The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity by Pedro G. Ferreira (PDF)

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“One of the best popular accounts of how Einstein and his followers have been trying to explain the universe for decades” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Physicists have been exploring, debating, and questioning the general theory of relativity ever since Albert Einstein first presented it in 1915. This has driven their work to unveil the universe’s surprising secrets even further, and many believe more wonders remain hidden within the theory’s tangle of equations, waiting to be exposed. In this sweeping narrative of science and culture, an astrophysicist brings general relativity to life through the story of the brilliant physicists, mathematicians, and astronomers who have taken up its challenge. For these scientists, the theory has been both a treasure trove and an enigma. Einstein’s theory, which explains the relationships among gravity, space, and time, is possibly the most perfect intellectual achievement of modern physics—yet studying it has always been a controversial endeavor. Relativists were the target of persecution in Hitler’s Germany, hounded in Stalin’s Russia, and disdained in 1950s America. Even today, PhD students are warned that specializing in general relativity will make them unemployable. Still, general relativity has flourished, delivering key insights into our understanding of the origin of time and the evolution of all the stars and galaxies in the cosmos. Its adherents have revealed what lies at the farthest reaches of the universe, shed light on the smallest scales of existence, and explained how the fabric of reality emerges. Dark matter, dark energy, black holes, and string theory are all progeny of Einstein’s theory. In the midst of a momentous transformation in modern physics, as scientists look farther and more clearly into space than ever before, The Perfect Theory exposes the greater relevance of general relativity, showing us where it started, where it has led—and where it can still take us.

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⭐“THE PERFECT THEORY: … THE BATTLE OVER GENERAL RELATIVITY”The question is often asked: ‘What was there before the Big Bang?’ According to Einstein, the answer is straightforward: ‘There is no “before” – no time – before the Big Bang.’ Or, if one is more philosophically inclined: ‘Asking about the “before” is like asking what is north of the north pole.’Until Einstein, Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry were unchallenged. This began to change with James Maxwell’s unified theory of electricity and magnetism. At first glance, these appear to be two separate phenomena. We see electricity in the lights in our home or lightning in the sky, and magnetism in the magnets stuck to our fridge. Maxwell’s theory showed that both were simply different manifestations of one underlying force.Then scientists discovered an oddity: Light traveling along two pathways – one longer and one shorter – arrived at their common destination at the same time. Newtonian physics had no explanation for this.In 1905, Einstein, working as a clerk in the Swiss patent office, explained the oddity with his “special theory of relativity:” the speed of light in a vacuum is constant for all observers regardless of the speed of the source of the light ( for example a car or train). In short, there is no possible speed faster than the speed of light. Further, light is related to mass… and made of particles.THEORY OF GENERAL RELATIVITY (1907) According to Einstein, space and time are intertwined in a cosmic dance as they respond to every single speck of stuff imaginable, from particles to galaxies, weaving themselves into elaborate patterns. In the world of relativity, time and space and gravity are intertwined and interchangeable; time dilates and space contracts. Gravity deflects light like a lens; in the universe there are no Euclidean straight lines.Initially, Einstein’s theory posited that the universe was in a fixed state with the galaxies and stars evenly spread out. This made his field equations simpler but led to a strange result. At some point, all the evenly distributed bits of energy and matter would start moving and eventually start falling in on itself.Abbé Georges Lemaître was a brilliant, determined Belgian priest. A Jesuit, he had been sent by the Catholic Church to MIT in Massachusetts for his PhD. LeMaitre took the equations of general relativity and constructed a radical new evolving view of the universe, a view that Einstein himself refused to accept for a very long time (1923). In Lemaitre’s way of looking at the universe, the curvature of space evolved as if points in space were hurtling away from each other. He had noticed that if a source of light is moving away from the observer the effect is that the light will look redder. Conversely, if a source of light is moving toward the observer, its spectrum is shifted to shorter wavelengths and will look bluer. This is known as the “Doppler Effect.”Einstein personally met with Lemaitre but dismissed his work with a dismissive zinger: “Although your calculations are correct, your physics is abominable.” Einstein’s prejudice against an evolving universe held enough weight to prevent other scientists from pursuing this theory.BIG BANG THEORYAfter 1927, Lemaître wanted to take Einstein’s general theory of relativity even further. He realized that Einstein’s theory could say something about the beginning of time. Indeed, if you accept that the universe is expanding, the next obvious question is how and why it started to do so. If you follow the universe back in time, you come to a point where the whole of spacetime was squashed into a single point. It was bizarre and – according to most scientists – altogether too much like the Biblical/Genesis description for the origin of the universe. Yet though Lemaitre was at pains to keep religion out of his writings, that is what his models seemed to show: an initial moment when spacetime comes into being.This time, Einstein, after some initial hesitation, warmly embraced Lemaitre’s theory. When the two were invited to speak at Caltech in 1933. Einstein and Lemaitre spent most of their free time together walking the Pasadena school’s beautiful gardens. Other scientists were not so enthusiastic. The great astronomer Edwin Hubble derisively called the theory “Big Bang.” Hubble never abandoned his derision of Big Bang, though most other scientists, after the discovery of relic radiation left over from it, gradually accepted it.Other scientists followed up on Lemaitre’s idea that the universe started in a hot dense soup from which all of the elements emerged. . The argument goes as follows: Imagine a universe in its simplest state, just full of hydrogen atoms. The hydrogen atom is the elementary building block of chemistry, a proton and an electron held together by electromagnetic force. If you bombard a hydrogen atom with enough energy, you can rip the electron away from its nucleus, leaving a lone proton floating in space. Now imagine a gas of hydrogen atoms pushed together in a hot bath. They will collide, move around, and be bombarded by energetic photons, beams of light whizzing around. As time passes and the universe cools, electrons stick to nuclei, leaving mostly hydrogen and helium atoms, an almost insignificant smattering of heavier elements, and a faint, almost invisible background of light.DARK HOLESThe General Theory of Relativity until the 1950s was pretty much abandoned by most in favor of Quantum physics. Einstein’s theory was interesting, but not of much practical use. Robert O. Oppenheimer, head of the WWII Manhattan Project, in 1947 became head of a program at Princeton with Einstein as his colleague. In this environment, Oppenheimer took up General Relativity which he had once dismissed. Oppenheimer found a strange, incomprehensible solution to the general theory of relativity that had been lurking in the background for almost twenty-five years. Oppenheimer showed that if a star is big and dense enough, it will collapse out of sight. The collapsed star would be hidden by a “shroud” and nothing would be able to escape outside the shroud, not even light. . But truly, no one has actually seen a black hole. To look at black holes directly is a bit of a paradox. There is nothing there to see— black holes are invisible behind the (“Schwarzschild”) shroud.The need for connected computer power from multiple geographic locations to investigate these dark holes gave birth to web browsing and, thus, our present web-browsing culture!QUASARSEdwin Hoyle and William Fowler posited the existence of superstars in a very tiny area of space with masses of a million or a hundred million suns like ours, so immense that they could produce tremendous amounts of energy during their lifetimes. They were dubbed “Quasars.” In 1993 the existence of these superstars was confirmed. STRING THEORY, LOOP QUANTUM GRAVITY THEORY, “M-THEORY” AND DARK ENERGYString theory started off as a cottage industry in the late 1960s, trying to explain the behavior of a whole zoo of exotic new particles that were appearing in particle accelerator experiments. These “exotica’s” it was thought, were better described as wiggly pieces of string. String theory as applied to the universe, and there are many, many versions of this, posit that there was a “before” Big Bang, a time when the universe was collapsing until it reached the “quantum” wall and magically started expanding again. Both string theory and “M-theory” also posit that the universe has more than four dimensions and that we live on a three-dimensional “brane” in this spacetime and “roll” with it.Richard Feynman, probably the model American physicist of the 20th Century didn’t like these theories. “I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction,” he said. “I don’t like that they’re not calculating anything. I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up (this) explanation….”Gravity was once viewed as a kind of innocuous background, certainly irrelevant to all versions of string theory, quantum and cosmological. Today, gravity plays a key role in all these theories. Almost all scientists believe that gravitational waves, analogous to electrical/magnetic waves, are still out there waiting to be discovered. If discovered, it might even reveal the nature of the infamous “dark energy” that seems to cement together the universe according to many models.AUTHORS CONCLUSION: WE NOW KNOW LESS THAN WE THOUGHT WE DID AND A NEW THEORY WOULD BE HELPFUL.“The picture of the universe that cosmology was revealing ….. was truly bizarre. It seemed that we understood far less of the universe than we had originally thought. In fact, a large fraction of the universe appeared to be in the form of exotic substances we had never seen in a laboratory. Dubbed “dark matter” and “dark energy,” they were out there, affecting spacetime, yet strangely elusive and undetectable.”

⭐Great book on the history of 20th century physics, truly inspiring for anyone doing research—regardless of the field, and also full of rich details shedding light into the lives of the amazing human minds that it covers. I couldn’t put it down!

⭐This is a wonderful book written for the general public whose topic is the history of general relativity, its evolution as a theory, and the modern evolution of gravitational theory to present attempts to obtain quantum gravity. It is a very well written book by an astrophysicist at Oxford who works in this area. The author has his personal experiences with the theory mixed in throughout the book.Its first chapter is entitled “If a Person falls Freely”. This is part of a thought experiment that Einstein used in order to come up with his ideas for general relativity. It discusses his ideas interspersed with Einstein’s personal history as a Swiss patent clerk up to his becoming a physics professor at Berlin, then spending his later years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.One of the earliest solution’s of general relativity was Schwarzschild’s showing the existence of black holes. As expected black holes are a large topic with Oppenheimer, Synder, Wheeler. Penrose, Hawking, Bekenstein, Zel’dovich and other discussed. Cosmological implications from general relativity are also a big topic with the expanding universe of Friedmann and Lemaitre, Einstein’s introduction of the cosmological constant in order to have a static universe, up to present day modification to gravitational theory. The history of general relativity is intermingled with experimental developments in astronomy which is explained very well. This book shows how a theory and experiments grow off of one another and shows how science is advanced in this way. One example of many in the book is shown very well with the work of Jim Peebles over many years. The book discusses a variety of personalities involved in the development of general relativity and also shows how it was carried on in the secretive Soviet society.The history to obtain a quantum theory of gravity as explained in this book and is very interesting and informative. All the big names in physics that you can think of have tried their hand at this problem and none have come up with a solution. The reasons why are discussed. This book has others that you might not have heard of such as DeWitt and their tales.If you are curious about Einstein’s theory of general relativity and its implications in astronomy, cosmology along with recent attempts to obtain a quantum theory of gravity this is a wonderful book to read and well worth your time.

⭐It is rare to find a physicist who can write something that is enjoyable to read, but I think I found one. Ferreira doesn’t write for junior high students but he also doesn’t talk down to anyone who isn’t well-versed in physics as if they are irrelevant. If you have even a passing interest in Einstein and his champions and detractors, you will enjoy this book.

⭐The Perfect Theory gives a perfect survey of the history of general relativity theory. It stands out from other biographys of GR in that it humanizes the story by carefully communicating how individual human beings were infected by the beauty and poetry of the theory. This infection often led to life long attempts by many individuals to unfold the mysteries of the theory and rigorously verify its predictions.The book does not go into detail about GR. It assumes the reader has at least a general knowledge of the theory. So if you are looking for a book that explains GR this is not for you. It is however, for the reader who wants to understand what a scientific theory really is and how it can help to answer deep questions about the structure of the universe and the nature of reality. It is a breezy read written by a great mind of a man who thoroughly understands the subject. He successfully communicates his own passion for GR and leaves the reader with the feeling that greater things are yet to come as a new generation of physicists seek to unravel the mysteries of life.

⭐A history of General Relativity from Einstein’s formulation to the present day, including the now-disputed announcement of the discovery of Gravity Waves. As a practising scientist, Ferreira has been in the centre of the latest developments and arguments of the theory. He manages to get through the book without a single mathematical equation, though sometimes in the descriptions, for example of ‘hairy’ black holes, you think that some mathematical formulation might explain the colourful language and descriptions. We learn that the field equations of General Relativity are very difficult and are solved for special cases, and clearly there is a level of mathematical understanding that excludes the general reader.But if you want to understand importance of people like Stephen Hawking then this book is a very good introduction

⭐Really well done history of relativity. Easy to read, with a good mix of insight into the theories, and the consequential discoveries and also the narratives of the characters involved up to and since Einstein’s great work.

⭐Well written without any of the usual incomprehensible jargon. A really good book to get some basics about relativity, gravity et al.

⭐Awesomeness. Totally absorbing easy read. I can’t judge the science but I can the readability. Unputdownable.

⭐Excellent quality. Thankyou RDR

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