This Day in Science & Discovery — Nov 9: Einstein Wins the Nobel Prize and Element 110 Is Found

Host 1: Welcome to this day in science and discovery, on this day November 9th, Albert Einstein is halfway around the world he's actually riding a tram in Hong Kong.

Host 2: Oh.

Host 2: The peak tram.

Host 1: Yeah exactly the peak tram and a telegram finally chases him down to tell him he won the Nobel Prize in physics but like shockingly it is not for the theory of relativity.

Host 2: Right, which is wild because that is what made him a global icon.

Host 1: Yeah. So in this deep dive we are exploring for you how scientific validation actually happens from you know a Nobel Prize that took years of waiting to lab experiments that blink into existence for just a millisecond.

Host 2: It really is the ultimate lesson in validation because science isn't just having a brilliant idea it is the sometimes grueling process of convincing the rest of the world to actually believe it.

Host 1: Right. So let's look at that Einstein telegram. in 1922 AD he is admiring what he called the prettiest landscape of his voyage totally removed from all the academic drama back in Europe

Host 2: and there was a lot of drama the committee had literally held over the 1921 prize because they didn't think anyone met the standard

Host 1: wait they just skipped a year

Host 2: yeah they held it over so they eventually paired his 1921 award with Niels Bohr's 1922 prize but they explicitly cited his discovery of the photoelectric effect

Host 1: right not relativity I mean it's like a legendary band winning an award for some obscure B-side track instead of their biggest hit. Why were they so terrified to just award him for relativity?

Host 2: Well, relatively challenged the very foundation of space and time it was mathematically beautiful but the old guard of the Nobel committee they did not trust theoretical physics without physical proof.

Host 1: oh gotcha

Host 2: they wanted the receipts

Host 1: exactly

Host 2: and the photoelectric effect had rock solid experimental receipts Einstein proved that light isn't just a continuous wave it's made of tiny packets of energy you know photons that can actually knock electrons off metal

Host 1: which means a physicist like Robert Millikan could literally go into a lab and physically measure those electrons getting knocked away

Host 2: right that demand for concrete measurable evidence became the engine of modern science that theory just isn't enough you have to observe it

Host 1: that makes total sense

Host 2: and that same demand for physical receipts drove a massive highly precise experiment decades later only this time scientists were not just measuring something that already existed they were trying to physically build a brand new piece of the universe.

Host 1: Oh, wow. Okay, so we jump to 1994 AD at the GSI laboratory in Darmstadt, Germany.

Host 2: Yeah.

Host 1: At exactly 4.39 in the afternoon physicists detected the very first atom of element 110 which was later named Darmstadtium.

Host 2: Right and to achieve this the team used a particle accelerator to continuously fire nickel ions at a lead target for days on end.

Host 1: Just constantly firing them

Host 2: constantly. The goal was to force a nickel nucleus and a lead nucleus to smash together and fuse into a single super heavy element

Host 1: Okay I have to stop you there because firing a particle accelerator continuously requires an astronomical amount of money and energy.

Host 2: Oh definitely

Host 1: how did they justify all those resources when the single atom they created lived for less than a thousandth of a second? It is like fishing for months just to catch a fish that vanishes the exact millisecond you hook it.

Host 2: That is a great analogy. Well because forcing two complex atomic nuclei to fuse isn't just slamming them together. It's like trying to crash two speeding cars into each other at the exact right angle so that they seamlessly merge into a larger vehicle instead of shattering.

Host 1: Wait so it usually just shatters into a million pieces?

Yeah

Host 2: Yeah almost always. Getting that to happen even once is a monumental triumph of human engineering. I mean team member Siegfried Hofmann arrived at the lab his colleagues greeted him with just three words he said we've got it

Host 1: that is incredible so days of brute force to capture just one millisecond of data but it proved human beings could push the boundaries of matter and extend the periodic table

Host 2: into elements that do not exist in nature yeah and that recurring theme of time you know ideas waiting decades for the world to catch up it shows up all over this date in history

Host 1: oh really like what else

Host 2: well take mathematician Herman Weil born on this day in 1885 AD he introduced the first gauge theory which is essentially a mathematical framework for measuring how physical fields change

Host 1: okay right

Host 2: or look at the brilliant film star Hedy Lamarr born in 1914 AD

Host 1: oh yes she co-patented a torpedo frequency hopping system basically a way to constantly shift radio signals so enemies couldn't jam them

Host 2: which took years for the military to actually adopt but today that exact frequency hopping concept is what powers the Bluetooth connection you are probably using to listen to this deep dive right now.

Host 1: that is so wild but sometimes time works instantly against us too

Host 2: oh yeah like in 1965 AD a wrongly set relay in Ontario tripped at exactly 5 16 PM

Host 1: just one single mechanical failure and it left 30 million people across the Northeast US and Ontario in the dark for up to 13 hours

Host 2: yeah a split second failure causing 13 hours of chaos compared to days of particle acceleration just to achieve a millisecond of discovery

Host 1: it really is crazy how time works in science

Host 2: it is which leaves you with a fascinating thought to ponder if scientists are currently trying to synthesize even heavier elements to reach the island of stability

Host 1: wait what's that

Host 2: it's a theoretical group of super heavy elements that might actually last longer than a millisecond if they find it could our entire understanding of chemistry be completely rewritten in the blink of an eye

Host 1: thanks for tuning in see you back here tomorrow