Accused can pick up a copy of the Smithsonian Magazine we publish them every month they are fantastic readings while you are waiting at the Doctors Office or whatever. Theres a handout you can also pick up on your way out and you will also notice tha that weved some post cards on the table. Two Nights Program a program in for science people and not science people and a way for you to curate. If you are curious about that, talk to me or check it out online. A couple of other orders of business, please silence any mobile devices and take the time to do so now and you will definitely want to do that tonight because you will notice we have cspan in the house. Tonight we have a professor of physics at th the university ofe sciences in philadelphia. His interests range from space, time and higher dimension to cultural aspects of science. The recipient of the fellowship fulbright scholarship and the literary award shes appeared on the history channel, Discovery Channel and pbs and is the author of science books including the quantum. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming doctor mohammed. [applause] i am delighted to be here and i think the associates for inviting me back. This is my second appearance for the group. The first one is about someone who may be more familiar to all of you, Albert Einstein. A couple weeks ago i gave a talk about all the einstein and i think it is fair to say that Everybody Knows who Albert Einstein is, so if you see this face on a poster, on a tshirt that everybody immediately recognized as alberrecognizes a, probably the most famous physicist of the 20th century, but im going to be talking about two other physicists tod today. He did some Television Shows where he explained the science to the general public. He was on the bbc and some american programs and he had a knack for explaining science. He was on some Television Shows including a film about Stephen Hawking and the Popular Science shows on pbs and other channels. You see him with the favorite venue he really enjoys drawing the diagrams and explaining them and that was one of his things. They investigate the Space Shuttle challenger disaster. Finally he made a name because he disagreed with the panels conclusion and he thought that it was too light so he thought that there was a direct reason for the disaster that have to do with something called the orings of the shuttle and he thought they were manufactured properly and we see a picture of him and an image of him dipping it into ice water showing that it was brutal when the experience calls which he thought the cause of the challenger disaster and he brought his own report from the commission explaining that. People that knew him knew that he was somebody that was very blunt and was investigating science and trying to get his roots to things. He was known in the 1960s for winning the 1965 guys. So this was the prize he won and heres the more serious picture of him. His favored part was the dancing and he wasnt so keen on being honored. He thought it was an honor to. It was a blessing he didnt want to be known as a Nobel Laureate he wanted to be known as an every maeveryman and common perh extraordinary guests to surprise people, Something Like a magician who could pull tricks out of his hat and he was someone who wanted to be a common person but then at the same time somebody with extraordinary tricks that could surprise and shock people. So he was known in some ways as much for his unconventionality as for his physics. So he wants to drown and he would stay up all night with his own go drums or congo drums and play into the night so people knew that he was around because they could hear his loud drumming and here is a picture of him come a portrait at a Costume Party that was run by his student. She used to have these themed parties and this is one of the. Also its shaped like one of his diagrams. He was in the musical and this one was very special. This one was itself pacific and he played the chief of valley high. The story in this we heard from the doctor a wonderful woman named shirley who directed the play is at caltech and some years before this she was staging a play and needed somebody to play the drums and the student producer said how about Richard Simon and she said who she said okay. If this professor can come and play thdrums he can participatee play and then she found out some more and realized that he was a Nobel Laureate and she got all intimidated and when she met him she said hello, just call me a dick. I dont want any pretense. And in a position like the drummer or a performer he didnt want people to prefer to the specifics but someone different because he wanted to amaze people in so many different ways through acting were drumming or music and all different things. He knew the skill and do it so well. It happened a few weeks after surgery in the early 1980s and he needed more than 100 pints of blood because a blood vessel near his heart burst. He survived in a couple weeks later was the play and he wasnt going to do it. So they talked him into it. It called for someone heroic that would dive into a pool to rescue pearls from him even and come back up and in the process gets bit by a crocodile and thats where you got your scar so he said i guess i should do the play so he got up and only had enough energy to call out some lines. When the spotlight was on him all of a sudden everybody was completely shocked. Here was this guy that famously were disturbingly almost lost his life and blood drive saved him and now a few weeks later he was on the stage and they got up and gave him a standing ovation and then here he is speaking to a commencement address in caltech. He has the mannerism of the preacher and told. Dry jokes. This is john wheeler being honored by president johnson very quiet and conservative in his outward appearance he was much more radical and was extraordinarily light within his ideas. He thought about the whole universe and tried to remake the whole universe fundamentally from scratch. He went through different phases where he thought it is the one element that the universe is made of . Hed become driven by that and try to store the implications of that as much as possible and then see what drove these diagrams and you would see he would fill up a blackboard from left to right including things like black holes and wormholes and things like this to explain and he was a revolutionary in the same. A lot of ideas we see today mike black holes and quantum physics ideas come from so from his clever mind came things like wormholes and connections. No matter what you put into a black hole you see they throw themselves in that it can only tell you three things about itself. Its only these three things so he compared that to Something Like a marine or soldier who could only report his name, rank and serial were supposed like you said they had no hair so that is a quote from him that they are indistinguishable and here we see a diagram of something called the participatory universe. He wrote down his ideas that are preserved today as the American Philosophical Society because if you are a scholar you can go in there and look through the notebooks and see all of the strange ideas that he came up with over the years and the diagrams for them and then this is a portrait of one of his Favorite Places which is an island off the coast of maine where he would sit and think. And he loved the coast of maine where even though it would be that cool chile he would sit there and write and think. He would sit there and think. Let me go back in time now to september, 1939. It is the time that the pivotal papers are publishe were publise journal called the physical review. He worked with him over in denmark. Then he worked with him over the United States to try to unravel the secrets of Nuclear Fission. This was important because once it was discovered in germany and they were worried about the nazis developing an atomic bomb, so somebody named lisa who worked with a german physicist knew about this discovery and told him. He came to United States in january of 1939, gave a talk in princeton and revealed to john and others including Albert Einstein the germans, Nuclear Fission program that the germans created Nuclear Fission and einstein wrote a letter to roosevelt. Suggesting that it be available to the United States research it. That took a couple of years. That is when the Manhattan Project got off the ground. The other paper in physical review aside from the Nuclear Fission paper was a paper by Robert Oppenheimer on black holes they are just cold collapsed stars and oppenheimer speculated in september 1939 that a large star come if it was large enough, would collapse down into something that is so ends. Other physicists pretty much ignored the paper and thought it was kind of a quark or made a mistake and that peter was forgotten from 1939 until the 50s or 60s. The person who discovered it was john wheeler and he discovered it when he looked at the paper again. He looked at the same issue and thought this stuff is really interesting. So he resurrected the idea before collapsed stars that came black holes and today they were a very important part. In the fall of 1938 but then 1939 in the second year was when he got off the ground with his research. When thinking about the prospect of the germans developing, he didnt really think about that too much because he didnt think that the United States would even get involved in world war ii. He was of the opinion that we wouldnt get involved and that people like and rico and einstein and so forth for a little bit too worried about Nuclear Fission and it wasnt something to concern oneself with that time. Later, he regretted this profession and i will explain why in a few minutes. So here he is at princeton and reading a book. He lived in the graduate college and worked with wheeler as a teaching assistant so his job was to be a teaching assistant and he already named a name for himself many times does a brilliant thinker even at the young age of 21. He has three articles already in the New York Times about his work by the age of 21 so the first on21 to thefirst one is wh school. He won a mathematics competition. He was the highest scorer. He was brilliant of calculation. He was always good at turning out results, computing. And then he was in the honor roll and took a competition. He came out the highest individual score in the country for the competition. Harvard offered him a full scholarship to go there as a graduate student that they discouraged because they wanted him to do Something Different so he wanted to go to princeton because princeton had this amazing smasher in his basement in the Physics Building where particles will circle around many times this year to magnets and then just at the right moment would smash into the target producing all sorts of other particles and finally he was fascinated by the idea that he could look at those results and do calculations and make predictions about the particles. He liked to calculate and come up with an answer to a. How does it fit into the bigger picture. It would steal him in that direction. He needed to meet to discuss his teaching responsibilities. He needed this responsibility to look for the mechanics course. So they read a book called mechanics and this text burke antext forpanther with the home assignments. There were a lot of procedures people out there and the other had his offices final and he was painted as a young assistant professor i need to manage my time. So he had a pocket watch and put it out on the table. Simon looked at it he was a little sneaky and went to find a store and bought his own watch. A friendship was born at that moment. And from that point on, they had a friendship based on joking with each other and also being very honest with each other and inspiring each other to spire the most farflung ideas in physics but then to try to make something of it to come up with a calculation that would make sense and match reality. So, you can guess whose job was the idea and then to do the calculation was simons job. It made an unusual pair and simon would wear Shirt Sleeves and have a very thick accent, spoke very loudly sometimes come at it an,didnt use the best la. He was very genteel, always watched his words very carefully. But the two of them got along very well. He admired his ability to be a little while and not care what other people think. He admired his family life and was nice to people, so in a late life interview, simon said i wish i was as nice as we are inviting students to my house and being really kind of two people. Well, simon was kind of people that he also could be kind of moody. Wheeler was always very, very straightforward with people. And if youre a kind person. Now of course simon also had his bongo playing side which go brot him a lot of press. The. He was much wilder. This was between september, 1939 in december, 1941, which is summer 1981 is when a lot of physicists were recruited to work in the Manhattan Project including wheeler and simon. They both took on roles in the Manhattan Project at this time. So, when you look at this timeframe, it is Pretty Amazing what they got done in this period with less than two and a half years. Simon did all the work that he needed for his thesis, for his doctoral thesis and in less than two and a half years. So, let me talk a little bit about the Research Together. So, the Research Together became known as a wheeler signed an observer theory. Well, which was all that about . Well, that had to do with how electrons interact with each other using electricity or the electromagnetic action. The standard picture at the time, which is now the picture today is modified is that when an electron interacts with another electron, they share another particle called a photon which is the carrier of the electromagnetic force. So, one elect john oscillates and then it gives off a photon and that its another s survey y dont sit bacbalance it back anh each other kind of like to volleyball players might dont they volleyball back and forth between each other and that creates the interaction between the two. So, you need the intermediate particle just like you need to e volleyball in a volleyball game to create the interaction. So the great physicist calculated how an electron could interact with itself to create kind of a ball of charge, so the model was imagining this as a ball of charge and these charges are going to interact with themselves using the photons ph, and if you calculate this using direct fear he which was developed in the 1930s were the late 1920s and early 1930s, if you do this calculation, you get a very strange answer. Also if you compute the energy of two electrons interacting with each other, using that you also get an answer of infinity. And many different calculations, using direct method give you an answer of infinity. Which is very unsatisfying. It is a crazy answer so in order to address this, Richard Feynman thought of a radical idea. He said well, the problem that youre getting infinity with disasters can be eliminated if you just eliminate the intermediary. Eliminate having a photon or a light particle exchange between the two electrons. We all know that there is light out there and it will be produced by the electrons themselves. Through their mutual interactions which would take place over a distance. This is known as the action at a distance theory. The action at a distance theory was not new. Isaac newton when he was talking about the plan is going around the sun, use the action at a distance theory to explain why earth and the other planets are gravitationally attached to the son. Newmans idea was that there is Something Like an invisible threat connecting hours and the other planets with the sun. Well, later, maxwell, the great scotchman says in the 19th century, wait a minute. Lets come up with an idea of intermediaries like something called a field which would be an intermediary, which would convey a force from one thing to another. And in the case of electromagnetism, that field was called the electromagnetic field. Which would be kind of like a wave going from one to the other. The quantum version of that is to say in quantum physics, a weight is the same of the particle. A wave is like a particle going back and forth. And that particle is known as a photon or light particle. And this is called technically known as a wave packet. Kind of like imagine, a little wave like an ocean wave but find to a small region so it is a little bit like a particle. Just like you took part of an ocean wave and created and if like a ball around it and then that is a wave packet. So that is the idea that quantum physics was considering. And this is what feynman decided to eliminate just to get the right answer in a calculation. So he was going back, it was a little bit retro. Going back to the idea of action in a distance with one modification. There needs to be a time delay because as we know, electron interaction with another electron must do so at the speed of light. So he built in a time delay. And once he had this idea is lets come up with the idea of direct interactions between electrons and maybe we can get somewhere with this. And wheeler pointed out a conundrum. He said well, if you have any electrons going through space, theres something called radiation resistance which is an interaction between electron with radiation that is going to slow it down. Which means you need light. And feynman was little bit disappointed in himself. Because the very first time that he mentioned this idea to wheeler, he immediately saw the drawbacks. And feynman thought well, my dear must be so bad that wheeler immediately saw the problem with it. Like within five minutes. But the real answer was that wheeler had been thinking about the same idea coincidently and wheeler had worked through the idea and saw that there was a drawback. So wheeler and feynman were really on the same wavelength at that point. And not real waves but signals. So they both felt about signals without light. In a way that appreciate when electron, sometime later you shake another electron. They tried to get this right for this radiation resistance. The original model did not have it. So wheeler came up with a suggestion, what if, when you shake an electron, then the other electrons in the area send a signal back to that electron that slows it down through space. And yes it is a shaken electron, instantly get signals from all of the other electrons. And that worked the only qualm, the only problem is that the other signals have to travel back within time. So violates the law of cause and effect. Wheeler was like well, okay lets get rid of the law of cause and effect. And feynman said well, you are the professor so, okay. Lets get rid of cause and effect. To the combined the waves that go forward for the signal i should say, that was forward in time, the signal goes backward in time. Mix it up 5050 and they got good answers. Good calculations. But they were not done yet because that was the classic picture, classical meaning, if you did not have any quantum haziness. So they both knew that to get the full picture, you could not have exact path between the electrons. You cannot have a direct signal. Need something a little hazy. Quantum physics involves haziness. So they needed to quantize this problem by making it a little murky. Wheeler tried that a little bit but then he asked feynman to do it. To quantize the problem. Now, while feynman was working on quantize the problem, feynman was in his dorm room and got a phone call. It was wheeler. And he said, feynman, i have this great idea. We know that electrons interact directly, what if all of the electrons in the universe were one and the same . And that an electron, a single electron going backward and forward in time zigzag and forward, not just signals would travel back in time but electrons would. And we would see these backward in time, negative electrons as positive electrons. They both knew then that there is such a thing as positive electrons. They are called positrons. And they have been discovered a couple years earlier. They were a result of one of the other theories that had detected positive electrons. Wheelers idea was a negative electrons back in time is the same as 140 time and vice versa. And that would explain why all of the electrons in the universe are here. They are the same electron. I like to think of this as Something Like the movie, back to the future two. Where he needs to return to the same town as he wasnt back to the future, the first one. And correct the problems in time. Well, at that point when he goes backwards in the 1950s again and back to the future number two, there are two marty mcfly. If we keep going with signal there was only one more sql of that movie. But suppose you had thousands of sequels to the movie. It was so popular. And then mcfly kept going back to the 50s again and again. He could have thousands of himself or even millions. Thats with the electron was doing and the one electron theory. Feynman took one thing from this theory, the idea that electrons going backward in time are positive. He took the essence of one thing and get rid of the rest of the theory. He did not discard the rest of it because the theory cant possibly be right because we dont see as many positive electrons as we do electrons in space. So that theory is wrong but feynman was still using that eerie use today. Much later in life, at a restaurant in pasadena, feynman would meet another student of wheeler and say, after willard came up and talked about some of his ideas and they sounded kind of zany, feynman said, we think that we are has gone crazy in his later years . He has always been crazy. And he mentioned the one electron universe to thoren and said well, you know the trick is to take the essence kind of like peeling the layers of an onion. We take the heart of the idea and you forget the skin. You forget the outer part. You take his ideas now usually on the mark. So at the time of Feynman Research of princeton, he married his childhood sweetheart. He met Arlene Greenbaum in queens. She was a girl from queens. And they met at a dance. And he kept in touch with her throughout mit. And then he stayed in touch with her at princeton and at one point he decided it was time to marry her. Since they been going together for so long. Going steady as they said at the time. So then unfortunately, she developed a cough and the cough turned out to be tuberculosis. Which at the time, there was no medicinal cure for tuberculosis. There was a place you go to call the sanitarium. You rest up and if you are very lucky, it would cure itself and you would go into remission. But of course, 11 people died from tuberculosis because there was not a way to treat it besides from hoping for the best. So when he got married, his parents were completely opposed to the marriage. They were very upset. Especially his mother. His mother wrote to him and said you know, it is not eating spinach. It is not something you have to do just because youve been going steady with this girl. It is not like you have to force yourself to get married even if you do not really want to. And he wrote back to her and said, it is not like that at all. Im in love with her. And we do so much for each other. She cheers me up and i learned so much from her. She has an amazing person. And i saw doctor princeton and he said, this will be fine. You just need to take some precautions. But your find to get married. So feynman and arlene went to a city office in Staten Island. They got married by a clerk. And their honeymoon was the Staten Island ferry ride where they got in the car and he drove her in his car to a sanatorium in new jersey. Now known as hospital in new jersey. That was a honeymoon. It was really very sad but he was not sent the time. He really loved her and she was a very creative person. She had a great sense of humor. She was an artist. She taught piano lessons. She always managed to cheer him up. She was one who cheered him up. He did not have to cheer her up. She was always very upbeat. And they still had that hope for a long life together. Now, she inspired him to become interested in art. Which led eventually, to his diagrams which he would show how electrons which are represented by probably feynman diagram. Reactive physicist what he is most famous for this is one of the things. Notice he eventually added the light particle back in. He would have to, to get the theory to work. Eventually for his nobel prizewinning work. Feynman was very proud of his diagrams. And later in life, when he was at caltech in his later years, he purchased a dodge van. He had it painted with the diagrams on the side. Just so people can stop him and they would park somewhere. Lets say a service station. And some would say to him, what are those strange diagrams on the side . And he said i invented these. [laughter] he was a bit immodest like that. Like you brag about what he did. He liked to talk about his accomplishments. He did not really like necessarily awards or honors but he liked to go to the average person on the street and say like, look at this cool thing that i did. And amaze people that way. You may have seen the van on the t. V. Show, the big bank theory. The actual feynman band was preserved and fixed up for the big bank theory. Then the final scene of an episode in the big bank theory, a replica was blown up. So happy to know it was a replica. There was an entrepreneur that owns the van and he is trying to donate it to this institution. Trying to donate it to the smithsonian. I do not know how that has progressed but he has something on twitter where he talks about that a little bit. The van has traveled around the country. The replica van at the end of the show was blown up. Let me go back a little bit to the Feynman Wheeler theory and talk about the implications of it. The Feynman Wheeler theory to quantize the theory, to making hazy, feynman came up with the idea of looking at all of the possible ways 11 electron can interact or possibly interact. Then adding them up in a kind of weighted average. In saying the most probable path is the one taken in classical aclassical meeting on a daytoday scale. A mundane scale. The scale of you and me. But then on a particle level there is a quantum haziness. A murkiness which is due to all of the other possible paths that are less likely. So let me give you an example of how this works. This is called suppose you work in dc. You live left stay in Silver Spring and you commute every day. And somebody says, how did you come into that . You say well, i came in on the metro. And i took a taxi. And i drove in. And i checked and uber. And they said, he did all of this at once . So theres a different possible ways of commuting. But imagine, the somebody said they did it all at once. That is a life have a quantum electron. The electron has all of the interactions and the most likely one is rated highly while the others are some out there in the haze. As you do it quantum calculation you have to take all of them into account. So of commuting, whatever the shortest distance is for the least expensive might be the most likely. Lets say the metro is the most likely because it is inexpensive and quick. And let said taxi would be the least likely because its very expensive but it was still be weighted. This is similar in some ways if you read fiction through the work of somebody and argentine writer that at the time simon was feynman was coming up. They came up with this classic short story called the garden of 14 paths. Which imagine some people in one kind of parallel universe, could be friends but because of warfare and another rendition of the enemies, and imagines books in which all the possibilities happen. So, in the book it mentions in the story, someone could die within the next chapter they are back again. And so forth. So all of the possibilities in nature, happen in a kind of labyrinth of time. This is a labyrinth idea of time which is very different from a linear time or cyclical time. Which are more of the older models. Feynman and creative writers suggested time as a labyrinth. A maze of possibilities. In which a bunch of things can happen at once. So as i mentioned in 1942, had to take a break from the work. To work in the Manhattan Project. His hobby when he was in los alamos, he went out there and arlene went to a sanatorium in albuquerque. And feynman would drive out there. He would tell her about all of the crazy things he did at los alamos. Which was topsecret. And one thing he would do was open up safes. At first they had key locks but they he would figure out how to get them open. And then they had combination locks that he would figure out by listening to them. And then one of the leading people on the project left classified papers in his desk drawer and had it locked and said theres no way you can get to that. And feynman reach the back of the desk and got the papers out. So it was through a crack in the back of the desk and he said see, i have your papers here and he said he was trying to show the security lapses. Or he would sneak through a hole in the fence. Leave the base and then come back. And north there was a where did you sign on he said yes, where did i sign out . So he liked to make people be amazed that way. He would drive to albuquerque with friends and he would tell arlene that he had the stories and she was very amazed. That would cheer her up. Unfortunately, 1945, arlene died of tuberculosis. And it was also sent in many other ways. The combination of working at los alamos, first the trinity test where they tested the bomb and then hiroshima and nagasaki. And also around the same time, late 1944, john will his younger brother, joe, died in italy. Right before joe died, he said the postcard to john saying, hurry up meaning hurry up with the bomb project. And from that point on, feynman and wheeler had different approaches to the bomb. At first he rose not register with feynman because he was so upset about arlene dying. But then it finally hit him. He was having lunch with his mother in manhattan. He thought about the idea of cities being destroyed. He got very depressed. And he vowed that if Something Like that happen again he would not get involved. He knew he cannot change the past but did not want to get involved. Wheeler thought that he should have gotten involved earlier. He shouldve kept going with this developed the bomb earlier and he would have perhaps, saves his brothers life and the lives of millions of people if the bomb was used in 1944 or 1943. If it had been developed earlier. Maybe world war ii would have ended earlier and millions of lives saved. Because of this, wheeler. , continued to be involved with the hbomb project. And one of the stimuli was clouse stuck around at los alamos and got into Atomic Energy later. Wheeler was an Atomic Energy Safety Commission where they were talking about reactive designs and wheeler remembered making an offhand comment like well, the main problem with reactors is not how their design but the celebratory and clouse did not say anything. Then a few months later they found out that clouse had been a soviet spy. And the soviets launched their own bomb. People were very upset how they found out the information so quickly. And clouse was arrested in england. And served a sentence, lid and end up in east germany. And everybody realized that he was the spy in the midst in los alamos. And feynman later joked that he should have been the spy because he was the one who violated security all the time but it was really that quiet friend who really turned out to be the spy. So, when i was involved in the hbomb project for a couple of years. And witnessed by air, the first test of an hbomb. And then when the project was winding down, he was given a secret report which investigated how much he knew about the bomb and maybe whether he knew about the hbomb or not because they Start Talking about the hbomb at los alamos. And they called it the super bomb. Had certain ideas for it. The question was, did the soviets know from him anything about the hbomb . That was a question and wheeler was commuting for traveling to d. C. And he brought the report with him. Which is kind of a nono as a classified report. When the train arrived in the station, it arrived Something Like 3 am. And as a convenience, they lowered the lights and said if you want you can sleep until 6 am when most people get up. And go about their business. Wheeler fell asleep and when he got up, the papers were gone. The classified papers. To this day, we do not know what happened to them. Who took the classified papers. And then, around then president eisenhower found out about this and was furious. And sent a reprimand to wheeler. By then he had switched gears and was back being a professor at princeton and looking into gravity and so it did not really affect his career that he got the reprimand. So, wheeler looked at this issue of review which had to papers. The oppenheimer paper and the wheeler paper and that gave him the idea of looking into what was considered black holes. Then he had a revelation. A set of anything in the universe being electrons or a single electron, everything is geometry. Which is einsteins theory of geometry. And he wanted to rebuild the entire universe based on geometric construction. So feynman at that time was at cornell. He was very depressed because of his wife and because of the atomic bomb. But then, i started getting interested also because he saw someone cast a plate with a cornell logo. And he thought he distilled the visits. Watch out then he started getting involved in physics again. That led to his nobel prizewinning work. And he still played the drums, let off steam. Then, he got remarried to his second wife. He met mary at a cornell cafeteria. And they talked about art history. They had some conversations that work memorable. Feynman had a sabbatical in brazil where he learned to play other drums and had a great time. And he thought i should really be married. Hey, that young woman mary louise, was kind of neat. We had a great conversation. Maybe i will write to her and she is interested in getting married. He rose to her. She accepted by mail, postal mail. And they got married and then feynman took a job in caltech. They moved together to southern california. And they were married for four years. When she did not realize is that he did a couple of things that would annoy her greatly. Calculus and bongo drumming. Those were the grounds for this divorce. [laughter] but they said the third time is a charm he did marry again. He met a young woman on a lakefront in geneva during a conference. She was a nanny. A british nanny. And he convinced her to be his housekeeper. At caltech. But he was also interested in her. She came over on a housekeeper visa. Then after she was housekeeper for one year, he proposed to her and they got married. That is when his third wife, you see how happy he was to be married to her. [laughter] the best minute at the wedding was this very cool artist, sculptor named jerry and armenian artist who was kind of a wild figure. Simon was playing bongo drums and he started dancing. He said i like that guy. And they taught each other their trades. Feynman tried to teach in physics which, was sort of semisuccessful. But he taught feynman how to paint. So these are actually paintings of feynman. He became quite an accomplished artist. Amateur artist. He would alternate between sketching and calculators. [laughter] and, also while he was at caltech, he was involved in musicals and went to parties. The annual parties with a theme. Each year there being a party, a question that you have to answer with a costume. So as i mentioned, one year, it was just as your favorite religious figure and he just as a himalayan monk. Another year, he just as i think it was your famous person. He just he dressed as god. Then it was head of state so it was queen elizabeth. Another year it was an astronomical body. He went in a suit and tie and peoples and what astronomical body are you supposed to be . And he said hi, i am serious. And he wanted people to say, surely you must be joking. Which was the name of one of his famous books. So as i mentioned, wheeler became interested in the theory of general relativity. Which was convenient because einstein was one of his neighbors. So he went a few doors down for a few blocks down and talk to einstein about general relativity. He even brought students for the first general relativity classes to einsteins house and had einstein come over to give a talk. That is when he came up with the idea that everything is made of geometry. He came up with the idea of self gravitating objects which you hope to particles. Somewhat the wrong size to be particles. There was Something Like the size of a son and he wanted them to be the size of an electron. So a little bit off and connections his face. He came up with the idea of tiny wormholes but his graduate students would blow these up a little bit and come up with the idea of wormholes or interstellar travel. He would often consult he would often consult with einstein. This is a physicist with him walking and talking. As i mentioned, later, his student would take this wormhole idea and make it into realistic schemes for traveling through space. Taking shortcuts through space. Which is originally motivated by carl sagan book contacts. And this later led to the movie interstellar. In the 50s , wheeler had another student, hugh everett. Who questioned another aspect of quantum physics on a fundamental level. We take a measurement in quantum physics, the observer affects the measurement because as soon as the observation is taken, if there are two different possibilities, the system is said to collapse into one of the two possibilities. And hugh everett thought that was ridiculous. How could a human observer affect the quantum measurement . This may have been inspired by a talk that einstein gave to everett and others when he joked that if a human can make an observation, why not a mouse about why do you need to have a human . I never thought deeply about this. And visited princeton, he brought this up. But bohr would not hear of it. At the idea of human observers affecting things was fine. They thought the theory works, why tamper with it . Everett came up with an idea that instead of involving observer, when you take a measurement, the universe will split into one of the two possibilities. And the observer was split to. So therell be two clubs of the observer. One would be in one version and the other in a another version. You have a cat in a box and he taken measurement and you open up the box and one version of the cat is alive, the other version the cat is dead. The universe was split. One observer will be happy to see that the cat is alive. The other will be sad to see that the cat is dead. And they would not know that about each other. And the advice was to tone this down. This will never fly. Just tried to use the math but do not say parallel universes. Do not talk about people splitting. So everett really toned it down but later, the ideas were rediscovered in the 70s. By another physicist. And then become popular since then. So there is a branch of physicists who are really interested in this many worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. It is by no means a majority but it is a significant minority who still believe this idea. So, this is everett. The difference between the idea is that reality itself splits instead of reality sort of blended together in the idea from feynman. In his idea to have these paths that are blended together in one reality. Everetts idea is that reality splits. Just like the cat paradox. One in which the cat is not live and one in which the cat is alive. Probably wheelers greater contribution is the idea of black holes. Which he did not come over the network and he heard the conference but he promoted it. So he is famous for black holes. This is a picture of him with a shirt on this a student of his so the great conundrum with black holes about what happens if you toss this sort of information into a black hole . Which is technically known as entropy. And the blackhole will expand and the area of a black hole represents its amount of disorder. So wheelers probably strangest idea is called the participatory universe. Basically saying, when it is common or measures the past, he or she is taking a quantum measurement. Then therefore, that person can collapse the state of the past. And change the past and perhaps, the result of astronomers taking measurements today is to create changes that creates the conditions eventually for life. And if it were not for these measurements, you would not have the universe the way it is today. In a very special state that can produce life which produces astronomers to take the measurement. They have this closed circle of time. Then they all thing remaining is the question, how come existence . Why do we exist . And wheeler called this idea self excited circuit. He looked back in the past and it creates the present. And this was popularized in a 1986 Readers Digest article which got him a lot of attention. He got a stack of fan mail and he only looked at a bit of it because he did not really want to be known as the new age guru. Which people were looking at him as. He spent the rest of his life considering the question, how come resistance . That was the final question. I personally had the opportunity to meet wheeler in 2002, he said that he was spending his time exploring that question. Which he never found an answer to. And no wonder, it was a very big, philosophical question. But he thought that perhaps, he could solve anyway the meaning of life. By thinking about it. And that was john wheeler, always thinking about the big picture. And the reactions of these ideas was well, you know, lets focus on the here and now rather than the big picture. Lets try to do calculations and progress forward rather than looking at everything. In the 80s, feynman was ill with cancer. He had the Challenger Commission but by then he was very ill. In 87, he witnessed a supernova of 87. And it was very special to him because he said that he had a supernova and now i had mine. I think he knew at that time he did not really have long to live. He died in 1980 8f cancer. Wheeler outlived him by 20 more years. And he died at the age of 96. We see wheeler at the gravitational wave observatory for which his students would win the nobel prize for the study of gravitational waves. So kip thorne is the second Nobel Prize Winning student of john wheeler. And has always been grateful to wheeler for his mentorship. When wheeler died, freeman said he was kind of like a prophet looking out over the Promised Land and his people the Promised Land is new ideas in physics and those inheriting the wheeler legacy our modern theoretical who owned a great debt to wheeler. So all of this and more is in my book, which as mentioned, i would be happy to sign for anybody who is interested. You can learn more about feynman and wheeler. But now, i would be glad to take some questions from the audience about feynman, wheeler and the physics that they were involved with. [applause] thank you. We have a microphone back here in the middle aisle. If youd like to ask a question we ask that you come to the microphone so we can all hear it. I am right over here. Hello microphone is right here. Hello. What about they shared the prize with feynman but you not mention them. Maybe they are in your book. Also, i was glad to see Freeman Dyson mention. I believe he was involved with a lot of tying these things together also. Is an excellent question. And i do go into that more in my book. Theres a lot more in my book that i can cover in one hour talk, as you can imagine. What happened was, there was somebody named lewis who came up with a quirk in quantum physics that cannot be predicted. And he presented his results at a conference at Shelter Island which is off the coast of long island. And feynman and another physicist were there. They heard about this and set up to come up with a reason for what was called explaining the slight shift in energy that electrons undergo. That could not be explained by ordinary quantum physics. So this man came up with all of this, presented at the next conference of the series which was in the pocono mountains in pennsylvania. For the pocono conference. At the same conference, feynman was there and had his own theory involving not the wheeler feynman version but a modified version that had light particles when he made the same prediction for this. So both of them came up with successful predictions for this. There were two different methods. Feynman had a lot of diagrams and the other one had a lot of mathematical calculations. And then there was one third equivalent method in japan, published in the japanese journal but not well known in the United States. All three were reasonable approaches. It took Freeman Dyson who knew feynman and took a workshop two pieces together and come up with a unified version of the three theories that he published in a paper that showed how all three theories were equivalent. That is why all of them share the 1965 nobel prize. And if there had been 1 4 person, it would have been Freeman Dyson. Interestingly, he came up with a theory on a Greyhound Bus trip back from his workshop. He came up with this whole scheme and he is a really, a brilliant person. He is still active today in his 90s. About one year ago, i had the pleasure of meeting him at the institute for advanced study. And i got to chat with him about his work with feynman. Which was very interesting. This is sort of a story. My brother is a theoretical physicist from chicago. He now believes there is a fourfold universe. Yes and no, forward and backward. For guides and then make a decision, they vote together. That is his idea of god. Okay. I found after talking to him for 20 years i finally understand it. Yeah, i think you know, im not going to theological questions. So in fact [inaudible] so, feynman was well know and as an educator. And well known for the lectures that fundamental physics back in 63 or 64 at caltech. I was wondering to what extent he was looked upon as a mentor and a great influence on upcoming physicists. And whether he had many famous students. He did have some graduate students. He worked with someone named george at caltech that developed an alternative to the model. And is a famous theoretical physicist. And the one that had the party, the annual parties, was quite active at the jet Propulsion Laboratory mentioned and was involved in different missions. He was another of his wellknown students. There is one of his first students, lori brown, well known history of the Physics Community. A number physics books. Not quite the same caliber as wheeler students. Wheeler has more students than feynman and more famous students. Particularly to nobel prize winners. Also students like hugh everett, or jason beck who made a real mark in the community. And hugh everett also became a Business Partner mind after he went into software. He got frustrated with physics and he wrote the first models to prove that nobody can win a nuclear war. And in any event, then it got very interesting and i started following peoples attention to his physics later on. Mostly after he died. But was in town recently because he got the nobel prize. I was fortunate enough to have a chance to ask him what he thought about theories. And he said well, you know, i am not a Quantum Mechanics that so i dont really know. He says but, i asked feynman about it was and he said you know, i think everett was probably right. Therefore as far as im concerned, everett was right. [laughter] the question is what you really think about this . You have any comments we think this debate might go . Editor interesting. Thats the first ive heard about feynman raising everetts work. I think in public forums, he was pretty neutral about these ideas. And it was a little bit too theoretical. But then i found in my research that feynman did have a bit of a side. Even though he always said no, i am hardnosed, i do not want to speculate. But for example, he went to a conference out in 1963. At cornell. On the nature of time and he did not want to embarrass himself. My philosophizing at a compass because it was a very philosophical conference. So he asked the organizer, tommy gold, and astronomy, to not listed in the program. Not listed in the conference proceedings. And it referred to him as mr. X throughout the proceedings. If you look at the proceedings, you have wheeler, tommy gold and mr. X. If you look at when he said, there is a lot of philosophy there. So i think that feynman sometimes you know, did kind of praise wild ideas or thought about these wild ideas. I do not think that he really was completely comfortable with that side of himself because he knew physics needed to be testable and i think public he would have said, the everetts ideas, lets look at them because we need testable ideas. But he would go back and forth on things just like wheeler did. He went through a lot of phases. He went through a late phase looking at information theory. Which is like wheeler did looking at Quantum Computers and the idea that everything is made up of information. Hugh everett, you mentioned, love physics. Part of it was just ahe left physics. Part of it was how he was received. The board completely ignored it and be Physics Community completely ignored it. But later, he noted physicist who had known about the theory started popularizing it and saying maybe this is right, then they have a conference and he was one of the honored guests. In texas. In the 1970s. Everett was really excited that people were looking at his theories. I was in caltech and in physics x in the 60s. About one everett was getting started. And what you told me, makes me think about the fact that in that saturday course, feynman kept coming back and back to this experiment. And he kept, it was clear tried to get something out of the audience. And we never really came through for him i think. But the split, this experiment means, when the electron lands on the thing, the universe splits. According to everett. And he may have been thinking that way. I dont know. He was trying to figure that out. I think even if you do not believe in the everett theory of the universe quitting, it is still kind of a mystery how if you observe double experiment one way, you get a wavelike behavior and another you get a particle like behavior which is kind of neat. It is a standard and quantum interpretation. But under observation you get one kind of behavior another behavior. Later where played with the idea it is what is called a delayed choice experiment. Send what the observer says, am going to do an experiment to produce Something Like a particle. And then changed his mind and says well im going to do an experiment to produce Something Like a wave . What happens if the change takes place in the middle of the experiment . He showed that that would also produce an effect. By the way, physics x, for those of you that do not know it was a course that he started at caltech. Which the only rule was, ask me anything and he would answer any student questions. It was a fun course. I think particularly for freshman. That when he started and it was very innovative. You know he would answer any questions that they will come up with. And he ran this for many years. If there are no more questions, thank you again to doctor paul halpern. [applause] thank you all for coming. Will be signing books outside. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] every month for the past 20 years, one of the nations top nonfiction authors has joined us on our indepth program for a fascinating three hour conversation about their work. Now, just for 2018, indepth is changing course. We have provided 12 fiction authors unto our set. Authors of historical fiction, National Security thrillers, science writers, social commentators like Colson Whitehead and brad meltzer, Geraldine Brooks and many others. Their books have been read by millions around the country. And around the world. So, if you are a reader and plan to join us for indepth on booktv, it is an Interactive Program first sunday of every month. It lets you call in and talk directly to your favorite authors. We got home and on came just trying to catch up on sleep and play with our dogs and we started the next day to go for walks in the woods which we like to do. But i was really, i was just in a state of total confusion. I did not know. And i relate in the book. I talked about what it felt like. The walks in the woods, yoga, cleaning my closets. My chardonnay and all of that. But then i began to see analysis or commentary about the election. And i just thought people were missing a lot of what i thought was critical to the outcome. We were just understanding what the russians had done. And after the election, the Obama Administration actually came out with even more information about what the russians had been up to, he began to sanction certain russian individuals and institutions for their interference in the election. But it took weeks. And months. Were still learning about what the russians were up to. And how effectively they were. You know there is a propaganda. This was not their first rodeo. They knew how to influence voters. They used social media. They used bots and trolls and content farms, fake news. They were rolling it all out. And of course the question being investigated is, where they coordinating with the Trump Campaign . We will find the answer to that. But i thought it was important that people begin to Pay Attention to what the russians did because this is an ongoing threat. It is not going away. We finally learned that they had intruded into election systems and may be as many as 30 or more states. What does that mean . How do we protect ourselves from a foreign adversary . So there was that piece which was not given the coverage i thought. Then as you remember, there was a big debate that started right at the election. Was it economic or cultural anxiety . And i thought that was an important question. Of course, there was economic anxiety but there is also a very clear theme and that Trump Campaign. Appealing to antiimmigrant attitudes, antiislamic, sexism, on and on. Slowly, information started coming out very well respected independent third parties that were looking at a lot of data. One of the things that struck me was that in exit polls, people is that the economy was the number one issue, maybe despite the rest at first getting across people heard me talking about jobs and income inequality and the like. Which i talk about endlessly. That was the important question for us to explore. Then voter suppression. Every day that goes by we are getting more information. Particularly first out of wisconsin with her so much evidence of voter suppression. And they have been excellent studies i think are compelling. It just went on. And as i was saying to myself, what happened . With a big question mark i said i want to know what happened. Up next on booktv after words, former Clinton Administration official argues that courts are exploiting the poor by charging excessive fines and fees for minor crimes. As a member of the outofpocket poverty caucus after words is a Weekly Program with guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. Guest host mr. Edelman is a pleasure to be with you today to discuss her book not a crime to be poor or the criminalization of
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.