:25:51Against his wishes,
0:25:51 > 0:25:54and without the family's permission,
0:25:54 > 0:25:59autopsy pathologist Thomas Harvey removed the ex-genius's brain.
0:25:59 > 0:26:01Curiously, he also removed the eyeballs,
0:26:01 > 0:26:05which today reside in a New York safe-deposit box.
0:26:07 > 0:26:10He actually stole Einstein's brain!
0:26:11 > 0:26:13He was really interested in finding out
0:26:13 > 0:26:19if there was a physical connection between the brain and genius.
0:26:19 > 0:26:22Instead of handing over his cerebral trophy,
0:26:22 > 0:26:25Harvey sliced it into 240 pieces,
0:26:25 > 0:26:28pickled them in two jars of formaldehyde
0:26:28 > 0:26:30and stashed them in his basement.
0:26:31 > 0:26:38After losing his wife, his job and his medical certificate as a result of the scandal,
0:26:38 > 0:26:42Dr Harvey set off around the USA in search of an expert
0:26:42 > 0:26:47who could unlock the secrets of a genius's brain.
0:26:47 > 0:26:51He even kept the brain in a beer cooler,
0:26:51 > 0:26:54before eventually shoving it into the trunk of his Buick Skylark
0:26:54 > 0:26:58and heading west to California.
0:26:58 > 0:27:02He thought it would make a nice gift for Einstein's granddaughter,
0:27:02 > 0:27:04but strangely enough, she didn't want it.
0:27:04 > 0:27:11After 41 years, Harvey finally contacted a university researcher in Canada.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15She spotted that thanks to an under-developed Sylvian fissure,
0:27:15 > 0:27:20Einstein's parietal lobe was about 15% wider than normal.
0:27:20 > 0:27:24This bit of the brain deals with mathematics and spatial awareness -
0:27:24 > 0:27:27definitely two of Einstein's better subjects!
0:27:29 > 0:27:34Later, a neuropathologist placed some of the sliced cerebrum under a microscope,
0:27:34 > 0:27:36and discovered something rather remarkable.
0:27:36 > 0:27:42Einstein's 76-year-old grey matter showed almost no sign of ageing.
0:27:44 > 0:27:49So, the key to Einstein's genius may have been simply that he was young at heart -
0:27:49 > 0:27:51or brain, at least.
0:27:53 > 0:27:57Whatever the cause, Einstein's impressive cerebral abilities
0:27:57 > 0:28:03have assured him a place as THE foremost thinker of the 20th century.
0:28:03 > 0:28:08The by-products of his work have affected every single one of us on the planet,
0:28:08 > 0:28:10not to mention quite a few people off it,
0:28:10 > 0:28:13while he himself has become an icon -
0:28:13 > 0:28:19a pipe-smoking, tongue-poking, sock-dodging symbol of true genius,
0:28:19 > 0:28:24with a natty little 'tache and the worst hairdo in physics.
0:28:26 > 0:28:29Relatively speaking, that is!
0:28:48 > 0:28:51Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd