by Neil Turok
49.Irene Born, trans., The Born-Einstein Letters, 1916–1955: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times (New York: Walker, 1971), 223.
50.My discussion here is a simplified version of David Mermin’s simplified version of Bell’s Theorem, presented in N. D. Mermin, “Bringing Home the Atomic World: Quantum Mysteries for Anybody,” American Journal of Physics 49, no. 10 (1981): 940. See also Gary Felder, “Spooky Action at a Distance ” (1999), North Carolina University, accessed July 4, 2012, http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/kenny/papers/bell.html.
51.H. Minkowski, “Space and Time,” in H. A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, H. Minkowski, and H. Weyl, The Principle of Relativity, trans. W. Perrett and G. B. Jeffery (1923; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1952), 75–91.
CHAPTER THREE: WHAT BANGED?
52.Thomas Huxley, “On the Reception of the Origin of Species” (1887), in Francis Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 1 (New York: Appleton, 1904), accessed online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2089/2089-h/2089-h.htm.
53.John Archibald Wheeler, “How Come the Quantum?” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 480, no. 1 (1986): 304–16.
54.Albert Einstein, quoted in Antonina Vallentin, Einstein: A Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1954), 24.
55.Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 19.
56.Albert Einstein, “Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunk,” Annalen der Physik 17, no. 6 (1905), 132–48. A good Wikisource translation is available online at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_a_Heuristic_Point_of_View_about_the_Creation_and_Conversion_of_Light.
57.Albert Einstein, “Maxwell’s Influence on the Development of the Conception of Physical Reality,” in James Clerk Maxwell: A Commemorative Volume (New York: Macmillan, 1931), 71.
58.Max Planck invented so-called Planck units when thinking of how to combine gravity with quantum theory. The Planck scale is Lp = (hG/c3)1/2 = 4 × 10−35 metres, a combination of Newton’s gravitational constant; Planck’s constant, h; and the speed of light, c. Below the Planck length, the effects of quantum fluctuations become so large that any classical notion of space and time becomes meaningless. The Planck energy is the energy associated with a quantum of radiation with a wavelength equal to the Planck length, Ep = (hc5/G)1/2 = 1.4 MWh.
59.Albert Einstein, quoted in Frederick Seitz, “James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), Member APS 1875,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 145, no. 1 (2001): 35. Available online at: http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/Seitz.pdf.
60.Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1938), 197–8.
61.John Archibald Wheeler and Kenneth William Ford, Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 235.
62.George Bernard Shaw, “You Have Broken Newton’s Back,” in The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking, ed. D. R. Danielson (New York: Perseus, 2000), 392−3.
63.Irene Born, trans., The Born-Einstein Letters, 1916–1955: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times (New York: Walker, 1971), 223.
64.John Farrell, The Day Without Yesterday: Lemaître, Einstein, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 10.
65.Ibid, 207.
66.Abbé G. Lemaître, “Contributions to a British Association Discussion on the Evolution of the Universe,” Nature 128 (October 24, 1931), 704–6.
67.Duncan Aikman, “Lemaître Follows Two Paths to Truth,” New York Times Magazine, February 19, 1933.
68.Gino Segrè, Ordinary Geniuses: Max Delbrück, George Gamow, and the Origins of Genomics and Big Bang Cosmology (London: Viking, 2011), 146.
69.U.S. Space Objects Registry, accessed July 4, 2012, http://usspaceobjectsregistry.state.gov/registry/dsp_DetailView.cfm.
70.Adam Frank, About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang (New York: Free Press, 2011), 196–201.
71.Technically, this means that the cosmological constant is the unique type of matter that is Lorentz-invariant.
72.See Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007).
73.Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter 46, quoted in ibid., 171.
74.G. Lemaître, “L’Univers en expansion,” Annales de la Société Scientifique de Bruxelles A21 (1933): 51.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE WORLD IN AN EQUATION
75.Paul Dirac, quoted in Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 435.
76.H. Weyl, “Emmy Noether,” Scripta Mathematica 3 (1935): 201–20, quoted in Peter Roquette, “Emmy Noether and Hermann Weyl” (2008), an extended manuscript of a talk given at the Hermann Weyl Conference, Bielefield, Germany, September 10, 2006 (see http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~ci3/weyl+noether.pdf), 22.
77.Albert Einstein, “The Late Emmy Noether,” letter to the editor of the New York Times, published May 4, 1935.
78.Helge Kragh, “Paul Dirac: The Purest Soul in an Atomic Age,” in Kevin C. Knox and Richard Noakes, eds., From Newton to Hawking: A History of Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professors of Mathematics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 387.
79.John Wheeler, quoted by Sir Michael Berry in an obituary of Dirac. Available online at http://www.phy.bris.ac.uk/people/berry_mv/the_papers/Berry130.pdf .
80.P. A. M. Dirac, “The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature,” Scientific American 208, no. 5 (May 1963): 45–53.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE OPPORTUNITY OF ALL TIME
81.The sole surviving fragment of Anaximander’s works, as quoted by Simplicius (see http://www.iep.utm.edu/anaximan/#H4).
82.Louis C. K., during an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, originally aired on NBC on February 24, 2009.
83.John Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (New York: Penguin, 2012).
84.Ibid., 149–52.
85.See the 1956 Nobel Prize lectures by Shockley, Brattain, and Bardeen, all of which are available online at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1956/.
86.Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 115–41.
87.Sebastian Loth et al., “Bistability in Atomic-Scale Antiferromagnets,” Science 335, no. 6065 (January 2012): 196. For a lay summary, see http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smarter_computing/article/atomic_scale_memory.html.
88.In fact, the quantum state of a qubit is specified by two real numbers, giving the location on a two-dimensional sphere.
89.A theorem due to Euclid, called the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, shows that such a factoring is unique.
90.Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews, ed. Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2005), 56.
91.Marshall McLuhan and Bruce Powers, Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 143.
92.Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in Tom Wolfe’s foreword to Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews, ed. Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2005), xvii.
93.Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (Harper Colophon, 1975), 221.
94.Julian Huxley, in introduction to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (HarperCollins Canada, 1975), 28.
95.Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory
of Effects (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2003), 12.
96.Brian Aldiss, The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), 78.
97.Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London: HarperPress, 2008), 295.
98.Ibid., 317.
99.Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 3rd ed. (1831; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover, 1994), 31–2.
100.Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry” (1821), available online at http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html.
101.Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826; repr., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 106.
102.Ibid., 219.
103.Ibid., 470.
104.Ibid., 220.
105.D. Albert, “On the Origin of Everything,” New York Times, March 23, 2012.
106.Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 144.
107.Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (London: Penguin, 2007), 248.
108.Richard Feynman, “The Uncertainty of Science,” in The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist (New York: Perseus, 1998), 3.
109.Basil Mahon, The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, (Chichester: Wiley, 2004), 45.
110.See, for example, Elizabeth Asmis, Epicurus’ Scientific Method (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984).
FURTHER READING
Albert, David. Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Deutsch, David. The Beginning of Infinity. New York: Viking, 2011.
Diamandis, Peter H., and Steven Kotler. Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think. New York: Free Press, 2012.
Falk, Dan. In Search of Time: Journeys Along a Curious Dimension. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008.
Gowers, Timothy. Mathematics. New York: Sterling, 2010.
Greene, Brian. The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality. New York: Vintage, 2005.
Guth, Alan. The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam, 1998.
Penrose, Roger. The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. New York: Vintage, 2007.
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Ballantine, 1985.
Steinhardt, Paul J., and Neil Turok. Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang — Rewriting Cosmic History. New York: Broadway, 2008.
Weinberg, Steven. The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
Zeilinger, Anton. Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010.
PERMISSIONS
Permission is gratefully acknowledged to reprint the following images:
Glenlair © Courtesy of Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge
Force Field © Neil Turok
Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) (1483–1520). The School of Athens. ca. 1510–1512. Fresco. © Scala/Art Resource, NY
Fifth Solvay Conference 1927 © Photograph by Benjamin Couprie, Institut International de Physique Solvay, courtesy AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives
Double-Slit Experiment © Neil Turok
Big bang © Neil Turok
COBE Temperature Fluctuations © NASA
Dark Matter © NASA
AIMS South Africa © African Institute for Mathematical Sciences
AIMS South Africa Students © Neil Turok
All Known Physics Equation © Neil Turok
ATLAS Experiment © 2012 CERN
“God Particle” © Fabrice Coffrini/Getty Images
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I WOULD LIKE TO express my heartfelt thanks to my friends and colleagues at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, a place for quantum leaps in space and time. Their constant encouragement and steadfast support kept me going as I struggled to prepare this manuscript. Once again, they made me realize how fortunate I am to be a part of this unique community. A special thanks is due to Mike Lazaridis, Perimeter’s founder and the most visionary supporter our field ever had, and to those who ensure the institute maintains the highest standards of management and communications, including Michael Duschenes and John Matlock.
Throughout this project, Alexandra Castell lent me continuous assistance. Natasha Waxman played a major role researching and helping to prepare early drafts, ably assisted by Erin Bow and Ross Diener. Daniel Gottesman, Lucien Hardy, Adrian Kent, Rob Myers, Lee Smolin, and Paul Steinhardt generously read drafts and provided invaluable comments. I have benefitted from discussions with many scientific colleagues on these topics, including Itzhak Bars, Laurent Freidel, Stephen Hawking, Ray Laflamme, Sandu Popescu, and Xiao-Gang Wen. Malcolm Longair very kindly shared with me the proofs of his fascinating new book on the historical origins of quantum mechanics, Quantum Concepts in Physics. Thank you for your enthusiasm and your wisdom. Naturally, whatever errors and misconceptions remain in this book are entirely my own. Many thanks to Chris Fach and Erick Schnetter for help preparing the illustrations.
A huge thank you to all my partners in the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) project, and to all our wonderful students. Let me mention in particular Barry Green and Thierry Zomahoun. It is a constant pleasure to work with you and for you. I thank you for your patience and understanding during the writing of this book, and for your tireless commitment to our shared cause.
Philip Coulter at the CBC and Janie Yoon at House of Anansi Press deserve special gratitude for stepping in with inspirational advice at a critical time. Janie in particular found the right combination of praise and tough love to keep me on track. If this manuscript is at all readable, it is due to your heroic efforts.
And last but first, big hugs to Corinne and Ruby without whom I would be lost.
INDEX
Aberdeen, University of, 31, 36, 251
Africa, 7, 31; mathematics/science in, 8, 159; need for scientific education in, 156–67
African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), 160–67; success stories of, 163, 164–65
African National Congress (ANC), 160
Albert, David, 247
Aldini, Giovanni, 241
Alexander the Great, 55
algebra, 32, 197; complex numbers in, 74–77, 168–69, 170; and Euler’s formula, 75–76, 170; and inclusion of i, 73–74, 93, 170; Noether’s work in, 181; Renaissance books on, 73, 74
Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham): Book of Optics, 17
Alpher, Ralph, 127–28, 130
Amazon.com, 204
Ampère, André-Marie, 44–45
analog vs digital technology, 203, 230–33, 237–39
Anaximander, 9, 52–55, 153, 202, 205, 207
Anderson, Carl D., 173
Anderson, Philip, 174
Andromeda Galaxy, 105
apartheid, in South Africa, 1–3, 21–22, 157–58; end of, 3, 160
Apollo 11 mission, 22, 129
Apollo 13 mission, 23
Archimedes, 18, 98
Aristotle, 25, 52
arithmetic, 8, 10, 74, 269n9
Armstrong, Neil, 22
art: and geometry, 16, 17. See also Leonardo da Vinci; Raphael
Aspect, Alain, 90
astronomers, 25, 122, 126, 123–24, 134–35, 157, 245
astronomy, 8, 10, 98, 129; and discovery of dark matter, 134–35; and heliocentric universe, 20–21, 25, 100; Hubble’s work in, 123–24; Maxwell’s work and, 36; Newton’s work and, 24–25, 29–30
AT&T, 128, 214. See also Bell Labs
atomic bomb, 10, 116, 125–26
Australian National Unive
rsity, 137
Babylon, 8, 18
background radiation. See radiation, cosmic microwave
Bardeen, John, 216–17
Bayes, Thomas, 32
Bell, Alexander Graham, 35, 213–14
Bell, John, 51. See also Bell’s Theorem
Bell Labs (New Jersey), 128, 129, 214–16, 220, 234
Bell Rock Lighthouse (Scotland), 32
Bell’s Theorem, 83–91, 233–34; illustration of, 85–90
Bible, 1–2, 24
big bang theory, 103–6, 136, 200–1, 228, 236; background radiation and, 127–30, 214; dark matter and, 134–35, 138; Lemaître’s proposal of, 124–25, 228; singularity and, 97, 122–25, 142–50, 200, 207–9; theory of inflation and, 106–10, 136, 139–52; Weinberg’s book on, 247–48. See also singularity, at moment of big bang
Biot-Savart law, 44
Bohm, David: hidden variable theory of, 83–84
Bohr, Niels, 58–59, 76, 126, 197, 199; on Dirac, 185; and quantization of atomic structure, 58, 70–72, 76, 124;
at Solvay Conference, 58–59, 80–81; and wave-particle duality, 80
Bolt, Usain, 49
Boltzmann, Ludwig: equipartition principle of, 65–66
Bombelli, Rafael: Algebra, 74
Borges, Jorge Luis, 223
Born, Max, 57, 58, 59, 180, 199; on general relativity, 119; and matrix mechanics, 58; on Planck, 61; on Schrödinger’s wavefunction, 76–77
Brahe, Tycho, 25
Brattain, Walter, 216
Brin, Sergey, 166
Brout, Robert, 174
Bryn Mawr College, 180
calculus, 26, 43, 101
California, University of: at Berkeley, 133, 137; at Santa Barbara, 219
Cambridge University, 31; author’s tenure at, 96–97, 98, 143, 151–52, 160, 161; cosmology workshop at, 106, 136; Dirac at, 182; Gamow at, 126; Maxwell at, 35, 42, 251; Newton at, 24, 223. See also Hawking, Stephen
Cape Town: and AIMS, 160–67; University of, 160
Cardano, Gerolamo: Ars Magna (The Great Art), 73, 74