“there should be a law of Nature”: “Discussion of Papers,” 38.
needed calculator: Miller, Empire of the Stars, 11.
“I do not know whether I shall escape”: “Discussion of Papers,” 38–39.
“an unholy alliance”: Eddington, “Relativistic Degeneracy,” 195.
Chandra’s defense: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 162.
“Stoner’s findings”: Nauenberg, “Edmund C. Stoner,” 301.
Eddington was mainly bullying Chandra: Miller, Empire of the Stars, 109.
“stellar buffoonery”: Chandrasekhar, Truth and Beauty, 132.
“debates were a sport”: e-mail communication with Werner Israel, 2 December 2013.
“a sort of Don Quixote”: Wali, Chandra, 145.
“Chandrasekhar limit”: Starting in the early 1960s, papers in the astrophysical journals began referring to “Chandrasekhar’s limiting mass.”
“I had to make up my mind”: Wali, Chandra, 146.
“In 1935 the astronomical community”: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 222.
Chandra admitted: Chandrasekhar, “Black Hole in Astrophysics,” 5.
Chapter 5: I’ll Show Those Bastards
on the night of 29 August 1975: International Astronomical Union Circular No. 2826, 1975; Mobberley, Cataclysmic Cosmic Events, 52; Shipman, Restless Universe, 308; “Fascination with Celestial Events.”
Hipparchus: Russell, “Address,” 2.
six thousand light-years: The distance is still inexact. See Wade et al., “Sharpened Hα + [N II] Image,” 1738.
intense gravitational field: Comins and Kaufmann, Discovering the Universe, 222.
“There is something uncanny”: Russell, “Address,” 2.
“phenomena of a different order”: Russell, “Address,” 4.
“giant novae”: Osterbrock, Walter Baade, 57.
“exceptional novae”: see, e.g., Hubble, “Spiral Nebula,” 127.
“Hauptnovae”: Osterbrock, Walter Baade, 57.
Baade had a hip defect: Osterbrock, Walter Baade, 3.
“saw the mysteries”: Robinson, Schild, and Schücking, Quasi-Stellar Sources, xi.
regularly photographed: Osterbrock, Walter Baade, 8.
exceptional novae: Baade and Zwicky, “Super-Novae.” Astronomer Donald Osterbrock believes this paper was largely the work of Baade. See Osterbrock, Walter Baade, 58.
Knut Lundmark: Lundmark, “Pre-Tychonic Novae.”
astronomy his “hobby”: Zwicky, Morphological Astronomy, 11.
existence of cosmic “dark matter”: Zwicky, “Die Rotverschiebung,” 122.
“Zwicky was one of those people”: Bartusiak, Through a Universe Darkly, 196.
James Chadwick had bombarded: Chadwick, “Possible Existence of a Neutron.”
“Such a star”: Baade and Zwicky, “Cosmic Rays from Super-Novae,” 263. While Baade carried out the astronomical observations on supernovae, it’s believed Zwicky was largely responsible for the speculative theoretical ideas. See Osterbrock, Walter Baade, 58–59.
packing the mass of a high-rise building: Wheeler, Cosmic Catastrophes, 36–37.
bathroom sink: McClintock, “Do Black Holes Exist?,” 30.
“may be the origin”: Chandrasekhar, “White Dwarfs,” 245.
Chapter 6: Only Its Gravitational Field Persists
noted for their creative insight: Hufbauer, “Landau’s Youthful Sallies,” 344.
astute practitioner: Hufbauer, “Landau’s Youthful Sallies,” 345.
“neutronic core”: Landau, “Origin of Stellar Energy,” 334.
liberating enough energy: Landau, “Origin of Stellar Energy,” 334.
“analogous to the conditions”: Gamow, Structure of Atomic Nuclei, 235.
“be quite enough”: Gamow, Structure of Atomic Nuclei, 238.
published the paper: Landau, “Origin of Stellar Energy.”
“we can regard”: Landau, “Origin of Stellar Energy,” 334.
“bold idea”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 186.
anti-Stalinist leaflet: Hufbauer, “Landau’s Youthful Sallies,” 352.
Soviet physicist Pyotr Kapitsa: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 186.
urged his colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer: Cassidy, Oppenheimer, 175.
“Oppenheimer was already aware”: Hufbauer, “Path to Black Holes,” 39.
could not possibly harbor neutronic cores: Oppenheimer and Serber, “Stability of Stellar Neutron Cores.” In a footnote, the authors thank Bethe for their discussions on these questions.
whether Landau’s neutron cores: Hufbauer, “Landau’s Youthful Sallies,” 352.
driven to private school: Cassidy, Oppenheimer, 16.
filled the family’s Manhattan apartment: Cassidy, Oppenheimer, 17.
“What really made”: Cassidy, Oppenheimer, 135.
“something like a god”: Cassidy, Oppenheimer, 154.
work with Max Born: Ferreira, Perfect Theory, 58.
Landau was convinced: Hufbauer, “Landau’s Youthful Sallies,” 341.
helped organize a symposium: Cassidy, Oppenheimer, 174.
“Tolman consulting”: Hufbauer, “Path to Black Holes,” 41–42.
Volkoff labored over a calculating machine: Hufbauer, “Path to Black Holes,” 42.
eight-page paper: Oppenheimer and Volkoff, “Massive Neutron Cores.”
“tour de force”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 207.
“the question of what happens”: Oppenheimer and Volkoff, “Massive Neutron Cores,” 380.
It was still possible: Oppenheimer and Volkoff, “Massive Neutron Cores,” 381.
“Oppie was extremely cultured”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 212.
“very odd”: Smith and Weiner, Robert Oppenheimer, 208–9.
“Only its gravitational field persists”: Oppenheimer and Snyder, “Continued Gravitational Contraction,” 456.
“most daring and uncannily prophetic”: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 226–27.
“golden list”: Hufbauer, “Landau’s Youthful Sallies,” 353.
“graduate students or third-rate hacks”: Dyson, “Chandrasekhar’s Role,” 47. Oppenheimer once told physicist Hong-Yee Chiu that his paper on gravitationally collapsed objects “was just an exercise for his students to work on as a Ph.D. thesis.” E-mail communication with Chiu, 3 January 2014.
“most important contribution”: Dyson, “Chandrasekhar’s Role,” 46.
Even Einstein: Einstein, “Stationary System with Spherical Symmetry.”
Einstein stacked the deck: Earman and Eisenstaedt, “Einstein and Singularities,” 225.
“One could not be sure”: Einstein, “Stationary System with Spherical Symmetry,” 922.
“great number”: Einstein, “Stationary System with Spherical Symmetry,” 922–23.
“strong candidate”: Earman and Eisenstaedt, “Einstein and Singularities,” 230.
“was so firmly convinced”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 137.
“There is a curious parallel”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 139.
Theorists revered: Chandrasekhar, Truth and Beauty, 69.
“Jewish physics”: Beyerchen, Scientists Under Hitler, 132–33.
universities around the world rarely offered: This is not unprecedented. In 1904, some four decades after Maxwell introduced his laws of electromagnetism, Lord Kelvin wrote, “The so-called ‘electromagnetic theory of light’ has not helped us hitherto. … It seems to me that it is rather a backward step.” Kelvin, Baltimore Lectures, vii, 9.
“It was despised”: Eisenstaedt, Curious History of Relativity, 242.
“with some tricky concepts”: Eisenstaedt, Curious History of Relativity, 234.
“probably also our brain processes”: Eisenstaedt, Curious History of Relativity, 234.
“Professor Eddington”: Chandrasekhar, Truth and Beauty, 117.
Less than 1 percent
: Eisenstaedt, Curious History of Relativity, 247–48.
“on the fingers”: Infeld, Conférence internationale, xv–xvi.
up-and-coming physicists: Ferreira, Perfect Theory, 81.
“Because there are no experiments”: Feynmann, Lectures on Gravitation, xxvii.
“We who worked in this field were looked upon rather askance by other physicists”: Infeld, Conférence internationale, xv.
Chapter 7: I Could Not Have Picked a More Exciting Time in Which to Become a Physicist
lay down an edict: DeWitt, “Quantum Gravity,” 414.
“Within a few years”: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 250.
“Babson was fascinated”: Kaiser, “Making Theory,” 576. I am indebted to David Kaiser for making me aware of Roger Babson’s unusual contribution to gravitational physics.
“through the Great Depression”: Kaiser, “Making Theory,” 577.
“oldest sister drowned”: Kaiser, “Making Theory,” 582–83. Babson later lost a grandson as well during a water rescue.
“It is to remind students”: Kaiser, “Making Theory,” 574.
Similar stones: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Research_Foundation.
“[Tufts] legend”: Kaiser, “Making Theory,” 574.
“Mad men and quacks”: Rickles, “Chapel Hill Conference,” 11.
“waste of time”: DeWitt, “New Directions for Research,” 30.
Agnew Bahnson: Rickles, “Chapel Hill Conference,” 9.
“no connection”: Rickles, “Chapel Hill Conference,” 13.
“landmark”: Kaiser, “Making Theory,” 592.
“By organizing conferences”: Kaiser, “Making Theory,” 594.
“set a record”: Dyson, “John Archibald Wheeler,” 126.
“’one-legged men’”: APS, Wheeler Papers, box 18, Misner folder 1, Wheeler to Kenneth Case, 17 January 1964.
“There is no such thing”: APS, Wheeler Papers, box 149, folder 12, Bekenstein to Wheeler, 23 August 1976.
“Before anyone else”: Dyson, “John Archibald Wheeler,” 128.
Wheeler grew up: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 71–81.
“bent on making”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 86.
“It is no exaggeration”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 92–93.
“It was a non stop flight”: APS, Wheeler Papers, box 133, Wheeler interview with Jeremy Bernstein, folder 1, p. 26.
“Vatican of physics”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 142.
Publishing a paper with Bohr in 1939: Bohr and Wheeler, “Mechanism of Nuclear Fission.”
“I finally had a calling”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 159.
Just half an hour earlier: APS, Wheeler Papers, Relativity notebook, vol. 39. Before that, general relativity had been taught in the Princeton mathematics department. The Harvard physics department didn’t add general relativity to its curriculum until 1967. See Kaiser, “A Ψ Is Just a Ψ?,” 321–22.
“I wanted to teach relativity”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 228.
“headed toward a complex thicket”: APS, Wheeler Papers, box 184, Mentor and Sounding Board folder, p. 6.
pondering whether curved space: AIP, Kenneth Ford interview with John Wheeler, Section IX, 4 March 1994.
“I was looking”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 229.
“He seemed to enjoy”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 106–7.
“until it becomes a cinder”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 229.
“no more than a superstition”: Hoyle et al., “Relativistic Astrophysics,” 909.
“free-wheeling talk sessions”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 21.
book titled Not Crazy Enough: Conniff, “Johnny Wheeler’s Space Odyssey,” 14.
“He was so playful”: Interview with Robert Fuller, 11 September 2013.
ultimately settling down: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 210.
“electromagnetic, gravitational, or neutrinos”: Harrison, Wakano, and Wheeler, “Matter-Energy at High Density,” 140.
“which lies at the untamed frontier”: Harrison, Wakano, and Wheeler, “Matter-Energy at High Density,” 137.
“Would not the simplest assumption”: Harrison, Wakano, and Wheeler, “Matter-Energy at High Density,” 147–48.
“It is very difficult”: Harrison, Wakano, and Wheeler, “Matter-Energy at High Density,” 148.
“green graduate student … I emerged”: Klauder, Magic Without Magic, 231.
“In Western circles”: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 231.
“a body must tend”: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 231.
awarded a doctorate: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 222.
“the physics of stars”: Sakharov, Memoirs, 102.
“intellectual progeny … Wheeler was a charismatic”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 261.
“Zel’dovich was the hard-driving player”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 261.
“When the mass”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 239.
“I had many discussions”: APS, Wheeler Papers, box 133, transcript of Wheeler interview with Jeremy Bernstein, folder 1, p. 147.
the very same answer: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 240–41.
“frozen star”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 255.
“you cannot appreciate”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 244.
developed a new reference frame: see Finkelstein, “Past-Future Asymmetry.”
he had joined: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 238.
Kruskal arrived at: Kruskal, “Maximal Extension of Schwarzschild Metric.”
Wheeler finally realized: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 238.
both Finkelstein and Kruskal: Eisenstaedt, Curious History of Relativity, 293.
“The field of gravitation”: Eisenstaedt, Curious History of Relativity, 299.
Beckedorff’s treatise: Beckedorff, “Terminal Configurations of Stellar Evolution.”
“Even if you sent”: interview with Misner, 25 November 2013.
“But it’s gone”: interview with Misner.
“forever outside”: Rindler, “Visual Horizons in World-Models,” 663.
Evgeny Lifshitz and Isaak Khalatnikov: Lifshitz and Khalatnikov, “Singularities of Cosmological Solutions, I,” and “Singularities of Cosmological Solutions, II.”
“A black hole has no hair”: Wheeler and Ford, Geons, Black Holes, 297.
“The matter of the core”: Wheeler, “Our Universe,” 5.
“When I got back to Cambridge”: AIP, Alan Lightman interview with Roger Penrose, 24 January 1989.
“ridiculous and mysterious”: said by Penrose during a roundtable discussion, “Recollections of the Relativistic Astrophysics Revolution,” 27th Texas Symposium, Dallas, 11 December 2013.
published a theorem in Physical Review Letters: Penrose, “Gravitational Collapse.”
“most influential development”: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 253.
“Deviations from spherical symmetry”: Penrose, “Gravitational Collapse,” 58.
“Cheshire cat”: Wheeler, “Our Universe,” 9.
“With this prediction”: Wheeler, “Our Universe,” 11.
“one final escape hatch”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 296–98.
“little relevance for the real Universe”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 268.
Chapter 8: It Was the Weirdest Spectrum I’d Ever Seen
Model-T Ford wheels: Sullivan, “Karl Jansky,” 42.
“Jansky’s merry-go-round”: Kraus, “Karl Guthe Jansky’s Serendipity,” 58.
After a year of detective work: see Jansky, “Electrical Disturbances.”
“star noise”: Friis, “Karl Jansky,” 842.
“result of some form of intelligence”: “New
Radio Waves Traced to Centre of the Milky Way.”
“sounded like steam”: “Radio Waves Heard from Remote Space.”
“some sort of thermal agitation”: Jansky, “Source of Interstellar Interference,” 1162.
sent his results: Reber, “Cosmic Static” (1940).
first map: Reber, “Cosmic Static” (1944).
“The world of decibels”: Sullivan, “Karl Jansky,” 54.
“the most eventful era”: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 240.
ten million suns: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 339; see also Burbidge, “Possible Sources of Radio Emission,” and “Theoretical Explanation of Radio Emission.”
“Nuclear fuel’s efficiency”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 340.
pinpoint of light: “First True Radio Star?,” 148.
“I took a spectrum”: Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 335.
Astronomers couldn’t even find: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 243; also “First True Radio Star?,” 148.
“ludicrous”: Robinson, Schild, and Schücking, Quasi-Stellar Sources, xv.
sitting at his desk: Bartusiak, Thursday’s Universe, 151.
rushing through space: Schmidt, “3C 273.”
quasars: Physicist Hong-Yee Chiu coined the term, first using it in a 1964 Physics Today article he wrote on the First Texas Symposium. See Chiu, “Gravitational Collapse.”
“The Astrophysical Journal”: Schmidt, “Space Distribution,” 371.
“The insult”: Bartusiak, Thursday’s Universe, 152.
old photographic plates: Hawking and Israel, Three Hundred Years of Gravitation, 246.
“The discovery of quasars”: Schmidt, “Discovery of Quasars,” 351.
“to the relativity limit”: Hoyle and Fowler, “Nature of Strong Radio Sources,” 535.
Vitaly L. Ginzburg: Ginzburg, “Nature of the Radio Galaxies.”
Funders for this large gathering: Robinson, Schild, and Schücking, Quasi-Stellar Sources, iv.
antigravity devices: see Kaiser, “Making Theory,” chap. 10, “Roger Babson and the Rediscovery of General Relativity.”
“For more than ten years”: Robinson, Schild, and Schücking, Quasi-Stellar Sources, v.
“I look forward”: APS, Wheeler Papers, box 20, Penrose folder, Roger Penrose to Wheeler, 9 September 1963.
Chapter 9: Why Don’t You Call It a Black Hole?
Black Hole Page 19