All language subtitles for Secrets.of.The.Universe.Great.Scientists.in.Their.Own.Words.2014.1080p.WEBRip.x264-RARBG

(rumbling)

(gentle instrumental music)

- [Narrator] The 20th century

witnessed an astonishing
revolution in physics.

From unlocking the secrets of the atom

to working out the
origins of the universe,

physics took us places
we'd never dreamt possible.

This was also a century when
we were for the first time

able to see and hear
scientists in their own words.

- I began to notice there was
something slightly curious

on the records.

- I didn't take it in, because
I was probably daydreaming.

- I can't stop!

I mean, I could talk forever.

- [Narrator] So we began to learn

not just about the science,

but the men and women behind it.

And the more we learnt
about these scientists,

the more it became clear
that their personalities,

eccentricities, and rivalries--

- It was that he was too sure too quickly.

- [Narrator] Were all
fundamental to their discoveries.

In fact, it's impossible
truly to understand

the 20th century revolution in physics

without first knowing who these
men and women really were.

- I see.

And your idea is to find
out what nature could be.

(mysterious instrumental music)

- [Narrator] 8:15 a.m, the 6th
of August, 1945, Hiroshima.

(singing in foreign language)

And the world witnessed
the power of physics.

A catastrophic explosion

sent a shock wave that flattened the city,

sparked a huge firestorm,

and bathed every living
thing in deadly radiation.

Over 60,000 people died immediately.

The atomic bomb shocked the world,

causing a scale of destruction
never before witnessed.

It also broke the heart

of the world's most famous scientist,

the man who had launched

the 20th century revolution in physics,

and dedicated his life to
world peace and equality.

- It is impossible to achieve peace

as long as every single action is taken

with a possible future conflict in view.

The leading point of view
of all political action

should therefore be, what can we do

to bring about a peaceful coexistence

and even loyal cooperation of the nations?

- [Narrator] Hiroshima
devastated Albert Einstein,

not only because it tested his ideals,

but also because he felt
he had played a role

in the development of the bomb.

What weighed heaviest
on Einstein's conscience

was a letter he had signed in 1939.

It was addressed to the
US President, Roosevelt,

and written to encourage the
Americans to build the bomb

to deter the Nazis.

Einstein knew that his signature

would have carried more
weight than any other.

After all, by then he was
the most famous scientist

in the world, a scientific superstar.

- [Reporter] What do you think
of Prohibition, Professor?

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Einstein never
worked on the Manhattan Project

that built the bomb,

but from the moment he
learnt about the death

of tens of thousands of
innocent civilians in Hiroshima,

he deeply regretted ever
having signed the letter.

Yet there was also another,
more fundamental way

in which Hiroshima lay
on Einstein's conscience.

Because the equation that made him famous,

the equation that symbolized

the scientific revolution he created,

was the very same equation

that underpinned the atomic
bomb, E equals mc squared.

- [Albert] The equation
E is equals mc squared

in which energy is put equal to mass,

multiplied by the square
of the velocity of light

showed that very small amounts of mass

may be converted into a
very large amount of energy.

- [Narrator] In this simple
and beautiful equation,

Einstein had rewritten
the laws of physics.

But he had also unwittingly
handed the world

the key to the atomic bomb.

It was an outcome he
could never have foreseen

when he began his scientific studies

at the start of the 20th century.

Einstein had crafted E equals mc squared

when he was in his 20s.

At the time, he was just a
young man working in obscurity

in a patent office in Bern, Switzerland.

But he had a fascination
for light, space and time.

- He read a lot while he
was at the patent office.

He read a lot in the evening and weekends,

and there was an informal
group of scientists in Bern.

He was very much engaged in
discussion about science,

even though he was spending

his time at work assessing patents.

- [Narrator] Despite the group,

Einstein did his best work alone.

His method was to create
thought experiments

that asked some simple,
profound questions.

Questions like, "If I'm
traveling on a tram,

"does time run differently
for me inside the tram

"compared to people standing
on the street outside?"

And, "If I was traveling
away from a clock tower

"on a beam of light,

"would my wristwatch and the
clock read the same time?"

- Whichever area he was looking at,

he would find the little inconsistencies,

the things that didn't quite make sense,

the things that in retrospect
seem like a bit of a fudge

when you got different explanations
for the same phenomenon.

And he would focus in on
those little rough corners

and completely cut them away
and bring in something new,

and bring clarity to the situation.

And that was very characteristic, I think,

of the way he operated in
all those different fields.

- [Narrator] Einstein spent
time deep in concentration

considering the outcomes
of his thought experiments

which would culminate in
two ground-breaking theories

that would lay the foundations
for modern physics.

First there was his special
theory of relativity.

This proposed a radical new
concept of space and time,

suggesting that neither are absolutes,

but can change depending
on the relative motion

of objects and observers,

a set of ideas that also
led to E equals mc squared.

And then his general theory of relativity,

which gave physicists a new
understanding of gravity.

Rather than being a force,

it was now a property of the
curvature of space and time.

They were ground-breaking new theories,

products of Einstein's vivid imagination,

creativity, and ambition.

The freedom and independence
he enjoyed in Bern,

away from the formality of
academia, allowed him the space

to formulate some of the most
original ideas in science.

And as other scientists

began to provide support
for these theories,

Einstein was rocketed into world fame.

- Einstein had the reputation,

before all these results were announced,

of being very mild-mannered, of being shy,

but he absolutely rose to the occasion.

He just basked in the glory,
and he really loved it.

And he went on tours and
he talked to audiences.

His lectures weren't always very good,

and there's a report
from Oxford by a student,

and he said, when
Professor Einstein came in,

he was shuffling along

and he looked quite
dejected and low-spirited,

and then the audience rose
to its feet and clapped,

and suddenly Einstein came
alive and his whole face lit up,

and he obviously really
needed that public adulation.

- [Man] Can you kill the lights, fellas?

Can you kill the lights?

- [Man] Shake hands with me.

- [Narrator] The public latched on

to Einstein's playful image,

rather than trying to understand
his complicated theories.

The intellectual elite
treated him like a god.

- Ptolemy made a universe
which lasted 1,400 years.

Newton also made a universe
which has lasted 300 years.

Einstein has made a universe,

and I can't tell you
how long that will last.

(laughing)

- [Ground Control] One.

- [Narrator] After Einstein, the story

of 20th century physics became
the story of men and women

who either built on
Einstein's work, attacked it,

or filled in the gaps of
what it could not explain.

And the first big
development after relativity

concerned the one part of the universe

that seemed to defy it.

The world of the subatomic particle.

This was a strange new world,

and it led to an entirely
new branch of physics.

It was called quantum theory,

and became characterized
by both bizarre ideas

and rather bizarre people.

Few were more strange than
British mathematician Paul Dirac.

His intellect rivaled
that of Albert Einstein,

but in character Dirac could
not have been more different.

- [Announcer] Talking about the history

of quantum mechanics, the
English physicist Paul Dirac.

- Quantum mechanics was discovered

40 years ago by Heisenberg.

Shortly afterwards it
was discovered again,

independently, in a rather
different form by Schrodinger.

Heisenberg and Schrodinger gave
us a very wonderful theory.

Many people took it up and
proceeded to develop it.

I was one of them.

- Well, he was certainly
a very strange man.

He was very quiet.

People call him shy.

I guess he was shy.

He took things very literally.

Also, it might be something
which seemed a bit rude.

I know that somebody asked him

whether he had seen any good
films recently, or something,

sitting next to him,
probably, at High Table,

at St John's College, Cambridge,

and he said, "Well, why
do you want to know?"

- [Narrator] Dirac would
later attribute his silence

to being bullied as a child by his father.

- He was brought up by
this very strict father

who insisted that at dinner
time, or at home, I think,

his son should only speak in French.

And Dirac didn't like to speak in French,

and so, as the preferable option,

he just didn't speak at all.

- [Narrator] Others claimed
Dirac's social awkwardness

was because he was autistic.

Whatever the reason,

it didn't hold him back
in the pursuit of a career

in mathematics at Cambridge.

- [Interviewer] Professor
Dirac, we heard before

from Professor Heisenberg

about his visit to the
Kapitza Club in Cambridge.

Can you tell us something about that club?

- Kapitza was a young Russian physicist

who came to Cambridge
to work with Rutherford.

He organized a club, about
20 members, physicists,

who would meet every Tuesday evening,

and someone would then read a paper

on some question of physics,

and there would be a lot
of discussion afterwards.

There was a minute book
that was kept of this club,

which is very fortunate,

and we can look in the records of that

and see just the subject
that Heisenberg talked on.

I don't remember whether he
spoke about his new theory

at that time.

If he did, I didn't take it in,

because I was probably daydreaming,

and I don't take in
everything a lecturer says.

- [Narrator] Despite his daydreaming,

Dirac was singled out as a
brilliant and fresh talent

in the new field of quantum theory.

He was invited to speak

at the most prestigious
international physics event,

the Solvay Conference.

Only a few months later,
he published an equation

which would solve one of the
biggest problems in physics

and become his most seminal work.

- I suppose the thing that
Dirac's best known for

is the Dirac equation.

And I remember going to
lectures where people would say,

"Well, the Dirac equation

"is the most accurate
equation known in science."

I don't know if you'd say that now,

but it's the equation of the electron.

It was partly to solve a
problem which people found

that they couldn't describe particles

in accordance with relativity.

- [Narrator] Dirac had done
what no one else could.

He had crafted an equation to
describe how electrons behave

that was consistent
with both quantum theory

and special relativity.

A union that had yet
to be proved possible.

- It was certainly highly original,

but I think this was driven from, maybe,

the fact that there was a barrier

between him and the outside world,

and that he was internally driven

and therefore found

that this was the way
he understood things,

and he would quite often, therefore,

understand things in a different way

from the way other people did,
and it might be a better way,

because he'd thought it all
through in his own terms.

- [Narrator] As well as
explaining how electrons behave,

he developed a theory of
quantum electrodynamics

which described the interactions

between electrons and light.

Dirac's unique understanding
of subatomic particles

won him a Nobel prize

and led to a series of
breakthroughs in quantum physics.

But despite all of his successes,

Dirac would never become a household name.

Unlike Einstein, attention
made him uncomfortable,

so he avoided the limelight
whenever he could.

- He was interested in
other things than science,

but a little bit surprising,

for instance, he was
interested in cartoon movies,

Mickey Mouse, and things like that.

He was interested in things

where the emotional content
was not a major part of it.

But then there was also this story

about either a play or a book,

I can't quite remember which now,

by a Russian author, maybe Dostoevsky.

In it, somebody asks him,
"Well, what did you make of it?

"Did you enjoy it?"

And he said, "Well, at one
point the author made a mistake

"and he said the sun rose
twice in the same day."

So this is the sort of
thing he would point out

about some literary classic,

rather than commenting
on its emotional impact.

- [Narrator] Dirac only
ever let a few people

into his world.

His wife was the sister

of a very distinguished quantum physicist,

or a mathematical
physicist, Eugene Wigner,

who was a very important
figure, also, in the early days

of quantum mechanics,

and so she must have known that community

and known how Dirac was
respected within that community,

which I expect had something

to do with their getting together.

And she probably felt that he was somebody

who needed protection, needed attention,

and somebody who would be very worthwhile

and interesting to be with.

(dramatic vocal music)

- [Narrator] While Dirac was developing

the foundations of quantum mechanics,

explaining the world of the very small,

other scientists were working
at the opposite scale,

exploring the boundaries
of the known universe.

General relativity had led to the idea

that we live in an expanding universe,

and observations had confirmed it.

But this led to a fundamental question.

Did the universe have a beginning?

It was a question that would cause

one of the bitterest rivalries in science,

a conflict that consumed
two brilliant physicists,

but would ultimately lead us

to a deeper understanding of the universe.

- As you probably know, there
are two forms of cosmology,

what has been spoken of as the Big Bang,

and the Steady State.

The one that I've been associated with,

the galaxies must be
forming the whole time.

- [Narrator] Fred Hoyle was
the son of a wool merchant,

and brusque Yorkshireman,

who believed that the universe

had no beginning and has no end.

- In the explosion theory,
we suppose that the matter

in the universe was originally
in a highly condensed state

which then expanded.

And the galaxies which we now see

are fragments of this explosion.

- [Narrator] Martin Ryle was
a volatile yet sensitive man

who, unlike Hoyle, believed the universe

did have a beginning.

Both worked at Cambridge University.

And in the 1950s, neither man
had enough evidence to prove

one way or the other who was right.

- I only got to know
Fred Hoyle after 1965,

when I was a student,

but I already became aware
that he had been a great figure

in the history of the subject.

Indeed between 1945 and 1965

I think it's fair to say
that he contributed more

to astronomy on the theoretical side

than anyone else in the world.

He was an extraordinarily
inventive and versatile person.

And his greatest achievement,
in retrospect, was to realize

that all the atoms that we are made of

were forged inside stars.

- [Narrator] Hoyle was a confident man

whose great achievements were,

in part, because he wasn't
afraid to go it alone.

- One of the things that
one has to, um, think about

is you have to have a sense
of obstinacy in science.

Because if you don't,

you're not going to go against the crowd.

And if you don't go against the crowd,

you're not going to
have any real successes.

But the question then is,

can it interfere with one's judgment?

Well, um, let me make it absolutely clear

that a sense of obstinacy is only of value

insofar as it allows you

to discount the opinions of other humans.

- [Narrator] At the time,
Hoyle was an atheist.

And so perhaps it wasn't surprising

that his Steady State theory
avoided any hint of a genesis.

He said that the universe
had always looked the same,

that new galaxies formed

in the spaces made by
the universe's expansion.

And as a practiced popularizer of science,

Hoyle took to the airwaves
to promote his point of view.

- [Announcer] The BBC presents
The Nature Of The Universe.

The speaker is Fred Hoyle,

a Cambridge mathematician and
Fellow of St John's College.

- [Fred] Perhaps like me,
you grew up with a notion

that the whole of the
matter in the universe

was created in one big
bang at a particular time

in the remote past.

What I'm now going to tell
you is that this is wrong.

- [Narrator] Hoyle was the first person

to refer to the explosion
theory as a big bang.

And although he didn't intend it to,

the phrase captured the
public's imagination

and became a brilliant marketing
tool for his opponents.

Perhaps his greatest opponent was Ryle,

different in almost every way.

Unlike Hoyle he was a practical
scientist, an engineer,

who sought to observe the
secrets of the universe,

mapping the faintest, furthest
things in the universe

with a radio telescope,

the newest and most exciting
instrument in astronomy.

(lively instrumental music)

- [Raymond] This is Martin Ryle,

Fellow of The Royal Society,

Professor of Radio Astronomy
at Cambridge University.

- We're receiving a
naturally emitted radiation,

just like the light from a star.

And if we listen to these radio waves,

as in the case of the
distant source, in Cygnus,

what we hear is a rushing noise.

(whooshing)

- Martin Ryle was above
all a brilliant technician

and engineer, but also he combined that

with being someone who
understood the theory

of what he was doing and
the importance of it.

And I think it's important to realize

that having invested many years of effort

in developing a pioneering new telescope,

and actually built it

and made the effort to get
the money for it, et cetera,

then, clearly, he had a huge stake

in ensuring that it did important work

and was naturally,
therefore, rather sensitive

at criticism of the output.

- [Narrator] So when theorist Fred Hoyle

publicly questioned the
accuracy of the first data set

produced by his telescope,
Ryle was devastated.

- I think he took criticism rather deeply.

It's partly because of his personality.

Unlike Fred Hoyle, he was
not robust in argument,

he got genuinely upset,

and he didn't really like
taking part in debate.

He didn't go to many conferences,
he didn't enjoy them.

And so he therefore took
very deeply any criticism,

it meant a lot to him.

- [Narrator] In front of the media,

Ryle was very self-controlled
and diplomatic.

But those who knew him well

often saw a different side to him.

- Martin Ryle did have a bit of a temper,

there's no doubt about it.

He would very easily fly
into a rage about something.

And I ended up getting on
extremely well with him

by writing down what my argument
was and giving it to him.

I would then get that
back after a day or two,

with Biro markings which were often

so fierce as to go
right through the paper.

And that would be his
view of the whole thing

and I would reply.

So we had this correspondence

and it's my great regret
that I've kept none of that.

But many of those bits of
paper were pretty transparent

after he'd had a go at them.

- [Narrator] Ryle's fury with Hoyle

fueled his determination
to use his radio telescope

to destroy the Steady State theory.

- Now, can you explain exactly
what you've been doing?

- Well, I think we'd
better have a diagram here.

And perhaps we could look at the board.

According to the theory
of continuous creation,

the density of galaxies would be the same

in the neighborhood of the Earth, here,

right out to the edges of
the observable universe.

And one way in which one
could test the two theories

is to make a measurement of the variation

of the density of galaxies
with distance from us.

- [Narrator] If the Steady
State theory was right

then the more distant galaxies,

which are older, would be
distributed just as they are now,

because it says the universe
has always been the same.

If the Big Bang theory was right,

then the more distant galaxies
would be more densely packed,

because the early universe

would have been crammed full of matter

before expanding and evolving.

- It's very easy for someone
in the public to look at this

and think, well, it's two astronomers

arguing about something.

They're not.

They're very different.

A mathematician and an engineer

are really rather different animals,

they do look at the universe
in a completely different way,

they see different things.

That was the fundamental problem, I think.

There was very little
attempt on either side,

I believe, to understand the other,

how they worked, how they ticked.

- [Narrator] Unlike Ryle,
Hoyle was a performer

and wasn't one to keep
his opinions to himself.

- [Interviewer] Do you
reject this Big Bang theory?

This concept of a
beginning, and an evolution

and a going on?

- Well, I do and I always have done.

One doesn't impress on the universe

its properties in the start.

I think my objection to Ryle

was he was too sure too quickly.

- Martin Ryle also found it very difficult

with Fred Hoyle being extremely negative

about the work of the group,

but it's also true that Martin Ryle

really made no serious attempt

to build bridges with
Hoyle and his people.

And I think that that
was very unfortunate.

The two groups were working
maybe as far as 200 yards apart

in the same town, an easy
walk from one to the other,

and the contact between
the two groups was minimal.

- [Narrator] Collecting
radio telescope data

was a slow process.

But in 1961, Martin Ryle
presented a comprehensive catalog

that showed the furthest
observable galaxies

were more densely distributed.

Finally he could settle the matter.

- [Martin] The first and most
remarkable result of all,

as you proceed outwards
from the most intense

and presumably nearest sources,

we find a great excess of fainter ones.

The universe must have changed radically

within the time span accessible
to our radio telescopes.

- [Reporter] This result
seems to show quite clearly

that the Steady State,
the continuous creation,

theory of the universe cannot be correct.

The results imply that the
universe is changing with time.

- [Narrator] The rivalry
between these two men

had finally yielded a result,

evidence for the Big Bang theory.

- Most of it comes from a body much larger

- [Narrator] For most astronomers,

the proof was now stacked
against Hoyle and his theory.

Although Hoyle himself wouldn't accept it.

- You have here in
Cambridge Professor Ryle,

who is a radio astronomer
and, as I understand it,

he made a study of the radio
stars and claims to have proved

your Steady State theory wrong.

- I still take the same view today.

I think we cannot know

whether there is a
contradiction with the theory

until we know exactly what
these radio sources are.

(gentle instrumental music)

- [Narrator] Even when the rest
of the scientific community

embraced the Big Bang theory,

Hoyle refused to join them.

In the early 1970s, Hoyle
felt forced out of Cambridge.

He moved to the Cumbrian countryside,

where he pursued his love
for science fiction writing.

- Tea's ready.

- [Narrator] Here, he also had more time

to spend with friends,

including a man who was revolutionizing

the other great branch
of 20th-century physics,

the quantum world of subatomic particles.

Despite their very different specialisms,

they found they had a lot in common.

- Have you had a moment
in a complicated problem,

where quite suddenly the
thing comes into your head

and you're almost sure
you've got to be right?

- Oh, yes.

That's it.
- This is great.

- Oh, God, yeah.

- [Narrator] Richard Feynman
was the ultimate showman,

an American who became
everybody's favorite physicist.

♪ In a spell ♪

♪ That old black magic
that you weave so well ♪

He was a brilliant mathematician

enamored by the smallest, most
fundamental building blocks

of the universe.

♪ Always glad when your eyes meet mine ♪

♪ That same old tingle
that I feel inside ♪

- Suppose that little things
behave very differently

than anything that was big.

The behavior of things on a
small scale is so fantastic,

it's so wonderfully different.

I get a kick out of
thinking about these things.

Uh, I can't stop.

I mean, I could talk forever.

- [Narrator] He was charismatic,
engaging and enthusiastic.

A bongo-playing prankster
who approached both life

and science with a sense of playfulness.

- Atoms do not behave like weights

hanging on a spring and oscillating,

nor do they behave like
miniature representations

of the solar system

with little planets going around in orbit.

It behaves like nothing
that you've seen before.

Well, there's one simplification.

At least electrons behave

exactly the same in
this respect as photons,

that is they are both screwy,
but in exactly the same way.

- [Narrator] As a quantum man,

Feynman was inspired by
the great Paul Dirac.

- There's this wonderful picture

at the Warsaw conference of
Feynman talking to Dirac,

Dirac leaning back

and Feynman being very very demonstrative.

They were very different characters,

completely different characters.

Dirac being this introverted,

afraid to say things unless
they're absolutely right.

Feynman saying anything
that comes to his mind,

they usually were right nevertheless.

- [Narrator] Despite the
differences in their characters,

they were both fascinated
by the same things.

In fact Feynman was especially
interested in unlocking

a riddle that lay at
heart of Dirac's own work

on quantum electrodynamics.

- I read Dirac's book
and he had these problems

that nobody knew how to solve
that were described there.

I couldn't understand the book very well

because I really wasn't up to it.

But there in the last paragraph

at the end of the book it said,

"Some new ideas are here needed."

And so there I was, "Some
new ideas are needed?

"Okay."

So I started to think of new ideas.

- [Narrator] Although Dirac's
mathematical description

of how electrons and photons interact

was undeniably correct,

the equations themselves
confused physicists

because they sometimes produced
crazy answers like infinity.

- Feynman had went his
own route and he said,

"Look, we don't have to have
all this complicated stuff,

"all these formulas and fancy mathematics.

"Let's get right down to the root

"of what we're trying to do."

- [Narrator] Feynman's
confidence, creativity

and direct approach

led to a radical solution
to Dirac's riddle.

- It's like building
those houses of cards,

and each of the cards is shaky.

And if you forget one of them,

the whole thing collapses again.

You don't know how you got there

and you have to build them up again.

- [Narrator] Feynman's answer
came in the form of diagrams,

little pictures that represented
each step of the equations.

They could be manipulated,

used to simplify the
complicated calculations,

remove the infinities,
and produce useful answers

to make accurate
predictions about the world.

Physicists all over the world
started using the diagrams.

Feynman had unlocked the potential

of Dirac's electrodynamics.

(fanfare playing)

In 1965, Feynman was given the Nobel Prize

to recognize the impact of his diagrams,

although he wasn't the most
grateful receiver of it.

- I don't like honors.

I'm appreciated for the work that I did

and the people who appreciate it,

and I notice that other
physicists use my work.

I don't need anything else,

I don't think there's any
sense to anything else.

I don't see that it makes any point

that someone in the Swedish Academy

decides that this work is noble
enough to receive a prize.

I've already got the prize,

the prize is the pleasure
of finding the thing out,

the kick in the discovery,

the observation that other people use it.

Those are the real things.

The honors are unreal to me.

- [Narrator] For Feynman, the real reward

was communicating his passion to others,

and he was very good at it.

- The things that are
solid are made of atoms,

which, although they're jiggling,

they never get out of place.

If you took one away,

the others are in the right
place, it pulls them back.

You see, it's a perpetual
check with your friend.

Are you okay?

Yes.

It's like people marching in a,

it's like the high
school band march, okay?

Nobody really knows what they're doing.

They're going like this.

It's okay, it holds together.

- [Narrator] Students
flocked to his lectures

and would seek out his
company whenever they could.

- I don't want to take
this stuff seriously.

I think we should just
have fun imagining it

and not worry about it.

There's no teacher going to
ask you questions at the end.

Otherwise it's a horrible subject.

♪ You gotta have my ♪

- [Narrator] Feynman's
informal approach to science,

and his brilliant creativity,

were instrumental in the
development and accessibility

of quantum theory in
the late-20th century.

♪ Juice ♪

("Spinning Wheel")

♪ What goes up must come down ♪

♪ Spinning wheel ♪

- [Narrator] At the same
time as the revolution

in quantum physics,

scientists were also making
great astronomical finds.

Observations that would
provide further proof

of Einstein's theories.

♪ Talking about your troubles ♪

One the most significant discoveries

was made in the late '60s,

by an extremely determined young woman

embarking on a career in the
field of radio astronomy.

- [Reporter] The new instrument

was perhaps the least
glamorous telescope ever built

and it was to be operated
full-time by one person, a girl.

- [Narrator] Jocelyn Bell Burnell

however was not just a girl,

she was a talented scientist

who had a lifelong
passion for the night sky.

- I went away to boarding
school at age 13.

My physics teacher that I had, Mr. Tillet,

was a super teacher.

I could well have had a physics teacher

who took the view that
girls couldn't do physics

and what's the point of
trying kind of thing.

I'm not sure where I'd have
gone then, what I'd have done

but Mr. Tillet was quite the opposite.

I went to Glasgow and I was
the only woman doing physics

and every time I entered
the lecture theater,

as was the tradition, the guys whistled,

stamped, catcalled, banged their desks.

There was a them and me.

I was rather on my own the whole time.

("Come On Everybody")

- [Narrator] In the early 1960s,

Bell Burnell started her
PhD as part of Martin Ryle's

radio astronomy group
at Cambridge University.

She had found her spiritual home.

It was here that Mr. Tillet's
inspirational teaching

and Glasgow University's trial by ordeal

would start to bear fruit.

- The Cambridge Radio Astronomy Group

had an interest in distant objects

because they were interested in general

in how the universe had evolved.

But first we had to build
the radio telescope,

and actually I spent two of my three years

constructing a radio telescope.

- She was outside in this muddy field,

literally building things

that looked like a very large fence,

with wooden poles and
wires strung between them,

and it was quite a hard business.

I think she must have
become very, very fit

because of all that,

but it was a difficult,
physically demanding life

that she led when the
telescope was being built.

- [Narrator] But it was
only once the last cables

were connected that the real work started.

Bell Burnell was in charge of searching

for tiny bright objects
far out in the cosmos.

- We were actually using this
telescope to look for quasars,

because they twinkle,

and this thing is specially designed

to pick out twinkling things.

And after we'd been running
I suppose about a few months

I began to notice

there was something slightly
curious on the records.

They came out as paper charts,

and of course on these charts
you could see radio sources

and unfortunately you could
also see man-made interference.

But there was also something

that didn't quite fit either bill.

It wasn't exactly a twinkling radio source

and it wasn't exactly interference either.

Everybody's first reactions
were that it must be man-made.

- [Narrator] Including
Bell Burnell's supervisor

Antony Hewish, who was convinced

there had to be a terrestrial explanation

for the anomaly on the paper chart.

- We wrote round to all the
astronomical observatories

in Britain saying, "Have
you had any program going

"which might possibly
cause radio interference?"

- [Narrator] But the observatories

wrote back with the all clear.

There was nothing obviously
interfering with her telescope.

- It's very easy when doing research,

to try and brush over those things

that don't quite fit
into your view of things.

It's much easier and much more convenient

if it sort of fulfills your prejudices.

She didn't do that,

she found this thing which actually

didn't really make sense,

and she kept at it and was concerned

as it became more and more obvious

that it wasn't making
any conventional sense.

So I think that approach
was very important.

- [Narrator] Bell
Burnell enlisted the help

of another radio telescope,

to prove to all her
doubters that the signal

was in fact coming from the cosmos.

She finally convinced Hewish

that this was something
to pay attention to.

The big mystery was,

what in the universe could
be producing this signal?

- It looked like a series
of equally spaced pulses.

I don't know what I had expected

but I certainly didn't
expect regular pulsations.

Stars and galaxies don't pulse like that.

- [Narrator] Hewish
ruled out the possibility

that it was coming from an object,

because it pulsed too
regularly and quickly

for any known star or galaxy.

Which led them to consider
another explanation.

- Second reactions not
really voiced very loud were,

well, perhaps it's little green men?

- [Narrator] While the leaders
of the radio astronomy group

started considering their
response to alien communication,

Bell Burnell remained unconvinced,

and returned to her telescope.

- She was very self-contained,
very self-motivated,

somebody who kept herself to herself.

Wasn't really a great
socialite in the group.

Not that my memory

is that it was particularly
a social group,

there were people who would get together,

but she was somebody who tended to be

and preferred to be on her own.

- Sometimes in research
you can know too much,

and it's the youngster who's ignorant

or somebody coming in from outside

that says, you know, the
emperor has no clothes on,

that actually is telling the
truth, can see the truth.

- I think in order to make
scientific discoveries,

you really have to be
open to the possibility

of something quite unexpected.

Jocelyn was somebody who was open to that,

and she found something quite unexpected.

- [Narrator] Bell Burnell was rigorous,

keeping meticulous records

and analyzing them in painstaking detail.

She was dogged in her
pursuit of an explanation.

- I was analyzing chart
from another piece of sky,

and thought I saw a piece of
this scruffy kind of signal.

Looked exactly like
what I was seeing before

but from a totally
different bit of the sky.

Right.

I thought, "I'm not going to bed tonight,

"I'm going out to the observatory."

And I switched on the high speed recorder,

in came, blip, blip, blip, blip, blip.

Clearly the same family,
the same sort of stuff.

And that was great, that was really sweet.

- Now, the people here say that

if they got three signals
as exactly spaced as that,

it would be very unusual.

If they got four, it would be phenomenal.

Well, they've had pulses
as exactly spaced as that

24 hours of the day since November.

- It was easier with the second one,

and that was a great relief in many ways

because it removed this possibility

of it being little green men.

Highly unlikely that several
lots of little green men

would be all signaling to us,

all at the same frequency,
all at the same time.

- [Narrator] With little
green men ruled out,

this had to be a brand-new
type of cosmological object,

behaving in a way that
astronomers had never expected.

The faint blips from space
so nearly dismissed as error

took the world by storm.

The new objects were called pulsars,

because they pulsed so regularly.

For Bell Burnell, it was
a personal vindication

for her years of struggle.

- Seeing the article in
print was tremendous,

and I remember sending a copy of the paper

to my physics teacher.

- [Interviewer] And that's
your physics teacher

at The Mount?
- At The Mount, yes.

My physics teacher at The Mount.

- And how did he react to it?
- He had actually

alerted the school.

There was a lot of publicity.

Mr. Tillet had seen this,
and told the school.

There aren't so many people

that take up physics as a profession,

and certainly relatively
few women of my generation,

so Mr. Tillet followed with
some interest my career.

And I was really pleased
that he was still around

at the time of the discovery.

- [Narrator] Further
investigation showed that pulsars

are the dense remains of
rapidly spinning dead stars

that emit beams of radiation.

With each rotation, the beam sweeps

in and out of the Earth's line of sight.

And when they're found in pairs,

they gradually move closer to each other.

This behavior indicated the existence

of gravitational waves,

distortions in space-time
produced by massive objects.

It's a phenomenon predicted

by Einstein's theory
of general relativity.

It was the strongest
evidence yet for the theory

that Einstein had developed

using just the power of
maths and abstract thought.

(audience applauding)

- [Man] Professor Antony Hewish.

- [Narrator] Antony Hewish
won the 1974 Nobel prize

for his role in the discovery of pulsars.

Controversially, Bell
Burnell was not included.

But she has remained remarkably
philosophical about it.

- You can actually do extremely well

out of not getting a Nobel prize.

And I have had so many
prizes and so many honors

and so many awards,

that actually I think
I've had far more fun

than if I'd got a Nobel prize,

which is a bit flash in the pan.

You get it, you have a fun
week and it's all over,

and nobody gives you
anything else after that

'cause they feel they can't match it.

- [Narrator] But Bell Burnell's
discovery not only advanced

our understanding of the universe,

it also forced physicists around the world

to think twice before they
dismissed the unconventional.

The scene was now set for
other novel ideas in cosmology

to be taken a little more
seriously than before.

Good news for another
Cambridge PhD student

who was not only pursing an idea

rejected by other physicists,

but was also facing his
own personal struggle.

In the early 1960s,

Stephen Hawking was a normal,
beer-swilling student,

living life to the full

while his physics
studies took a back seat.

However, his life would change forever

when at the age of 21

Hawking was diagnosed with
motor neurone disease.

- [Stephen] I was given two
and a half years to live.

I have always wondered

how they could be so
precise about the half.

Its first effect was to depress me.

I seemed to be getting
worse fairly rapidly.

There didn't seem any
point in doing anything

or working on my PhD,

because I didn't know I would
live long enough to finish it.

- [Narrator] While he struggled
to adjust to the diagnosis,

Hawking fell in love

and married a family friend, Jane Wilde.

- [Stephen] I certainly wouldn't

have managed it without her.

Being engaged to her

lifted me out of the
slough of despond I was in.

But then things started to improve,

the condition developed more slowly

and I began to make progress in my work.

- [Narrator] His spirits were buoyed,

but Hawking believed he
didn't have long to live.

Motivated by a sense of his own mortality,

he was determined to complete
his PhD at Cambridge.

In it, he applied general relativity

to what we see in the universe,

and showed that at the big bang

there had to be what's
known as a singularity,

a infinitely small and
dense point in space-time.

In the 1960s, it was a
thing that most physicists

didn't believe existed.

Roger Penrose was one of his examiners.

- He was very good at picking up ideas.

When he came down to London
when I was giving a talk,

this was on some cosmological thing,

I remember him particularly
asking very awkward questions!

So, er, okay, good questions.

So I had to think a bit
before giving the answer.

So a bit of an awkward
cuss, you would say.

Not afraid to bring out issues

which a young student might be
a little shy of bringing up,

so he wasn't shy at all in that way.

- [Narrator] Hawking remained
at Cambridge University,

and his career in astrophysics

went from strength to strength.

Although he had outlived
his original diagnosis,

his health was inevitably deteriorating.

- He could speak for quite a while,

but largely only in ways

that his close colleagues
could understand him.

- (speaking indistinctly)

- Now, it just so happens that
we have the universe here.

(speaking indistinctly)
(laughing)

- Sorry.

- I'd speak to him for a while, and,

a fair amount of to and fro,

and I could understand what
he was saying more or less

and he could understand what I was saying.

But then he'd say something
that was completely,

I couldn't understand a word of it.

What on earth is that?

And he'd spell it out letter by letter.

And it would either be a joke, you see,

or it would be an invitation to dinner.

Something which was on a personal nature

not technical at all,

so technical things were
much easier to understand.

- [Narrator] Despite his
ailing physical health,

Hawking's mind was sharp
and his will strong.

- (speaking indistinctly)

- Stephen's lucky in that he
chose one of the few fields

in which his disability
is not a serious handicap.

- (speaking indistinctly)

- 'Cause most of his work
is really just thinking.

- (speaking indistinctly)

- And his disabilities
don't stop him doing that.

- (speaking indistinctly)

- In a way, they give
him more time to think.

- I think probably the
most determined person

I've ever known.

I remember staying at his house

in Little Clarendon
Street, wherever it was,

there was a three-story,
little narrow house,

much higher than it was wide.

And when it came to the time
when he wanted to go to bed

he would crawl up the stairs.

He refused to have anybody
help him in any way.

He would crawl up the stairs.

It would take him about
a quarter of an hour

to get up the stairs, put himself to bed,

do everything he could for himself.

- [Narrator] Hawking's determination

was also evident in his science.

Not only had his PhD shown singularities

were present in the universe,

along with Penrose, he
proved that they also lay

at the heart of another
curiosity, black holes.

Hawking was now used to pushing
the boundaries of cosmology.

But his greatest discovery came in 1974,

when he showed that black
holes aren't entirely black,

but emit some light.

Radiation created by the
strange quantum effects

that occur at the edge of the black hole.

Where Dirac had previously managed

to unite special relativity
and quantum theory,

Hawking was the first to use

both general relativity and quantum

in the same explanation.

- [Stephen] Where I have had success,

it has been because I
have approached problems

from a different angle.

I rely on intuition a great deal.

I try to guess a result.

But I then have to prove it.

That is how I found black
holes aren't completely black.

I was trying to prove something else.

There's nothing like the eureka moment

of discovering something
that no-one knew before.

I won't compare it to
sex, but it lasts longer.

- [Narrator] Hawking's unifying idea

was revelatory, yet complex.

And having had a family of his own,

he had a burning ambition now
to popularize his science.

In 1988, he published "A
Brief History Of Time,"

which aimed to explain the
mysteries of the universe

to non-scientists.

It became an international bestseller.

The contrast between his imprisoned body

and a mind roaming the
cosmos fascinated the public.

- [Stephen] All my life
I have been fascinated

by the big questions that face us,

and have tried to find
scientific answers to them.

Perhaps that's why I have
sold more books on physics

than Madonna has on sex.

- [Narrator] He was
catapulted into celebrity,

and became the most
famous living scientist.

- He clearly likes his fame.

One can see that this is something

he does get a lot of enjoyment out of,

having big crowds.

So there's an element of
showmanship about it all.

- [Narrator] Hawking's strength
as a communicator of science

has opened a window onto the cosmos,

and enabled us all to marvel at its glory.

Throughout the 20th century,

the secrets of the universe

have been unraveled by
extraordinary individuals,

(singing in foreign language)

inspirational men and women

who have discovered fundamental new truths

about everything from the subatomic

to the extremely massive.

But today, science has changed.

Many of the most exciting
frontiers of physics

are being explored not by individuals,

but by large groups of scientists,

working together in collaborative units.

- The subject now is
much more sophisticated,

in that whether you're a space astronomer,

an optical astronomer
or a particle physicist,

you depend on very large instruments.

At CERN, for instance,

you have the designers of the instruments,

the operators of the instruments,

those who analyze the
data, the phenomenologists

and the theorists who
try to make sense of it

at a deeper level.

- [Narrator] So the story of
physics in the 21st century

is more about collective endeavor.

And although we may miss the
individual personalities,

it is a price we may have to pay

if we are to stand a chance of solving

the remaining secrets of the universe.

(singing in foreign language)