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
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