A happy first night of hanukkah to all. To all of our members and donors think you for your continued support. I can talk to you about our programs or membership. It has a lovely winter scene this month. While youre waiting in the Doctors Office or whatever. Check out our programs. If you are already we put some postcard on the table outside. Its part of our new science literacy program. The is for both science people and not science people. If you are curious more about that talk to me a couple other orders of business. You will notice we have cspan in the house. If your phone goes off it will be on tv tonight. Let me tell you about tonights guest. Tonight we have dr. Paul halpern. His interest range from space, time to higher dimensions. The recipients about guggenheim fellowship. He has appeared on the history channel. In pbs. The author of 15 Popular Science books including the quantum elaborate is available for sale at the end of the program. [applause]. I am delighted to be here and i think Smithsonian Associates for welcoming me back. The first one was about someone who may be a little bit more familiar to all of you Albert Einstein a couple years ago i gave a talk about this. I think its fair to say Everybody Knows who Albert Einstein is. Probably the most famous physicists of the 20th century. Im going to be talking about two other physicist today. Some of you may not have heard of. Most people today are not so familiar with simon and wheeler is with Albert Einstein. They made a name for themselves on the 1970s and 80s. They did some Television Shows where he explained science to the general public. On the have a knack for explaining a science. Wheeler was not as well known. He did publish some Popular Science books. He was on some Television Shows as will including a brief history of time which was the film about Stephen Hawking but also some shows on pbs and other channels. We see him with his favorite venue. Drying diagrams and explaining them. And that was one of his things. Many people remember Richard Simon during the 1980s for for the challenger disaster commission. They appointed him along with Neil Armstrong to investigate the Space Shuttle challenger disaster. And simon made a name for himself that because he disagreed with the panels conclusion. And he thought there was a direct reason for this. He thought they were manufacturing properly. We see a picture of him with an o ring dipping into ice water showing that it was brittle which he thought was the cause of the challenger disaster and he wrote his own report explaining that. And this is quite surprising to people. The people who knew him knew that he was somebody that was very blunt and straightforward. And always investigating science and trying to get his roots with things. Simon was also well known in that 1960s before winning the 1965 nobel prize. Here is a more serious picture of them. We see how happy he is the favorite part was that dancing. He wasnt so keen on being honored. He thought it was an honor in and of itself. He did and not want to be known as a Nobel Laureate laureate. Something like a musician who could pull tricks out of his hat. He wanted to be one of the guys but at the same time someone with extraordinary tricks. This assignment was known in some ways as much for his own conventionality as for his physics. We see some typical poses here is the picture of him with his bongo drums. And play into the night so that people knew that he was around. Here is a picture of him at a Costume Party he went to an annual Costume Party that was run by his student al hibbs he was also known and now hibbs used to have these theme parties. It was the favorite religious figure. And he was dressed as a himalayan monk at the party. And an artist was there and she painted him and you you can see him holding a thunderbolt. Which seems appropriate. But also its shaped it shaped like one of his diagrams. Its really a very collaborative painting. We see here on the right he was involved in the annual caltech musicals and this the sun is very special this is South Pacific played the chief of valley high. The story behind this i actually heard personally from the director who ran the plays at caltech. And some years before this she was staging a play and she needed someone to play drums. And the student producer of the play said how about Richard Simon. If this professor can come and play the drums he can anticipate in the play. And he got all intimidated. Hello dr. Simon. I dont want any pretense. And as the way he was. He did not want people to refer to his physics. He wanted to amaze people in semi different ways not just to his physics but also through acting or drumming or music all different things. Language ability. He liked people to be surprised the story behind this particular play South Pacific is that this happened just a few weeks after he have surgery in which he almost lost his life. He needed more than a hundred pipe of blood. A blood vessel near his heart burst. There was an amazing blood drive. He wasnt in a do it. They talked him into it. He have a scar from the surgery. And they sent him this part the chief of valley high calls for someone who is a relic that would dive into a pool to rescue some girls from a maiden and come back up and maybe in the process get bit by a crocodile. Thats where you got your scar. And simon said really that should be the play. He got up he only had enough energy to call out some cohesions for the play. They do their thing on the stage. When the spotlight was on him all the sudden everybody was completely shocked. He almost lost his life in the blood drive saved him. A few weeks later he was up on stage and they just gave him a standing ovation. Now to john wheeler was a who was a much more quiet subdued figure. Alice has the mannerism of the preacher. They would tell very dry jokes. The typical poses with some papers. Not sure inside he was much more radical than simon. As he start to think about the whole universe. What is a fundamental ingredient of the universe. What is the one element that the universe is made up. He would become driven by that to try to square the implications of that as much as possible. He would fill up a blackboard from left to right. Including things like black holes. And explain these and he was a revolutionary in that sense. Quantum physics ideas. They come from john wheeler and his students. The connections between different parts of space and time. They have no hair serum. You see a stool, a flower through all of those things into a black hole but it can only i can only tell you three things about itself. Its a rate of rotation. Only those three things. They compared that to Something Like a marine or soldier who can only report his name, rank and serial number. Thats why he said black holes had no hair. And here we see a diagram of something called the universe. If you look backward in time that changes the past. That was another one of his wild ideas. He wrote down his ideas in the series of notebooks which are preserved today. 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. And then this is a portrait of him at one of his Favorite Places off the coast of maine where he would sit among the rocks and just sing. He would sit there and write and think. Simon preferred the beaches of california. They served the same purpose. Let me go back in time now to september 1939 which was a pivotal month in history september 1939 was the start of world war ii in europe. Thats when hitler invaded poland. It was also a time when two pivotable papers were published from the physical review. There was the main physical journal. Paper by john wheeler and his mentor and wheeler had worked with him over in denmark and then worked with him again in the United States to try to unravel the secrets of nuclear efficient. It was important because it was discovered in germany and there were worries about the nazis developing an atomic bomb. They would work with some german physicist knew about the discovery of that and told him and he came to the United States in january 1939 and gave a talk including Albert Einstein. Einstein wrote a letter to roosevelt morning roosevelt about that and suggested it would be developed. To research it. That took a couple of years it wasnt in december of 1941. The other paper in the physical review aside from the nuclear fishing paper was a paper by robert alzheimer. And they were speculated in september 1939 that a large star would collapse down to something and they thought it was possible. Other physicist much ignored the paper. Maybe they made a mistake. And that paper was forgotten from 1939 until the late 50s. The person who rediscovered it was john wheeler. He rediscovered it when he started looking at the nuclear fishing paper again. He thought this stuff is really interesting. So he resurrected the idea they became black holes in today they are a very important part of physics and astronomy. Here is the young john wheeler around the time he started at princeton. His second year was when he really got off the ground with his non nuclear research. He was looking for new opportunities to do something different. When he was thinking about the prospect of the germans he did not really think about that. He did not think that the United States would even get involved in world war ii. It would remain a european war they would not get involved. They were a little bit to word dash too worried about that. Later he regretted the decision to leave that. And i will expand in a few minutes. So completely by chance he was assigned a bright young student from mit so here is fine. He was just sitting and reading a book. As a teaching assistant so he thought his job was to be a teaching assistant. He have already made a name for himself many times as a brilliant thinker even at the young age of 21. He had three articles already in the New York Times about his work. He won a mathematics competition and he was a high score. He was brilliant at calculations. He could do mental math he was great at calculus and he learned at a very young age. He was always good and just trying out results in computing. And then mit he was at the honorable and that he took the competition called up putnam competition. Came at the highest individual score in the country. Harvard offered him a full paid fellowship to go there. They just discourage him. They wanted to go to princeton why because they have this amazing smasher in its basement. Where they would circle around. Many times feared by magnets and just at the right moment with smash into targets producing all sorts of other particles he could look at those results. And do calculations and make predictions. He loved to and come up with very specific results and come up with very specific results. He looked to calculate and come up with an answer convince himself that the answer was right in and see it match nature. He did not like philosophical speculation. How does it fit into the bigger picture. But, his meeting would steer him more in that direction. So he needed to meet with simon. Before they did Research Together he wanted him to know his responsibility. They read a book called mechanics. In this textbook and then there would be homework assignments and simon was the greater. He met a place called fine hall at princeton which was where einstein used to work with. He have his office at fine hall. And he was thinking as a young assistant professor i need to manage my time. He was really interested in being the most efficient. They have to Balance Research and teaching so he have a pocket watch. He took it out and put it on the table just to time himself. Simon looked at it the next time he was a little sneaky. He went to a five and dime store and bought his own wrist as soon as he took out his pocket watch dislike countering that. He took out his cheap watch and put it right next to that. They both burst out laughing. A friendship was born at that moment and from that point on they have a friendship based and joking with each other but also being a very honest with each other about physics and inspiring each other to consider the loftiest more farflung ideas in physics but then to try to make something of it to come up with the calculation that would make sense and match reality. Simon would wear short sleeves he have a very thick queens accent spoke very loudly sometimes unit use the best language. Always watched his words very carefully. But the two of them got along very well. He admired his ability to be a little bit wild and not really care what other people think. And simon admired his family life and the overall niceness to people. He said i wish i was as nice as wheeler. Simon was kind to people but he also could be kind of moody he was always very straightforward. Very converse it. He also had his bongo plane aside which got him a lot of press and art side and so forth. Simon always like to live the wildlife. In terms of ideas he was much wilder. The worked together took place in a brief window of opportunity this was a between september 1930 died in december 1941. Which is when in december 1941 that is exactly when its Pretty Amazing how much to get done. Let me talk a little bit about the Research Together. The Research Together became known as the absorber theory. What was that all about. That had to do with how electrons interact with each other or the magnetic interaction. The standard picture at the time which is now not today. Is that when an electron interacts with another electron the two share another particle. It is a carrier of the electric magnetic force. And then it gives off another photon and that hits another electron and the to bounce back and forth with each other kind of like to volleyball players might bounce up 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 the volleyball in the volleyball game to create the interaction. A great physicist named paul dirac calculated how an electron could interact with itself to create a ball of charge. Imagining electrons using the photons and then when you calculate this. Or the late 1920s. If you do this calculation you get a very strange answer which is like dividing one. It does not compute. That cant be right because the amount of energy if you consider it to be a ball of charge cant be infinity. Interacting with each other. Using the direct method. Many different conversations done using this message. Is very unsatisfying and its a crazy answer. In order to address this he thought of a radical idea. It could be eliminated if you just eliminate the intermediary and you eliminate having a photon or a light particle exchange between the two electrons. We all know that there is lay out there in the light would be produced by the electrons themselves through their mutual interactions which would take place over a distance. Is known as the action and the distance theory. It was not new when he was talking about the planets going around the sun used the actions to explain why earth and the other planets are gravitationally attached to the sun. Theres Something Like an invisible thread convex connecting ours and the other planets. Later maxwell the great scottish physicist said hey wait a minute. Lets come up at the idea of intermediaries which would be an intermediary which would convey a force from one thing to another. And in the case of electric magnetism. I would kinda be like a wave going from one to the other. The quantum version of that is to say a wave is the same as the particle. So the wave is kind of like a particle going back and forth between the two. Not particle is known as a photon or light particle. Kind of like imagine a little wave. Confined to a small region. Just like you took part of an ocean wave and created a ball around it. And that is the wave packet. That is the idea that quantum physics was considering and this is what he decided to eliminate just to get the right answer in the calculation. He was a little bit retro. Going back to the newton idea was meant one month one modification. There needs to be a time delay because as we know electron once he have this idea. Lets come up with the idea of direct interactions between electrons and maybe we can get somewhere with this. And he pointed out a conundrum. He said he was a little bit disappointed in himself. They immediately sought the drawback. My idea must be so bad that he immediately sought the problem the real answer was that he had been thinking about the same idea coincidently. They had worked through the idea and saw that there was a drawback. So they were really on the same wavelength at that point. The signals. Away that if you shake one electron then sometime later you shake another electron. The original model did not had it. We came up with a suggestion what if when you shake an electron the other electrons in the area send a signal back to that electron that slows it down through space. His as soon as we shake that. And that worked. The only qualm is that the other signals have to travel fast within time. It violates the law of cause and effect. They combined the waves that go forward or the signal that goes forward in time. And the signal goes backward in time. And they got good answers and calculations. But they were not done yet because that was a classical picture and meaning if you didnt have any quantum haziness. So they both know that to get the full picture you couldnt have exact paths between the electrons. You could happen in direct signal. Quantum physics involves haziness. They need to monetize this problem they tried that a little bit. But then he asked assignment to do it. Simon was one time in his dorm room and he got a phone call. And it was wheeler and he said it have this great idea we know that electrons interact directly. What if all of the elec