Universe on a T-Shirt

The Quest for the Theory of Everything

Dan Falk

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781611454604
• Topic: Scienze fisiche
• Subtopic: Teoria quantistica

No scientific quest is as compelling as the search for the key to understand the universe—the elusive unified "Theory of Everything"—a theory so concise it could fit on a T-shirt. Lively and thought-provoking, Universe on a T-Shirt tells the fascinating story of the search for the Holy Grail of physics.Dan Falk places this intriguing story in its historical context, tracing the quest from ancient Greece to the breakthroughs of Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein, to the excitement over string theory and today's efforts to merge quantum theory with general relativity. With as much emphasis on history as on science, Falk's accessible approach is ideal for anyone intrigued by the advances in modern physics but still wondering what theoretical physicists are searching for, and why. Today's physicists use sophisticated methods, but their goal—the search for simplicity—has not changed since the time of the ancient Greeks. Universe on a T-Shirt is filled with quirky personalities, brilliant minds, and bold ideas—high science and high drama."An admirably concise and comprehensive overview of cosmology... [that] offers intriguing insights into the philosophic and personal outlooks motivating the scientists involved, from the ancient Greeks through Newton and Einstein... [and] Stephen Hawking and Ed Witten."— Booklist

Endnotes

Introduction

p. 1 My ambition is to live to see... Lederman, Leon with Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing, 1994, 21.

p. 1 The longed-for Theory of Everything... Barrow, John D., Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation. London: Vintage, 1992, 115.

Shadows and Light

p. 7 Zeus, father of the Olympians... quoted in Easterling, P.E. and B.M.W. Knox, The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 127.

p. 8 “...the Lydians and the Medes...” Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Selincourt. New York: Penguin, 1996, Book I, part 74, 30.

p. 11 “inherited from their nomadic forbears...” Goldstein, Thomas, The Dawn of Modern Science. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1980, 47.

p. 12-13 “They saw the world as something ordered...” Barnes, Jonathan, Early Greek Philosophy. London: Penguin, 1987, 16.

p. 13 “first founder of this kind of philosophy” Aristotle, Metaphysics. quoted in W.K.C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962, 40.

p. 15 “An immortal god, no longer mortal...” quoted in Barnes, 192.

p. 16 “...men and women, and birds and beasts...” quoted in Lambridis, Helle, Empedocles. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1976, 48.

p. 17 “Nothing happens in vain...” quoted in Barnes, 243.

p. 18 “By convention color...” quoted in de Santillana, Georgio, The Origins of Scientific Thought. New York: The New American Library, 1961, 145.

p. 18 “The atoms have all sorts of shapes...” quoted in de Santillana, 146.

p. 20 “If you look back at the earliest myths...” Barrow, John, Author interview for CBC Radio. 13 May 1997.

p. 21 “...unique inventions, never duplicated...” Cromer, Alan, Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 99-100.

p. 23 ...we must regard them at least as protoscientists... Long, A.A. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 63.

p. 23 “Matter is constituted of particles...” Schrödinger, Erwin, Science and Humanism: Physics in our Time. Oxford: Canto, 1996, 117.

p. 23 “If their attempts sometimes look comic...” Barnes, 18.

p. 24 “the principal ingredients of a scientific approach...” Pullman, Bernard, The Atom in the History of Human Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

A New Vision

p. 25 It is clear that the earth does not move... Aristotle, On the Heavens. In Barnes, Jonathan (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle. Vol. 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, 487.

p. 26-27 “...not necessary to probe into the nature of things...” Goldstein, Thomas, Dawn of Modern Science. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1980, 57.

p. 27 “no room for scientific observation...” Goldstein, 55-56.

p. 29 In expounding Scripture... Lindberg, David C., The Beginnings of Western Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, 198.

p. 32 “entities are not to be multiplied...” quoted in Cohen, I. Bernard, The Birth of a New Physics. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1985, 127.

p. 32 ...will clamor to have me shouted down. Copernicus, Nicolaus, De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium, trans. Dennis Richard Danielson. In Danielson (ed.), The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2000, 104.

p. 33 six to nine million copies Ferris, Timothy, Coming of Age in the Milky Way. New York: Anchor Books, 1988,62.

p. 34 “...would compose a monster, not a man” Copernicus, quoted in Danielson, 106.

p. 35 the stars must be very far away Copernicus turned out to be right. We now know that the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is about four light-years away, some 6,500 times more distant than Pluto, the farthest planet. Because the stars are so far away, stellar parallax remained undetected until 1838, when three different astronomers succeeded in measuring the tiny, apparent shift in the position of a nearby star resulting from the earth’s motion around the sun. Germany’s Frederich Wilhelm Bessel was the first to publish.

p. 36 “...multiplying spheres almost ad infinitum” Copernicus, in Danielson, 116.

p. 36 deprived humanity of a “special place” For a thorough discussion of this misconception, see Danielson, Dennis R., “The great Copernican cliché.” American Journal of Physics 69 (10)(2001): 1029-1035.

p. 36 400,000 times larger Ferris, 68.

p. 36-37 “They had to adapt to a moving earth...” Gingerich, Owen, Personal interview. 18 December 1999.

p. 37 “...the marvelous symmetry of the universe...” Copernicus, in Danielson, 117.

p. 38 “through the triple holes in [his] nose” Ursus, Nicolaus, De hypothesibus astronomicis tractatus. Quoted in Jardine, Nicholas, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler’s A Defence of Tycho Against Ursus’ with Essays on its Provenance and Significance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, 35.

p. 38 “I noticed that a new and unusual star...” Brahe, Tycho, De Stella Nova, trans. John H. Walden, in Danielson, 129.

p. 39 “...a star shining in the firmament itself...” Brahe, in Danielson, 131.

p. 39 “If you want to settle down on the island...” quoted in Christianson, John Robert, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe and his Assistants, 1570-1601. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 22.

p. 41 “Holding his urine...” quoted in Thoren, Victor E., The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 468-9.

p. 42 “For a long time I was restless...” Baumgardt, Carola, Johannes Kepler: Life and Letters. New York: Philosophical Library, 1951, 31.

p. 43 “...ould easily assemble a whole volume...” Cohen, I. Bernard, Revolution in Science. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985, 127.

p. 43 “foolish little daughter...” Baumgardt, 27.

p. 44 “a man of great benevolence” Ibid., 64.

p. 44 “...by an inexorable fate” Ibid., 66.

p. 45 “the most acute thinker ever born” quoted in Baumgardt, 17.

p. 45-46 “How much inventive power...” Ibid., 11-12.

p. 46 “...filled with unbelievable delight...” Ibid., 121.

p. Heaven and Earth

p. 48 O telescope, instrument of much knowledge... quoted in Ferris, Timothy, Coming of Age in the Milky Way. New York: Anchor Books, 1988, 95.

p. 52 “undoubtedly false” Cohen, I. Bernard, Revolution in Science. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985, 140.

p. 52 “...the first great scientific publicity stunt” Lederman, Leon with Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing, 1994, 73.

p. 52 it could have happened Drake, Stillman, Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 415.

p. 52 similar falling-body experiments For a discussion of the Pisa experiment, see Adler, Carl G. and Byron L. Coulter, “Galileo and the Tower of Pisa experiment.” American Journal of Physics 46 (3) (Mar. 1978): 199-201. Also Segre, Michael, “Galileo, Viviani and the Tower of Pisa.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 20 (4) (1989): 435-451. For a discussion of scientists who performed the experiment prior to Galileo, see Weiss, P., “Weights make haste: Lighter linger.” Science News Online, 4 December 2001 <www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc00/12_18_99b/fob7.htm>. Also “Scientific Urban Legends.” Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. 4 December 2001

<www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sciurban.htm> and Dauben, “Joseph W. Galileo: The Early Years.” In Galileo’s Experiment at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Endex Engineering, Inc., 4 December 2001

<www.endex.com/gf/buildings/ltpisa/ltpnews/physnews1.htm>

p. 53 A host of other stars are p...