This not a summary in the conventional sense, but a stitched-together memory palace built from my own highlights and marginalia—so that when I read this blog years from now, the universe Singh unfolded will quietly reassemble itself again.
Epigraph
Place three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars. JAMES JEANS
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. STEVEN WEINBERG
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite. PAUL DIRAC
The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. ALBERT EINSTEIN
Chapter 1 In the Beginning
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. GALILEO GALILEI
Physics is not a religion. If it were, we’d have a much easier time raising money. LEON LEDERMAN
Wilhelm Röntgen, who discovered X- rays in 1895, was a firm believer in the Pythagorean philosophy of mathematical science, and once pointed out: ‘The physicist in preparing for his work needs three things: mathematics, mathematics and mathematics.’
physicist Berndt Matthias put it: ‘If you see a formula in the Physical Review that extends over a quarter of a page, forget it. It’s wrong. Nature isn’t that complicated.’
Thomas Huxley stated it thus: ‘The great tragedy of Science— the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.’
The Athenians had a penchant for adorning their city with idols, which is why in 1638 Bishop John Wilkins pointed out the irony of a man who turned gods into stones being persecuted by people who turned stones into gods.
Henri Poincaré rightly declared: ‘Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.’
Scientists are driven by curiosity, rather than comfort or utility.
Egocentric attitudes may have been a contributory factor behind the dominance of the geocentric world- view,
Albert Einstein condemned common sense, declaring it to be ‘the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen’.
he had stated that men have more teeth than women, a generalisation based on the observation that stallions have more teeth than mares. Although he was married twice, Aristotle apparently never bothered to look into the mouth of either of his wives.
When condemned to death for his crimes, he responded: ‘Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.’ On 17 February 1600, he was taken to Rome’s Campo dei Fiori (Field of Flowers), stripped naked, gagged, tied to a stake and burned to death.
Bruno Ussher was able to pronounce that the date of creation was Saturday 22 October, 4004 BC. To be even more precise, Ussher announced that time began at 6 p.m. on that day,
Bishop Ussher’s date was recognised by the Church of England in 1701, and was thereafter published in the opening margin of the King James Bible right the way through to the twentieth century. Even scientists and philosophers were happy to accept Ussher’s date well into the nineteenth century.
Chapter 2 Theories of the Universe
‘The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.’
‘You are a smart boy, Einstein, a very smart boy. But you have one great fault: you do not let yourself be told anything.’
He threw in a jingoistic justification, suggesting that it was the duty of an Englishman to defend Newtonian gravity against the German theory of general relativity.
In his heart and mind Dyson was pro- Einstein, but he hoped that this subterfuge would convince the authorities. His lobbying paid off.
physicist Ludwig Silberstein, who also considered himself an authority on general relativity, once said to Eddington, ‘You must be one of three persons in the world who understands general relativity.’ Eddington stared back in silence, until Silberstein told him not to be so modest. ‘On the contrary,’ replied Eddington, ‘I am trying to think who the third person is.’
when asked by a student how he would have reacted if God’s universe had turned out to behave differently from the way the general theory of relativity had predicted. In a wonderful demonstration of mock hubris, Einstein answered: ‘Then I would feel sorry for the Good Lord. The theory is correct anyway.’
Einstein, who had once been the epitome of rebellion, had become an unwitting dictator.
Chapter 3 The Great Debate
The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.
The less one knows about the universe, the easier it is to explain.
First, get the facts, then you can distort them at your leisure. MARK TWAIN
The citations honouring the winners and the acceptance speeches seemed to go on for ever. There was not even a drop of wine to help cheer up proceedings, as prohibition had come into force earlier that year. In the audience, Albert Einstein whispered to his neighbour: ‘I have just got a new theory of Eternity.’
a civilised man does what is best for all, while the savage does what is best for himself. Civilisation is but a huge mutual insurance company against human selfishness.’
Chapter 4 Mavericks of the Cosmos
Cosmologists are often in error, but never in doubt. LEV LANDAU
In 1931, while on a sabbatical at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), he and his second wife, Elsa, paid a visit to the Mount Wilson Observatory as Hubble’s guests of honour. They were given a guided tour of the giant 100- inch Hooker Telescope, and the astronomers explained how this gigantic machine was essential for exploring the universe. To their surprise, Elsa was not particularly impressed: ‘Well, well, my husband does that on the back of an old envelope.’
favourite insult—‘ spherical bastard’. Just as a sphere looks the same from every direction, a spherical bastard was someone who was a bastard whatever way you looked at them.
Twinkle, Twinkle little star, I don’t wonder what you are;
For by spectroscopic ken,
I know that you are hydrogen;
Twinkle, Twinkle little star, I don’t wonder what you are.
‘All science is either physics or stamp collecting.’
This blinkered comment backfired when the Nobel Committee awarded him the 1908 chemistry prize.
He had a disdain for chemists, which was not uncommon among physicists. For example, Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli was angry when his wife left him for a chemist: ‘Had she taken a bullfighter then I would have understood, but an ordinary chemist…’
That evening, after we had finished our paper, I went for a walk with a pretty girl. As soon as it grew dark the stars came out, one after another, in all their splendour. ‘Don’t they shine beautifully?’ cried my companion. But I simply stuck out my chest and said proudly:‘ I’ve known since yesterday why it is that they shine.’
called England ‘the domain of the salted potatoes’. At the end of 1934 he left for the Soviet Union. According to his biographer Iosif Khriplovich, his emigration was driven by ‘idealism and English cooking’.
He became fascinated by a microscope given to him by his father and used it to analyse the process of transubstantiation. Having attended Communion at the local Russian Orthodox church, he dashed home with a piece of bread and a few drops of wine secreted in his cheeks. He put them under the microscope and compared what he saw with everyday bread and wine. He could find no evidence that the structure of the bread had transformed into the body of Christ, and he later wrote: ‘I think this was the experiment that made me a scientist.’
Pierre Curie had been killed many years earlier when he was hit by a horse- drawn wagon in 1906. Marie then started a relationship with Paul Langevin, who is in the photograph next to her. Langevin was still married, which led to a public scandal. When Curie received notice of her second Nobel prize she was asked not to come to Stockholm to collect her prize in person, because of the embarrassment it might cause to the Nobel committee. She ignored the request, explaining that the prize was presumably a reward for her science and not her personal life.
ylem (pronounced ‘eye- lem’), a word he stumbled upon in Webster’s Dictionary. This obsolete Middle English word means ‘the primordial substance from which the elements were formed’
Gamow was infamous for his limericks and his sometimes offbeat application of physics. On one occasion, he argued that God lived 9.5 light years from the Earth. This estimate relied on the fact that in 1904, at the outbreak of the Russo- Japanese War, churches across Russia had offered prayers requesting the destruction of Japan, but it was not until 1923 that Japan was struck by the Kanto earthquake.
‘Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.’
The BBC kept files on prospective contributors, and Hoyle’s file was marked with the words ‘Do not use this man’, probably because he was considered to be a troublemaker who continually kicked against the establishment. Nevertheless, producer and fellow Cambridge academic Peter Laslett disregarded the warning label and invited Hoyle to broadcast a series of five lectures on the Third Programme radio network. The series was aired at eight o’clock on Saturday evenings, and transcripts were published in the Listener magazine. The entire project was a huge success, turning Hoyle into a celebrity. The radio series is still remembered today because of a historic moment in the final lecture. Although the term ‘Big Bang’ has appeared in previous chapters of this book, its use has actually been anachronistic, because the term was originated by Hoyle during this radio broadcast. Up until the moment that Hoyle coined this catchy title, the theory had generally been known as the dynamic evolving model.
Chapter 5 The Paradigm Shift
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. ALBERT EINSTEIN
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it) but ‘That’s funny…’ ISAAC ASIMOV
Fiat lux
Elmer Davis, read the address and could not resist writing to Hubble and joking: ‘I am used to seeing you earn new and ever higher distinctions; but till I read this morning’s paper I had not dreamed that the Pope would have to fall back on you for proof of the existence of God. This ought to qualify you, in due course, for sainthood.’
Nikolai Kozyrev, who was sent to a labour camp in 1937 and sentenced to be executed for continuing to discuss his belief in the Big Bang model. Fortunately his death sentence was commuted to ten years’ incarceration when officials were unable to drum up a firing squad.
Vsevolod Frederiks and Matvei Bronstein, who were also supporters of the Big Bang model, received the harshest punishments of all. Frederiks was imprisoned in a series of camps and died after six years of hard labour, while Bronstein was shot after being arrested on trumped- up charges of being a spy.
An argument is judged “right” by these people because they judge it to be based on “right” premises, not because it leads to results that accord with the facts. Indeed, if the facts should disagree with the dogma then so much worse for the facts.’
during the Second World War when he had the 100- inch telescope to himself.*
*ironically, the reasons Baade was successfully were: 1. second world war 2. baade was born German and hence not transferred to war critical departments 3. leaving him alone with the most powerful telescope in the world and nothing important to do 4. because of the war, there were frequent black outs in the city, reducing light pollution, further improving his observations
Hubble died of a cerebral thrombosis on 28 September 1953. Tragically, he was completely unaware that the Nobel physics committee had secretly decided to change their rules and recognise his achievements with a Nobel prize. In fact, the committee was preparing to make the announcement of his nomination when Hubble passed away.
two committee members, Enrico Fermi and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who decided to contact Grace Hubble. They were anxious to let Grace know that her husband’s unparalleled contribution to our understanding of the universe had not been overlooked.
research discoveries at Bell Labs have netted six Nobel prizes in physics, shared among eleven scientists, a record that is matched only by the world’s greatest universities.
1928, the year after AT& T began a transatlantic radio- based telephone service. The radio link could carry one call at a time at a rate of $ 75 for the first three minutes— equivalent to almost $ 1,000 at today’s prices.
Winston Churchill once observed: ‘Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.’
At last, he understood the source of the noise that had plagued his radio telescope and appreciated how highly significant it was. At long last the mystery of the omnipresent noise had been solved. It was nothing to do with pigeons, dodgy wiring or New York, but it had everything to do with the creation of the universe.
Gamow was asked if the recently discovered radiation was indeed the phenomenon that he, Alpher and Herman had predicted. Gamow stood at the podium and replied: ‘Well, I lost a nickel around here someplace and now a nickel has been found about the place where I lost it. I know all nickels look about the same, but yes, I think it is my nickel.’
Epilogue
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
The term ‘Big Bang’ implies some sort of explosion, which is not a wholly inappropriate analogy, except that the Big Bang was not an explosion in space, but an explosion of space. Similarly, the Big Bang was not an explosion in time, but an explosion of time. Both space and time were created at the moment of the Big Bang.
Observations show that stars orbiting the periphery of galaxies have tremendous speeds, yet the gravitational pull of all the stars closer to the heart of the galaxy is not enough to prevent these peripheral stars from flying off into the cosmos. Therefore, cosmologists believe that there must be vast quantities of dark matter in a galaxy, namely matter that does not shine but which exerts enough of a gravitational pull to keep the stars in their orbits.
calculations imply that the universe has more dark matter than ordinary stellar matter.
J.B.S. Haldane had tremendous foresight when he wrote in 1937: ‘My suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.’
‘SAGAN’ (‘Scientists Awestruck by God’s Awesome Nature’).
The chemist Charles Coulson coined the term ‘God of the gaps’ to point out that a deity who was supposedly responsible for everything beyond our comprehension would have his power diminished as each gap in knowledge was filled by science.
What is Science?
Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don’t know. BERTRAND RUSSELL
Four stages of acceptance: i) this is worthless nonsense, ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view, iii) this is true, but quite unimportant, iv) I always said so. J.B.S. HALDANE
Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. RICHARD FEYNMAN
