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Black holes are undoubtedly one of the all-time coolest phenomena in astrophysics. With his theory of relativity, Einstein initially predicted their existence as the inevitable result of gravitation on some of the more massive objects in the universe. But according to Fulvio Melia's new book Cracking the Einstein Code: Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics, for more than four decades after the publication of Einstein's ideas, this phenomenon, along with the rest of Einstein's theory, remained a curious abstraction for most scientists who lacked the final set of equations that would allow them to empirically verify its principles.

Then came Roy Kerr, the twenty-nine-year-old Cambridge graduate who solved the great riddle in 1963, transforming Einstein's theory into an applicable description of how real objects in the universe actually behave—including black holes. As a recent review in the New Scientist notes:

The most intriguing application of Kerr's solution is in describing objects that are so massive and so dense that their gravitational field prevents even light from escaping. Einstein himself was skeptical that such "black holes" could exist in nature. Just as Kerr was developing his solution, however, the first compelling evidence for black holes was found. Today, black holes are thought to be commonplace, including the "supermassive" variety that lurk at the centre of most galaxies, and Kerr's solution has become a vital tool in astrophysics and cosmology.

Indeed, today more than 300 million supermassive black holes are suspected of anchoring their host galaxies across the cosmos, and the Kerr solution is what astronomers and astrophysicists use to describe much of their behavior.

Offering a detailed account of Kerr's great discovery Fulvio Melia's Cracking the Einstein Code: Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics showcases of some of the most important science of the twentieth century.

For more check out the review in the New Scientist or read this excerpt from the book.

Archived in History and Philosophy of Science | Mathematics and Physics | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Because Albert Einstein’s equations so accurately describe the world around us, they seem timeless. But in truth, we have only understood how to apply his theory of general relativity for less than fifty years. When Einstein published his description of the effect of gravitation on the shape of space and the flow of time in 1916, few scientists knew what to do with it. Enter Roy Kerr, a twenty-nine-year-old Cambridge graduate who solved the great riddle in 1963. The solution he proposed emerged coincidentally with the discovery of black holes that same year and provided fertile testing ground—at long last—for general relativity. Today scientists routinely cite the Kerr solution, but even among specialists few know the story of how Kerr cracked Einstein’s code.

Part biography, part chronicle of scientific discovery, Cracking the Einstein Code unmasks the history behind the search for a real-world solution to Einstein’s field equations. Offering an eyewitness account of the events leading up to Kerr’s great discovery, Fulvio Melia vividly describes how luminaries such as Karl Schwarzschild, David Hilbert, and Emmy Noether set the stage for the Kerr solution; how Kerr came to make his breakthrough; and how scientists such as Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne, and Stephen Hawking used the accomplishment to refine and expand modern astronomy and physics. Today more than 300 million supermassive black holes are suspected of anchoring their host galaxies across the cosmos, and the Kerr solution is what astronomers and astrophysicists use to describe much of their behavior.

Sometimes dramatic, often exhilarating, but always attuned to the human element, Cracking the Einstein Code is ultimately a showcase of how important science gets done.

Read the press release. Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in History and Philosophy of Science | Mathematics and Physics | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of the stories making today's headlines, the continued technical glitches in the Large Hadron Collider should particularly resonate with some Chicagoans—especially those with PhD's in particle physics. Until the construction of the LHC, the Batavia based Fermilab was home to the world's most powerful supercollider, the Tevatron, so named because of its ability to accelerate particles at energy states of up to one terravolt, (TeV). But since an international consortium of scientists powered up the LHC, which boasts a target operating energy seven times that of the Tevatron, the lab has been preparing to fade into the background as the new collider takes over its position conducting experiments at the cutting edge of particle physics.

But since 2007 several malfunctions have delayed CERN's first sub-atomic smash-ups, and now, as has been widely reported this morning, another malfunction may set those experiments back even further.

As the New York Times notes, this is obviously bad news for researchers and engineers eager to demonstrate the scientific payoff promised by the 15 year, $9 billion dollar project, but for the folks back at Fermilab, it may mean that the Tevatron gets to stay online for a little while longer as scientists whose work doesn't require the full capacity of the LHC return to Batavia during the interim for some good old 1 TeV particle-smashing.

And what better to enhance the experience of Fermilab's return to center-stage, than Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb, and Catherine Westfall's fascinating historical account of the labs in Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience. Recalling a time when thick glasses and pocket protectors were all the rage and names like Robert R. Wilson and Leon M. Lederman rang throughout the accelerator tunnels, Fermilab takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of the labs, with a special focus on its early role in the rise of "megascience,"—the collaborative struggle to conduct large-scale international experiments—in the context of the Cold War. Delivering a detailed account of the growth of the modern research laboratory and capturing the drama of human exploration at the cutting edge of science, Fermilab takes an illuminating look at science's past, and perhaps its future as well as scientists return to the labs, granting the accelerator another chance at isolating a Higgs boson, or perhaps shedding some light on the nature of dark matter before the LHC takes over the spotlight—eventually.

For more info see this special website for the book.

Also, for a fascinating look at the life and career of the lab's namesake, who's work also helped set the stage for the research performed there, see this excerpt from Fermi Remembered, edited by James W. Cronin.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | History and Philosophy of Science | Mathematics and Physics
Posted by TXM at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In October, New Scientist reported that large black holes, vestiges from a pre-Milky Way universe, could be floating undetected in our galaxy. If we find them, the magazine suggests, they could help us understand the violent birth of the Milky Way itself. But if the threat of rogue black holes has you a little worried, Three Steps to the Universe is here to bring this, and other recent discoveries involving cosmic phenomena, into clearer focus. Explaining how we know what we know about everything in space—from our familiar sun to black holes and dark matter—David Garfinkle and Richard Garfinkle take readers on an utterly fascinating tour of the universe, revealing along the way how scientists uncover its mysteries.

Read the press release.

Archived in Mathematics and Physics | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since the successful launch of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN last week, all eyes have been on Switzerland. But closer to home, Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois, houses the Tevatron, a landmark particle accelerator. In anticipation of the publication this fall of the definitive history of the laboratory, Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience, we asked Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb, and Catherine Westfall to reflect on what the LHC means for Fermilab and for the future of physics:

Congratulations to CERN for the successful launch of the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider, the latest excursion into the frontier of high energy particle physics!

For more than 25 years the energy frontier machine has been Fermilab's Tevatron, the 1983 superconducting extension of the 1972 Main Ring. Now the LHC will be the machine at the energy frontier. The LHC will enable high energy physicists from around the world to explore deeper into the unknown frontiers of the universe. While the times and technology are vastly different in 2008, much of the same excitement and drama of the turn on of CERN's LHC was felt by physicists at the turn on of Fermilab's Main Ring and the superconducting Energy Doubler/Saver, now called the Tevatron . Although the dress styles are different the spirit remains the same as the frontier beckons!

For further reading, check out editor James W. Cronin's collection Fermi Remembered . Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience will be published in December.

Archived in Books for the News | Mathematics and Physics
Posted by SXH at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Wednesday, September 10, after 14 years of preparation, scientists at the CERN laboratory switched on the Large Hadron Collider and the world didn't end. To untangle what exactly the LHC is and how it might (or might not) destroy the world, we turned to black hole and dark matter experts David Garfinkle and Richard Garfinkle, author-brothers of the forthcoming Three Steps to the Universe: From the Sun to Black Holes to the Mystery of Dark Matter. They urged calm and offered the following soothing words of wisdom:

Strange as it may sound, scientists are not actually willing to risk destroying the Earth just for a few experimental results. Most of them are fond of the place and would prefer that it still be there after they, as the monster movies say, throw the switch. Yet, somehow, many reports about the startup of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN have included the dire warning that it may create a micro black hole which would eat up the entire world.

In medicine such a risk would be described as contra-indicated. The general reaction in the scientific community if such were really possible would be What are you, crazy?

It's frustrating that this has been a main focus of reporting. To be fair, a decent number of reports have treated this idea with humor, but they have done so without talking in depth about the real scientific purpose of the LHC. As a result, much of what anyone has heard is either, Black hole, we're doomed or Black hole, we're doomed. Yeah, right.

Continue reading "No, the Swiss will not destroy the world" »

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Books for the News | Mathematics and Physics
Posted by SXH at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The August 16 edition of the Guardian published a short but positive review of John D. North's Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology. The review praises the book for its comprehensive exploration of these two sciences, and their integral role in helping mankind to define his place within the universe. From the Guardian:

At nearly 900 pages, this is a suitably monumental book about the biggest subject of all: the cosmos.… From Stonehenge and ancient China, where sunspots were first recorded in 28BC (European astronomers didn't spot them until the 17th century), to today's search for dark matter, Machos and Wimps, this remarkable work brings together the global history, theories, people and technologies of astronomy to tell a story that "has very few intellectual parallels in the whole of human history."

See the review on the Guardian website.

Archived in History and Philosophy of Science | Mathematics and Physics | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now available in paperback—Optimists believe this is the best of all possible worlds. And pessimists fear that might really be the case. But what is the best of all possible worlds? How do we define it? Is it the world that operates the most efficiently? Or the one in which most people are comfortable and content? Questions such as these have preoccupied philosophers and theologians for ages, but there was a time, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when scientists and mathematicians felt they could provide the answer.

This book is their story. Ivar Ekeland here takes the reader on a journey through scientific attempts to envision the best of all possible worlds. He begins with the French physicist Maupertuis, whose least action principle asserted that everything in nature occurs in the way that requires the least possible action. This idea, Ekeland shows, was a pivotal breakthrough in mathematics, because it was the first expression of the concept of optimization, or the creation of systems that are the most efficient or functional.

Tracing the profound impact of optimization and the unexpected ways in which it has influenced the study of mathematics, biology, economics, and even politics, Ekeland reveals throughout how the idea of optimization has driven some of our greatest intellectual breakthroughs.

Read the press release.

Archived in Economics | History | Mathematics and Physics | Philosophy | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Joseph Mazur, a professor of mathematics at the University of Marlborough, published a review today of Ivar Ekeland's newest book The Best of all Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny in the international journal of science, Nature. In his review, Mazur praises the book for its fascinating exploration of the work of eighteenth-century French intellectual Maupertuis, a philosopher and physicist whose ideas—as Mazur notes—continue to have a profound impact in both fields to this day. Mazur writes:

The eighteenth-century French philosopher Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis gave us the principle of least action: in all natural phenomena, a quantity called 'action'—for him, the product of mass, distance travelled and velocity—tends to be minimized. In his view, God, being the supreme mathematician, had created the "best of all possible worlds" by insisting that everything in it obey the principle of least action, an economy of effort—a metaphysical rule designed to support the laws of mechanics.

In The Best of All Possible Worlds, Ivar Ekeland skillfully traces the historical developments of de Maupertuis' principle as it matured from a metaphysical directive in physical two- or three-dimensional space to a mathematical principle in a conceptual space where the action is not just minimized but stopped altogether. He then tracks it further to our modern notions of randomness measured by probabilities.

Yet despite its heavy subject matter, Mazur's review continues:

This complex story can be read with a minimum of effort, and we are left feeling that Maupertuis' principle works, even though we know that randomness is hardly compatible with minimizing actions.… [Ekeland's] explanations are clear and elegant, in the brilliant, effortless manner of Richard Feynman, and his prose is fluid, exhilarating and suspenseful. I tried to put this superb book down after chapter 4 but couldn't. It was as if some compelling force of nature had a purpose, an opposing directive in the best of all possible worlds.

Archived in Mathematics and Physics | Philosophy
Posted by TXM at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The April issue of Physics Today features a glowing review of Iwan Rhys Morus's When Physics Became King. Reviewer Robert M. Brain wrote: "Excellent.… A few good histories of physics during that remarkable age [the 19th century] exist—but none as readable or comprehensive as Morus's superb book."

When Physics Became King traces the emergence of this revolutionary science, demonstrating how a discipline that barely existed in 1800 came to be regarded a century later as the ultimate key to unlocking nature's secrets. A cultural history designed to provide a big-picture view, the book ably ties advances in the field to the efforts of physicists who worked to win social acceptance for their research.

Archived in History | History and Philosophy of Science | Mathematics and Physics | Reviews
Posted by at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The Presidential Search Committee of the University of Chicago has just announced that Robert J. Zimmer has been nominated to serve as president of the University of Chicago.

Zimmer is a mathematician and former University of Chicago faculty member. He currently serves as provost at Brown University. The Board of Trustees is expected to approve the recommendation on Friday. Zimmer would then succeed Don Michael Randel as thirteenth president of the University of Chicago.

Zimmer is the author of Essential Results of Functional Analysis. Functional analysis is a broad mathematical area with strong connections to many domains within mathematics and physics. This book, based on a first-year graduate course taught by Robert J. Zimmer at the University of Chicago, is a complete, concise presentation of fundamental ideas and theorems of functional analysis. It introduces essential notions and results from many areas of mathematics to which functional analysis makes important contributions, and it demonstrates the unity of perspective and technique made possible by the functional analytic approach.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | Mathematics and Physics
Posted by at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)