中文名称：BBC 爱因斯坦 死亡方程式
英文名称：BBC Einstein's Equation of Life of and Death
别名：爱因斯坦 死亡的公式 BBC Exlusiv Albert Einstein oder die Formel des Todes
版本：双语版
发行时间：2005年
地区：英国,德国
语言：英语,德语
简介：
首播：2005年5月15日上午9：40－10：40 星期天（中间插播广告）
电视台：VOX
英语原版名： Einstein's Equation of Life of and Death
德语版片长： 44分钟
制片： Aidan Laverty
出版：BBC Horizon（注：BBC 2台科教片系列旗舰品牌，每集长度约为50分钟。）
发行：
早在1905年，年仅26岁的爱因斯坦就已提出了狭义相对论。狭义相对论推倒了牛顿力学的质量守恒、能量守恒、质量能量互不相关、时空永恒不变的基本命题。这是一场真正的科学革命。
其后，爱因斯坦又经过10年探索，建立了广义相对论。自此，爱因斯坦相对论宣告完成。它奠定了20世纪物理学的基石。爱因斯坦仍不满足。他开始探索宇宙起源问题，并揭示出宇宙是“静态”的、有限无界的。他根据广义相对论，提出了三大命题：光线在太阳引力场中会发生弯曲；水星近日点运动规律；引力场中光谱线向红端移动。然而直到1919年5月之前，这些预言并未得到验证。许多科学家对此持怀疑态度。
经历了两次世界大战的惨败，德国人一直苦于自己的国家严重缺乏英雄人物，现在他们重新将艾伯特·爱因斯坦视为德国历史上最伟大的人物之一，尽管这位犹太裔物理学家曾因自己的血统遭到纳粹党人的仇视而流亡国外。
爱因斯坦生于德国，一个世纪前，他在瑞士发表了著名的相对论。1955年4月18日，他永远离开了这个世界。50年后的今天，他曾摒弃的国家为他重扬美名。
2005年被称为“爱因斯坦年”，世界各地纷纷展开各种庆祝活动。但是没有一个地方像德国一样，在对这位有着低垂眼睛和浓密灰发的老人予以盛赞的同时，还要肩负沉重的“历史包袱”。
德国政府开始竭尽全力了解爱因斯坦。20世纪早期，他关于宇宙、时间和相对论的理论给当时的物理学带来了颠覆性的变革，他也由此成为世界上第一位大众偶像级科学家。
“这有点奇怪。”德国版爱因斯坦传记的作者于尔根·内费说。该书自从一月份出版以来，在畅销书榜上一直位居前列。
“爱因斯坦憎恨纳粹，并将这种反感之情延伸到所有德国人身上，在他看来德国人造成了这一切。他确实非常讨厌德国，但是无论如何，他肯定会为德国最近30年来取得的发展感到欣慰的。”
德国对爱因斯坦的“重新发现”始于2003年。在当时的一次调查中，他被数百万电视观众推选为德国历史上“最伟大的人物”之一。
1879年，爱因斯坦出生于德国乌尔姆的巴伐利亚市，17岁时，为逃避服兵役，他移居瑞士。从苏黎世联邦工业大学毕业后，他供职于瑞士联邦专利局，并在业余时间撰写科学论文。
1905年是爱因斯坦的“奇迹年”，他创立了阐释时空关系的相对论，挑战了物理学巨人艾萨克·牛顿始创的宇宙观，那些理论200年来一直固若磐石。
1919年，爱因斯坦的理论为科学家们所证实，一时他声名鹊起。1921年，他获得了诺贝尔物理学奖，随后德国和瑞士都争着说爱因斯坦是属于自己国家的。
但是爱因斯坦没有停滞不前。他的独特理论也给他最为著名的发现奠定了基础，那个发现就是E=mc2——一个打开原子时代大门的方程式。全世界都知道这个公式，虽然没多少人能真正理解它。
1914年，爱因斯坦回到德国，随后在柏林居住了19年，直到1933年为躲避希特勒的纳粹军团的迫害而逃亡国外。他曾在美国普林斯顿大学执教，并在那里度过了晚年。
他在柏林的住宅曾遭纳粹党人洗劫。1932年，爱因斯坦放弃了德国国籍，并于1940年加入美国国籍，成为一名美国公民。
In the summer of 1939 Albert Einstein was on holiday in a small resort town on the tip of Long Island. His peaceful summer, however, was about to be shattered by a visit from an old friend and colleague from his years in Berlin. The visitor was the physicist Leo Szilard. He had come to tell Einstein that he feared the Nazis could soon be in possession of a terrible new weapon and that something had to be done.
Szilard believed that recent scientific breakthroughs meant it was now possible to convert mass into energy. And that this could be used to make a bomb. If this were to happen, it would be a terrible realisation of the law of nature Einstein had discovered some 34 years earlier.
September 1905 was Einstein's 'miracle year'. While working as a patents clerk in the Swiss capital Berne Einstein submitted a three-page supplement to his special theory of relativity, published earlier that year. In those pages he derived the most famous equation of all time; e=mc², energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.
The equation showed that mass and energy were related and that one could, in theory, be transformed into the other. But because the speed of light squared is such a huge number, it meant that even a small amount of mass could potentially be converted into a huge amount of energy. Ever since the discovery of radioactivity in the late 19th century, scientists had realised that the atomic nucleus could contain a large amount of energy. Einstein's revolutionary equation showed them, for the first time, just how much there was.
However, at the time Einstein doubted whether that energy could ever be released. By 1935 he was convinced it would never be practical. At the Winter Session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Pittsburgh, he is quoted as telling journalists: "The likelihood of transforming matter into energy is something akin to shooting birds in the dark in a country where there are only a few birds."
Einstein was so sceptical because attempts to break open the atomic nucleus always required more far energy be put in than was ever released. Nuclear physicists like Ernest Rutherford were exploring the structure of the atom by bombarding atomic nuclei with alpha particles. Even when machines were built to accelerate the alpha particles to ever higher speeds they had only limited success in breaking apart the nucleus. In 1933 Rutherford dismissed talk of atomic power as 'moonshine'.
One morning in September 1933 Szilard read Rutherford's comments in The Times. Leaving his hotel and crossing the street, he had a brainwave. Alpha particles and the other particles that physicists had been using to bombard the nucleus were simply the wrong tool for the job, because he realised that they, like the nucleus, had a positive charge.
Since like charges repel, Szilard thought, no matter how hard you fire them in, the majority would simply be deflected away. That morning he was one of the first to realise that the recently discovered neutron might be what was needed. The neutron, a subatomic particle like a proton but with no electric charge was discovered in 1932. With no charge, Szilard believed the neutron would simply slip into the heart of the atom undeflected.
But he didn't stop there. Szilard thought that if an atom could be found that is split open by neutrons, not only would it release some of its huge store of energy, it might also release further neutrons, which could then go on and split further atoms, setting up a chain reaction leading to a truly vast release of energy. Szilard immediately saw the possible military applications and sought to patent the idea and have it made an official secret. But in 1933, the chain reaction only existed in Szilard's head. No one had yet found an atom that could be split by neutrons.
These developments were happening against a background of extraordinary political turmoil in Europe. Hitler had come to power in Germany in January 1933. In 1938, less than a year before the outbreak of World War II, just such an atom was found, uranium.
Working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, the nuclear chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman found that when bombarded with neutrons, uranium split into two nuclei of roughly half the size. Not only that, but further calculations showed that a large amount of energy was also released - enough from a single nucleus to move a grain of sand. The first stage of Szilard's chain reaction had been achieved.
When he heard the news Szilard, now in New York and working at Columbia University with Enrico Fermi, set about showing whether, as well as energy, further 'secondary' neutrons were released. By July 1939, when he first knocked on Einstein's door, he knew that they were and so the chain reaction was possible. Also, he and Fermi had settled on a design for the first nuclear reactor.
During the course of their conversations in the summer of 1939, Szilard explained these new developments to Einstein and his fear that the Nazis might use them to create a nuclear bomb. Together they drafted a letter, signed by Einstein, to the American President, Franklin Roosevelt. The letter was delivered to the President on the 11 October 1939 and after reading it the President provided funding for research that would pave the way for the Manhattan Project and lead, ultimately to the construction of the first atomic bomb. After signing the letter, Einstein played no further part in the development of the bomb.
With the first atomic explosion over Hiroshima, the power of e=mc² had been graphically demonstrated to the world. Just 0.6 grams of mass, converted into energy, had been enough to destroy an entire city.
Einstein was horrified when he heard that the bomb had been dropped. When they, wrote to the President, Szilard and Einstein advocated the development of an American bomb purely as a deterrent against the threat of a Nazi weapon. They had not conceived of its use as an offensive weapon, especially after the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Einstein always saw e=mc2; as a purely theoretical insight and refuted any responsibility for the bomb but he did feel some responsibility for the letter he'd written to Roosevelt. A letter he would come to describe as "the one mistake" of his life. Einstein saw nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms race as a threat to the future of civilisation. In his final years he devoted much of his time and energy to issues dealing with the world's future - advocating pacifism and campaigning for the control of nuclear weapons, not by individual nations, but by a world government. The last document he signed, just a week before he died, was a manifesto drawn up by Bertrand Russell, renouncing war and nuclear weapons. As Russell said: ""Einstein was not only a great scientist he was a great man. He stood for peace in a world drifting towards war..."
But while the bomb proved e=mc2; to be the ultimate equation of destruction, only after his death has the role of Einstein's equation in the creation of the universe become clear. Just as mass can be turned into energy in a bomb, the pure energy generated in the Big Bang condensed into the matter that makes up our world. Almost a hundred years ago, with just six short pen stokes Einstein unlocked one of the most powerful truths about the universe. A truth that would change our world, both for good and ill.
