Quantum Legacies: Dispatches From an Uncertain World

by David Kaiser

  20. Kevles, Physicists, 421.

  21. Physics Survey Committee, Physics in Perspective (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1972), 1:367; and Physics Survey Committee, Physics through the 1990s: An Overview (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1986), 98.

  22. Physics Survey Committee, Physics in Perspective, 1:119.

  23. Arthur Beiser to Malcolm Johnson, 14 April 1959, in LIS box 12, folder “Yilmaz: Relativity” (“not a vast market”). Figures on textbook publications come from keyword and call-number searches in the online catalog of the US Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov. On Feynman’s idiosyncratic Caltech course on gravitation, see David Kaiser, “A Psi Is Just a Psi? Pedagogy, Practice, and the Reconstitution of General Relativity, 1942–1975,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 29 (1998): 321–38. See also Achilleus Papetrou, Lectures on General Relativity (Boston: Reidel, 1974).

  24. Anthony Zee, “Broken-Symmetric Theory of Gravity,” Physical Review Letters 42 (1979): 417–21; and Lee Smolin, “Towards a Theory of Spacetime Structure at Very Short Distances,” Nuclear Physics B 160 (1979): 253–68.

  25. Yasunori Fujii, “Scalar-Tensor Theory of Gravitation and Spontaneous Breakdown of Scale Invariance,” Physical Review D 9 (1974): 874–76; F. Englert, E. Gunzig, C. Truffin, and P. Windey, “Conformal Invariant General Relativity with Dynamical Symmetry Breakdown,” Physics Letters B 57 (1975): 73–77; P. Minkowski, “On the Spontaneous Origin of Newton’s Constant,” Physics Letters B 71 (1977): 419–21; T. Matsuki, “Effects of the Higgs Scalar on Gravity,” Progress of Theoretical Physics 59 (1978): 235–41; and E. M. Chudnovskii, “Spontaneous Breaking of Conformal Invariance and the Higgs Mechanism,” Theoretical and Mathematical Physics 35 (1978): 538–39.

  26. Zee and Smolin parameterized their gravitational equations slightly differently than Brans and Dicke had done. They followed the usual convention in particle physics of giving scalar fields the dimension of mass (for theories defined in four spacetime dimensions). In these units, Newton’s gravitational constant G has units 1/(mass)2, and hence Zee and Smolin each set G equal to the inverse square of their scalar field rather than to the inverse as in the original Brans-Dicke work.

  27. Anthony Zee to John Wheeler, February 1977, included in “Wheeler Family Gathering,” vol. 2 (a collection of reminiscences by Wheeler’s former students), a copy of which is available in the Niels Bohr Library, call number AR167, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; and Anthony Zee, telephone interview with the author, 16 May 2005.

  28. Lee Smolin, interview with the author, MIT, 1 December 2004. See also Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 7–8, 50; and Lee Smolin, “A Strange Beautiful Girl in a Car,” in Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist, ed. John Brockman (New York: Random House, 2004), 71–78. On Coleman’s Harvard course on general relativity, see Kaiser, “A Psi Is Just a Psi?,” 331–33.

  29. Edward W. Kolb and Michael S. Turner, The Early Universe (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990). See also David Kaiser, “Whose Mass Is It Anyway? Particle Cosmology and the Objects of Theory,” Social Studies of Science 36 (2006): 533–64, on 549–50. On the founding of the Center for Particle Astrophysics at Fermilab, see also Overbye, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, 206–11; and Steve Nadis, “The Lost Years of Michael Turner,” Astronomy 32 (April 2004): 44–49, on 48.

  30. To be fair, my earlier assumption—like that of the other physicists who had considered models that combined a Brans-Dicke-like gravitational coupling to a Higgs-like field—was that the Higgs field would be associated with some higher-energy symmetry breaking, perhaps at the GUT scale. Hence, I had been focused on different ranges of the various parameters rather than considering the Standard Model Higgs field. See also David Kaiser, “Nonminimal Couplings in the Early Universe: Multifield Models of Inflation and the Latest Observations,” in At the Frontier of Spacetime: Scalar-Tensor Theory, Bell’s Inequality, Mach’s Principle, Exotic Smoothness, ed. T. Asselmeyer-Maluga (New York: Springer, 2016), 41–57, http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.09148.

  Chapter 14

  A version of this essay originally appeared in London Review of Books 32 (8 July 2010): 34–35.

  1. Ki Mae Heussner, “Stephen Hawking: Alien Contact Could Be Risky,” 26 April 2010, ABCNews.com.

  2. Steven J. Dick, Life on Other Worlds: The Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

  3. Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison, “Searching for Interstellar Communications,” Nature 184 (19 September 1959): 844–46.

  4. Cocconi and Morrison, “Searching for Interstellar Communications.”

  5. Cocconi and Morrison, “Searching for Interstellar Communications.”

  6. Silvan S. Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 130–45.

  7. Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, Is Anyone Out There? The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (New York: Delacorte, 1992).

  8. Paul Davies, The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2010).

  9. Davies, Eerie Silence, 175.

  10. Jennifer Burney, “The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Changing Science Here on Earth” (AB thesis, Harvard University, 1999).

  11. Burney, “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” 78–84. On more recent efforts, see, e.g., Chelsea Gohd, “Breakthrough Listen Launches New Search for E.T. across Millions of Stars,” 8 May 2018, Space.com.

  12. Burney, “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” chap. 4.

  13. Davies, Eerie Silence, 198.

  14. Peter Galison and Robb Moss, Containment (documentary film, 2015), http://www.containmentmovie.com.

  Chapter 15

  A version of this essay originally appeared in Isis 103 (March 2012): 126–38.

  1. Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John A. Wheeler, Gravitation (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973). On nicknames for the book, see, e.g., “Chicago Undergraduate Physics Bibliography,” accessed 8 July 2011, http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicphys.htm.

  2. For succinct introductions to the early history of Einstein’s work on general relativity, see Michel Janssen, “‘No Success like Failure’: Einstein’s Quest for General Relativity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Einstein, ed. Michel Janssen and Christoph Lehner (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 167–227; Hanoch Gutfreund and Jürgen Renn, The Road to Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein’s “The Foundation of General Relativity” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); Michel Janssen and Jürgen Renn, “Arch and Scaffold: How Einstein Found His Field Equations,” Physics Today 68, no. 11 (November 2015): 30–36; and Matthew Stanley, Einstein’s War: How Relativity Triumphed amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I (New York: Dutton, 2019).

  3. Albert Einstein, foreword to Peter G. Bergmann, Introduction to the Theory of Relativity (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1942), v. On Eddington’s eclipse expedition and the early reception of general relativity, see Jean Eisenstaedt, The Curious History of Relativity: How Einstein’s Theory of Gravity Was Lost and Found Again (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Jeffrey Crelinstein, Einstein’s Jury: The Race to Test Relativity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Matthew Stanley, Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), chap. 3; Hanoch Gutfreund and Jürgen Renn, The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein’s Princeton Lectures (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); Daniel Kennefick, No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); and Stanley, Einstein’s War.

  4. On the return of general relativity to physics departments’ course offerings during the 1950s and 1960s, see David Kaiser, “A Psi Is Just a Psi? Pedagogy, Practice, and the R
econstitution of General Relativity, 1942–1975,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 29 (1998): 321–38; Daniel Kennefick, Traveling at the Speed of Thought: Einstein and the Quest for Gravitational Waves (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), chap. 6; and Alexander Blum, Roberto Lalli, and Jürgen Renn, “The Reinvention of General Relativity: A Historiographical Framework for Assessing One Hundred Years of Curved Space-Time,” Isis 106 (September 2015): 598–620. On Wheeler as an effective mentor, see Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and Wojciech H. Zurek, “John Wheeler, Relativity, and Quantum Information,” Physics Today 62, no. 4 (April 2009): 40–46; and Terry M. Christensen, “John Wheeler’s Mentorship: An Enduring Legacy,” Physics Today 62, no. 4 (April 2009): 55–59.

  5. Steven Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity (New York: Wiley, 1972); and S. W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973).

  6. John Wheeler, handwritten notes, “Thoughts on preface, Mon., 13 July 1970,” in JAW series IV, box F-L, folder “Gravitation: Notes with Charles W. Misner and Kip S. Thorne” (“committee planning graduate courses”). See also form letter from Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler to colleagues announcing forthcoming publication of the book, 13 June 1973, in KST folder “MTW: Sample pages.”

  7. John Wheeler, handwritten notes, page for insertion into draft of preface, n.d. (late August 1970) (“third channel of pedagogy”), and Wheeler, handwritten notes, “Plan of Book, Sat., 18 July 1970” (“test a write up” [emphasis in original]), both in JAW series IV, box F-L, folder “Gravitation: Notes with Charles W. Misner and Kip S. Thorne.” On sidebars in more elementary physics textbooks, see Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High-Energy Physicists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 76–81.

  8. Kip Thorne to Earl Tondreau (editor at W. H. Freeman), 14 October 1970, in KST folder “MTW: Correspondence, 1970–May, 1973” (“several features,” typefaces). See also Thorne to Robert Ishikawa and Aidan Kelley (W. H. Freeman), 28 January 1971, in KST folder “MTW”; and Evan Gillespie (W. H. Freeman) to Kip Thorne, 29 November 1972, in KST folder “MTW: Publishing company, 1970–71, 1971–72.”

  9. Kip Thorne to Y. B. Zel’dovich and I. D. Novikov, 21 June 1973, in KST folder “MTW: Correspondence, June, 1973–.”

  10. Thorne to Ishikawa and Kelley, 28 January 1971 (“dependency statements”).

  11. Kip Thorne to John Wheeler and Charles Misner, with cc to Bruce Armbruster, 17 February 1972, in KST folder “MTW: Correspondence, 1970–May, 1973.”

  12. Thorne to Wheeler and Misner with cc to Armbruster, 17 February 1972. See also Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, form letter to colleagues, 13 June 1973.

  13. Thorne to Bruce Armbruster, 10 April 1973 (royalty rates, pricing vis-à-vis Weinberg’s book, “capture one hundred percent”), in KST folder “MTW: Publishing company, 1970–71, 1971–72.” On pricing, see also Thorne to Richard Warrington (president), Peter Renz (science editor), and Lew Kimmick (financial manager) at W. H. Freeman, 14 February 1979, in JAW series II, box Fr-Gl, folder “W. H. Freeman and Co., Publishers”; Thorne to Wheeler and Misner, 2 November 1972, in KST folder “MTW”; Misner to Wheeler and Thorne, 18 November 1982, in KST folder “MTW” (copy also in JAW series II, box Fr-Gl, folder “W. H. Freeman and Co., Publishers”); and royalty statement from June 1993, in KST folder “MTW: Royalty statements.”

  14. Dennis Sciama, “Modern View of General Relativity,” Science 183 (22 March 1974): 1186 (“pedagogic masterpiece”); Michael Berry, review in Science Progress 62, no. 246 (1975): 356–60, on 360 (“Aladdin’s cave”); and David Park, “Ups and Downs of ‘Gravitation,’” Washington Post, 21 April 1974, 4 (“three highly inventive people”). See also D. Allan Bromley, review in American Scientist (January–February 1974): 101–2.

  15. L. Resnick, review in Physics in Canada, June 1975, clipping in KST folder “MTW: Reviews” (“difficult book to read”); S. Chandrasekhar, “A Vast Treatise on General Relativity,” Physics Today, August 1974, 47–48, on 48 (“needless repetition”); and W. H. McCrea, review in Contemporary Physics 15, no. 4 (July 1974), clipping in KST folder “MTW: Reviews” (“variety of gimmicks”).

  16. John Wheeler, handwritten notes, “Thoughts on preface, Mon., 13 July 1970” (“make clear the idea”). On Wheeler’s style, see also John A. Wheeler with Kenneth Ford, Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998); and Misner, Thorne, and Zurek, “John Wheeler, Relativity, and Quantum Information.”

  17. Sciama, “Modern View of General Relativity,” 1186 (“prose style”); Resnick, review in Physics in Canada (“commendable attempt”); and J. Bicak, review in Bulletin of the Astronomical Institute of Czechoslovakia 26, no. 6 (1975): 377–78 (“A ‘poetical’ style”).

  18. Alan Farmer, review in Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 27 (1974): 314–15, on 314 (“comes dangerously close”); and Ian Roxburgh, “Geometry Is All, or Is It?,” New Scientist, 26 September 1974, 828 (“a regular subscriber”).

  19. Chandrasekhar, “A Vast Treatise on General Relativity,” 48; and Thorne to Chandrasekhar, 21 June 1974, in KST folder “MTW: Reviews.” On Chandrasekhar’s career, see K. C. Wali, Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); and Arthur I. Miller, Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).

  20. Kip Thorne to Peter Renz, 15 June 1983, in KST folder “MTW” (“large fraction”); and Thorne to Warrington, Renz, and Kimmick, 14 February 1979, on annual sales of Gravitation and Weinberg’s textbook.

  21. Sales figures from royalty statement of June 1993 in KST folder “MTW: Royalty statements.” On PhD conferral rates, see David Kaiser, “Cold War Requisitions, Scientific Manpower, and the Production of American Physicists after World War II,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33 (2002): 131–59; and David Kaiser, “Booms, Busts, and the World of Ideas: Enrollment Pressures and the Challenge of Specialization,” Osiris 27 (2012): 276–302.

  22. Kip Thorne to Peter Renz, 10 August 1983, in KST folder “MTW.”

  23. Park, “Ups and Downs of ‘Gravitation,’” 4.

  24. Robert Pincus, “Gravity Theory Excites the Mind,” clipping in KST folder “MTW: Reviews.” The clipping does not indicate date, publication title, or page number, but advertisements on the same page as the review clearly indicate that the newspaper was based in San Antonio, Texas.

  25. See, e.g., Andrzej Trautman to Charles Misner, Kip Thorne, and John Wheeler, 10 January 1974, in KST folder “MTW”; Heinz Pagels to Wheeler, 1 February 1974, in KST folder “MTW Reviews”; Philip B. Burt to Wheeler, 12 November 1974, in KST folder “MTW”; and Robert Rabinoff to Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, 10 March 1978, in KST folder “MTW: Reviews.”

  26. Luigi Vignato to Charles Misner, Kip Thorne, and John Wheeler, 20 July 1976, in KST folder “MTW: Correspondence, June, 1973–”; and Wheeler to Vignato, 2 August 1976, in the same folder. Wheeler did not directly address Vignato’s question, but he did enclose a preprint of his recent essay: John Wheeler, “Genesis and Observership,” in Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences, ed. Robert E. Butts and Jaakko Hintikka (Boston: Reidel, 1977), 3–33.

  27. Jadoul Michel to Charles Misner, Kip Thorne, and John Wheeler, August 1983, in KST folder “MTW.”

  28. Dan Foley to Kip Thorne, 7 February 1980, in KST folder “MTW.” See also Thorne to Foley, 27 February 1980, in the same folder.

  29. John Wheeler to Peter Renz, 28 June 1979, in KST folder “MTW”; copy also in JAW series II, box Fr-Gl, folder “W. H. Freeman and Co. Publishers.”

  30. Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John A. Wheeler, Gravitation (repr., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).

  Chapter 16

  A version of this essay originally appeared in American Scientist 95 (Novem
ber–December 2007): 518–25.

  1. On various fragments attributed to Heraclitus, especially regarding the nature of change, see Daniel W. Graham, “Heraclitus,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 ed.), sec. 3.1 (“flux”), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/heraclitus.

  2. Christopher Smeenk, “Einstein’s Role in the Creation of Relativistic Cosmology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Einstein, ed. Michel Janssen and Christoph Lehner (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 228–69.

  3. Helge Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), chap. 2; and Eduard Tropp, Viktor Y. Frenkel, and Artur Chernin, Alexander A. Friedmann: The Man Who Made the Universe Expand (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  4. Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy, chap. 2. See also Dominique Lambert, The Atom of the Universe: The Life and Work of Georges Lemaître, trans. Luc Ampleman (New York: Copernicus Center Press, 2015); and Helge Kragh and Robert W. Smith, “Who Discovered the Expanding Universe?,” History of Science 41 (2003): 141–62. On Lemaître, Hubble, and the early interpretations of Hubble’s data in terms of cosmic expansion, see also Mario Livio, “Mystery of the Missing Text Solved,” Nature 479 (10 November 2011): 171–73; and Elizabeth Gibney, “Belgian Priest Recognized in Hubble-Law Name Change,” Nature, 30 October 2018, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07234-y.