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Quantum Legacies: Dispatches From an Uncertain World

Page 30

by David Kaiser


  Dyson, Freeman, 127

  Dyson, George, 93

  Early Universe, The (Kolb and Turner), 200

  Eddington, Arthur, 219, 235

  Education and Professional Employment in the USSR (DeWitt), 99, 100

  Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence, The (Davis), 209–10

  Ehrenfest, Paul, 1–4, 3, 13, 24; shot his son Wassik, 4

  Einstein, Albert, 1–4, 3, 13, 234; ball-in-box analogy, 33; commitment to pacifism, 34; critic of quantum mechanics, 2; energy-mass relation (E=mc2), 173, 175; gravitational field equations, 186, 188; gravitational waves, calculation of, 264; Hitler’s raid, 31; light’s speed, 54; Newton’s constant (G), 186; particles’ definite values, 32, 55; Princeton, resettle in, 3, 31; Prussian Academy of Sciences, resigned from, 31; quantum mechanics, 17; singularity, 271; special relativity, formulation of, 17; special theory of relativity, 30, 54, 173; twin paradox, 54

  Einstein collection at Princeton University, 1–2

  Eisberg, Robert, 132

  Eisenhower, Dwight D., 105–6

  electromagnetic spectrum, 206–7

  electromagnetism, 193

  electrons, 167; paths, 19

  elementary physics, teaching, 75–76

  elements of reality, 32

  Ellis, George, 220

  Ellis, John, 177, 182

  “El Monstro,” 42

  Englert, François, 177; Noble Prize, 181

  ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), 91, 92

  entangled particles, pairs of, 61

  entanglement, 54, 62; photons with a laser, 66

  Escher, M. C., 256

  Essential Information on Atomic Energy (1946), 81

  Estle, Thomas L., 132

  eternal recurrence, 256

  European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), 162–64, 179–80; UA1 and UA2, 170

  European Space Agency, 253, 254

  exploding gunpowder, 33–34

  extraterrestrial civilization, 205–7, 209

  Farmelo, Graham, 25, 27–28

  fascism, 36, 41, 45, 89

  federal spending on particle physics, 195

  Fermi, Enrico, 41, 126; affected by Nazi-inspired racial laws in Italy, 41; Manhattan Project, 41, 42; neutrino, 41; Noble Prize, 41; radioactive decay, 41, 44; in United States, 41

  Fermilab accelerator, 161

  fermions, 175

  Feshbach, Herman, 131

  Feynman, Richard, 116, 118, 119, 126, 134, 174, 197; curriculum for physics students, 116–17, 119; Feynman Lectures on Physics, The, 117, 118; “Physics X” course, 134, 135

  Finnegans Wake (Joyce), 165

  First World War (“a chemists’ war”), 72

  fission bombs, 91

  Fitch, Val, 8, 10

  “five sigma,” 180

  Flexner, Abraham, 89

  Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de, 244

  Formaggio, Joseph, 49, 50

  Fowler, Ralph, 18, 19

  freedom-of-choice loophole, 57–58, 60, 63–64, 67

  French Revolution, 88

  Friedman, Andrew, 58, 59, 60, 64, 236

  Friedmann, Alexander, 232–33, 245

  Fuchs, Klaus, 24, 46; atomic secrets to the Soviets, 46

  Fuld, Caroline Bamberger, 89

  funding for research, 82–83; Atomic Energy Commission, 83; Department of Defense, 83; federal defense agencies, 83

  Gaia hypothesis, 215

  Galileo, 235

  Galison, Peter, 216

  Gallicchio, Jason, 58, 60, 64

  Gamow, George, 236, 237, 238

  Gell-Mann, Murray, 165, 166, 173; Noble Prize, 165

  General Account of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940–1945, A (Smyth report), 79–80

  general relativity, 185–86, 188, 197, 199, 218–19, 231–32, 236, 238, 241, 253, 257, 264, 269, 271–72

  Genesis Flood, The (Whitcomb and Morris), 240

  Gerjuoy, Edward, 129, 130

  Gerstenstein, Michaeil, 266

  Gianotti, Fabiola, 181

  G.I. Bill, 83

  gluons, 172–73

  Gödel, Kurt, 89

  God particle, 175

  Gold, Thomas, 238, 239

  Goldstone, Jeffrey, 189, 190

  Goldstone-Higgs symmetry-breaking potential, 197

  Goudsmit, Samuel, 9–10

  graduate enrollments in physics, 83–84, 97, 108–10, 112–13, 120, 124–25, 133–34, 137, 149, 161, 195

  grand unified theories (GUT), 193–95

  Gravitation (Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler), 218–30; typesetting, 222–23, 226

  gravitational waves, 263–69; detector, 265

  Gravitation and Cosmology (Weinberg), 199, 220, 224–26; reviews, 224–25

  gravity, 186; Newton’s constant (G), 186. See also general relativity

  Gravity’s Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves (Collins), 267

  Grier, David Alan, 90

  Gross, David, 193, 245

  Group Portrait with Lady, 17

  Groves, Leslie, 79, 82

  Guggenheim Foundation, 95

  Guralnik, Gerald, 177

  GUT. See grand unified theories (GUT)

  Guth, Alan, 248, 249

  Haan, Bierens de, 89

  Hagen, Carl, 177

  Half-Life (Close), 45

  Handsteiner, Johannes, 61; Cosmic Bell test, 62; telescope, 61

  Hartnett, John, 246

  Hawking, Stephen, 7, 205, 220, 270, 273; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), 272; on black holes, 272–73; on Einstein’s equations, 271

  Hawking Incorporated (Mialet), 274

  Heisenberg, Werner, 2, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 30, 33, 121; approach to quantum mechanics, 20; discrete arrays of numbers, 20; electrons’ paths, 19; first-principles treatment of matter and radiation, 19; uncertainty principle, 2, 119, 122, 172

  Heisenberg uncertainty principle, 2, 119, 122, 172

  Heraclitus, 231

  Herbert, Nick, 150

  Herman, Robert, 236, 237

  Higgs, Peter, 177, 181, 191–92; Noble Prize, 181

  Higgs boson, 13, 167, 174, 177, 180–82; decaying, 179; mass, 178

  Higgs fields, 172, 197

  Higgs Hunter’s Guide, The, 179

  Higgs inflation, 183, 201

  Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 42, 71, 78

  Hitler, Adolf, 3, 31, 34

  Hochrainer, Armin, 66

  holism, 146

  House Un-American Activities Committee, 81

  Hoyle, Fred, 238, 239

  Hubble, Edwin, 233

  Hubble Space Telescope, 252

  Humphreys, Russell, 246

  hydrogen atom, 251

  hydrogen bombs, 91; calculations for, 93; crash-course development, 94; tritium for, 43

  hype-amplification-feedback process, 99

  IceCube Neutrino Observatory, 52

  IndependHiggs Day, 182

  Institute for Advanced Study, 31, 32, 88–90, 93, 94–95

  Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, 61

  International Council of Scientific Unions, 213

  International Telecommunications Union, 213

  isotope separation plants, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 71

  Jackson, Henry “Scoop,” 104, 106

  Johnniac, 96

  Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, 236

  Johnson, Lyndon, 105

  Joyce, James, 165

  Kajita, Takaaki, 49

  Kennefick, Daniel, 264

  Kibble, Thomas, 177

  Kolb, Edward “Rocky,” 199, 200

  Korean War, 83, 99, 112, 161

  Korol, Alexander, 99, 100, 101, 102, 107

  Landau, Lev, 18

  Laplace, Pierre-Simon de, 245

  Large Hadron Collider (LHC), 8, 155, 162–64, 174

  Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, The (Hawking and Ellis), 220

  Laser Interferomete
r Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), 263, 266–69

  Lawrence, Ernest, 158, 159, 160

  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 13, 17, 156, 159

  Leighton, Robert, 116–17, 119

  Lemaître, Georges, 233, 234, 235–36

  liquid helium, 162

  Lisle, Jason, 246

  locality, 57

  Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos (Overbye), 250, 252

  loopholes in Bell experiments: fair sampling, 57; freedom-of-choice, 57–58; locality, 57

  Los Alamos laboratory, 25, 72

  Lysenko, Trofim, 111

  Mach, Ernst, 185

  Mach’s principle, 185

  Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS), 51

  Making of the Atomic Bomb, The (Rhodes), 78

  Manhattan Project (Manhattan Engineer District), 12, 41, 42, 71, 78–79, 84, 236. See also Atomic Energy Commission

  Manuel, Frank, 26

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): Army and Navy courses, 76; students in Army and Navy programs, 76; students in the US Army Special Training Program, 77

  McCarthy-era red scare, 81

  McDonald, Arthur, 49

  Meitner, Lise, 24

  melancholia, 27

  Melville, Herman, 17

  membranes, 242

  Mercator, Gerardus, 256; projection, 256

  Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), 215

  METI. See Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI)

  Mialet, Hélène, 274

  Milky Way galaxy, 243

  Millikan, Max, 100

  Millikan, Robert A., 234

  Misner, Charles, 218, 219, 220, 221

  mobilization of scientists and engineers, 71

  Moby Dick (Melville), 17

  Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862, 107

  Morris, Henry, 240

  Morrison, Michael A., 132

  Morrison, Philip, 206–7, 208, 213; on SETI, 209–12; in wartime Manhattan Project, 209

  Morse, Marsten, 94–95

  MTW. See Gravitation (Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler)

  muon, 167

  Murskyj, Mykola, 50

  National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 213; SETI observational program, 213–14

  National Committee on Physicists, 78, 107

  National Defense Education Act, 107, 108

  National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel, 108

  National Research Council, 100

  National Science Foundation, 83, 100, 114, 267

  National Security Agency, 215

  Nature of the Universe, The (Hoyle), 239

  Navy, physics graduate training, 82

  Nazi book-burning rally, Opernplatz in Berlin, 35

  neutrinos, 37, 39–40, 43, 48; discovery, 41; flavor-changing oscillations, 50–51; primordial, 52; quantum superposition, 50, 51; solar, 49

  neutrons, 172

  Newton, Isaac: equations, 271; family dynamics, 26

  Newton’s constant (G), 198

  Nietzsche, Friedrich, 256

  Nordheim, Lothar, 125, 127, 132; course on quantum mechanics at Duke, 125–26; hydrogen-bomb project, 125; section chief at the Oak Ridge laboratory, 125

  Nordic Optical Telescope, 5, 5–6

  nuclear brinksmanship, 7

  nuclear fission, 45, 81

  nuclear forces, 91, 193

  nuclear-force symmetry, 172

  nuclear reactor facilities at Hanford, Washington, 71, 72

  nuclear weapons, 76, 81; program, 74; used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 42, 71, 78, 91

  nucleosynthesis, 237

  Office of Naval Research, 82, 160

  Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 25, 72, 87, 89, 93, 119; Berkeley group, 129; at Cambridge, 121; course on quantum mechanics at Berkeley, 121–22; early life and schooling, 120–21; teaching at Berkeley and Caltech, 121

  organicism, 146

  Origin of Species (Darwin), 248

  Overbye, Dennis, 250

  particle accelerator, Geneva, 155. See also Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

  particle cosmology, 184, 195

  particle physics, 174; crisis, 1970s, 185, 196

  Pauli, Wolfgang, 2, 18, 22, 41

  Pearl Harbor attack, 73

  Penrose, Roger, 255–62, 271; conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC), 256

  Penrose diagrams, 257–58

  Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems, 271

  “phone book, the.” See Gravitation (Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler)

  photons, 254; electric field, 56; of light, 56; massless, 175

  Physical Review (Journal), 8, 9, 11–12

  “physicists’ war,” 12, 72–73, 78; Google n-gram of, 79

  “Physicist’s War, A” (bulletins), 72–73, 75

  Physics Survey Committee, 192, 196

  Physics: Survey and Outlook, 192

  “Physics X,” 134

  Pius XII, 238

  Placement Service of the American Institute of Physics, 110

  Planck satellite, 253, 254

  Plato, 231

  plutonium-producing nuclear reactors, 81

  Podolsky, Boris, 32

  polarization, 56

  Polchinski, Joseph, 242

  Politzer, H. David, 193

  Pontecorvo, Bruno, 44–45, 47; British nuclear research facility in Harwell, 45; in Fermi’s group (“Puppy”), 44–46; Manhattan Project, 45; moved to New York City, 45; on neutrinos, 47–48; nuclear fission, 45; nuclear reactor, 45; nuclear research facility at Dubna, 45; patent dispute, 46; into Soviet territory, 46; theory of neutrino oscillations, 50

  Pontecorvo Affair, The (Turchetti), 45

  Pontecorvo’s theory of neutrino oscillations, 50

  Portrait of Isaac Newton, A (Manuel), 26

  positron, 43

  primeval atom, 234

  Principles of Quantum Mechanics, The (Dirac), 22

  Privileged Planet, The (DVD), 249

  Project Ozma, 206

  Prony, Gaspard Riche de, 88

  protons, 172

  prussic acid, 35

  ψ-function, 33, 35

  Pustovoit, V. I., 266

  quantum chess, 275

  quantum electrodynamics (QED), 22

  quantum entanglement, 6, 12, 54, 62, 146

  quantum mechanics, 6, 17–18, 32–34, 50, 52, 54, 122, 124; and cosmology, 23; Einstein, critic of, 2; Heisenberg approach to, 20; paradoxes of, 146; philosophical challenges of, 125; quantum tunneling, 127; Schrödinger equation, 30, 33; textbooks on, 123; training, 116–35

  Quantum Mechanics (1949) (Schiff), 127–29

  Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles (Eisberg and Resnick), 132

  Quantum Reality (Herbert), 150

  Quantum States of Atoms, Molecules, and Solids (Estle and Morrison), 132

  Quantum Theory (Bohm), 128–29

  quantum theory of gravity, 261

  quarks, 165–66, 171; quark-gluon interactions, 173; “Standard Model,” 166–69

  quasars, 6, 65

  Rabi, Isidor Isaac, 105–7, 107

  radar and bomb projects, 74

  Radiation Laboratory (Rad Lab), MIT, 73, 74

  radioactive decay, 175

  radio astronomy, 207

  RAND, 96

  Rauch, Dominik, 66

  Reagan administration, 8, 114, 161

  Reines, Frederick, 42–43, 47, 49; bomb-based test, 43; neutrinos detection, 43, 44

  Reines-Cowan test, 48

  relativistic cosmology, 232, 241

  Renaissance, 255

  Resnick, Robert, 132

  Rhodes, Richard, 78

  Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, 5, 5–6, 64

  Rosen, Nathan, 32

  Rosenberg, Ethel, 46

  Rosenberg, Julius, 46

  Rubbia, Carlo, 170

  Rudd, Paul, 275

  Sagan, Carl, 147

  Sands, Matthew, 116, 119

  Scheidl, Thomas,
61, 66

  Schiff, Leonard, 127

  Schrödinger, Erwin, 17–18, 29, 31, 32–33, 136; cat scenario, 29–30, 35, 37–38, 119; entanglement, 6, 12, 54, 62; Equality and Relativity of Freedom (lecture on BBC radio), 30; independent formulation of quantum mechanics, 20; left Berlin, 32, 36; Nobel Prize, atomic theory, 32; professorship, 30; University of Oxford, fellowship at, 32; wave equation for quantum mechanics (Schrödinger equation), 30, 33

  Schrödinger equation, 30, 131

  Schwartz, Rebecca Press, 80

  Scientific American, 226

  Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee on Atomic Power, 81

  Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), 206–16

  Second World War (“physicists’ war”), 12, 72–73, 111; Japan surrendered, 71

  Shambhala, 143

  Shiller, Robert, 98

  shock wave, 43

  Shutt, Charles, 107

  Silicon Valley, 98

  singularity theorems, 271

  Smolin, Lee, 197, 198, 199, 200, 241

  Smyth, Henry DeWolf, 79; member of Atomic Energy Commission, 84

  “Smyth report,” 79–80

  Snow, C. P., 94

  SoHo, 98

  Solvay, Ernest, 18

  South Pole Telescope collaboration, 58

  Soviet Atomic Espionage, 46

  Soviet education and training system, 11, 100, 101–3

  Soviet Education for Science and Technology (Korol), 99, 100

  Soviet Professional Manpower (DeWitt), 99

  spacetime, causal structure of, 257

  Special Committee on Atomic Energy, 81

  spontaneous symmetry breaking, 189, 190

  Sputnik satellite (Soviet), 97, 100, 104, 105

  stagflation, 8

  Standard Model, 13, 49, 166–69, 170, 193; fundamental forces, 169; and Higgs mechanism, 171

  Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe (Humphreys), 246

  “Star Wars” program, 113

  Steinhardt, Paul, 199, 200

  stored-program computation, 91

  Strangest Man, The (Farmelo), 25

  Strassler, Matthew, 182

  string theory, 23, 241–43

  Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), 49

  superconducting magnets, 163

  Superconducting Supercollider (SSC), 156, 181, 214; demise, 157, 163, 248; in Waxahachie, Texas, 158

  Super Kamiokande facility in Japan, 49

  supernova explosions, 239, 252–54

  superposition, 126

  supersymmetry, 242

  Susskind, Leonard, 244

  symmetry, 168–69

  synchrocyclotron at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, 159

  table of integrals, 86–87, 88

  Taking Astronomy Back: The Heavens Declare Creation (Lisle), 246

 

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