On May 29 1919 a solar eclipse offered scientists a rare opportunity to test Albert Einstein strange new ideas about the universe. For years the world of science had followed Newton laws but Einstein proposed a radical Theory of General Relativity in which gravity is the curvature of space and time. He predicted that the sun s immense gravity would bend starlight. Two expeditions led by British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington traveled to Sobral in Brazil and Principe off West Africa and their ob