By Robyn Arianrhod
This year, 2012, marks the 325th anniversary of the first publication of the legendary Principia (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), the 500-page book in which Sir Isaac Newton presented the world with his theory of gravity. It was the first comprehensive scientific theory in history, and it’s withstood the test of time over the past three centuries.
Unfortunately, this superb legacy is often overshadowed, not just by Einstein’s achievement but also by Newton’s own secret obsession with Biblical prophecies and alchemy. Given these preoccupations, it’s reasonable to wonder if he was quite the modern scientific guru his legend suggests, but personally I’m all for celebrating him as one of the greatest geniuses ever. Although his private obsessions were excessive even for the seventeenth century, he was well aware that in eschewing metaphysical, alchemical, and mystical speculation in his Principia, he was creating a new way of thinking about the fundamental principles underlying the natural world. To paraphrase Newton himself, he changed the emphasis from metaphysics and mechanism to experiment and mathematical analogy. His method has proved astonishingly fruitful, but initially it was quite controversial.
He had developed his theory of gravity to explain the cause of the mysterious motion of the planets through the sky: in a nutshell, he derived a formula for the force needed to keep a planet moving in its observed elliptical orbit, and he connected this force with everyday gravity through the experimentally derived mathematics of falling motion. Ironically (in hindsight), some of his greatest peers, like Leibniz and Huygens, dismissed the theory of gravity as “mystical” because it was “too mathematical.” As far as they were concerned, the law of gravity may have been brilliant, but it didn’t explain how an invisible gravitational force could reach all the way from the sun to the earth without any apparent material mechanism. Consequently, they favoured the mainstream Cartesian “theory”, which held that the universe was filled with an invisible substance called ether, whose material nature was completely unknown, but which somehow formed into great swirling whirlpools that physically dragged the planets in their orbits.
The only evidence for this vortex “theory” was the physical fact of planetary motion, but this fact alone could lead to any number of causal hypotheses. By contrast, Newton explained the mystery of planetary motion in terms of a known physical phenomenon, gravity; he didn’t need to postulate the existence of fanciful ethereal whirlpools. As for the question of how gravity itself worked, Newton recognized this was beyond his scope — a challenge for posterity — but he knew that for the task at hand (explaining why the planets move) “it is enough that gravity really exists and acts according to the laws that we have set forth and is sufficient to explain all the motions of the heavenly bodies…”
What’s more, he found a way of testing his theory by using his formula for gravitational force to make quantitative predictions. For instance, he realized that comets were not random, unpredictable phenomena (which the superstitious had feared as fiery warnings from God), but small celestial bodies following well-defined orbits like the planets. His friend Halley famously used the theory of gravity to predict the date of return of the comet now named after him. As it turned out, Halley’s prediction was fairly good, although Clairaut — working half a century later but just before the predicted return of Halley’s comet — used more sophisticated mathematics to apply Newton’s laws to make an even more accurate prediction.
Clairaut’s calculations illustrate the fact that despite the phenomenal depth and breadth of Principia, it took a further century of effort by scores of mathematicians and physicists to build on Newton’s work and to create modern “Newtonian” physics in the form we know it today. But Newton had created the blueprint for this science, and its novelty can be seen from the fact that some of his most capable peers missed the point. After all, he had begun the radical process of transforming “natural philosophy” into theoretical physics — a transformation from traditional qualitative philosophical speculation about possible causes of physical phenomena, to a quantitative study of experimentally observed physical effects. (From this experimental study, mathematical propositions are deduced and then made general by induction, as he explained in Principia.)
Even the secular nature of Newton’s work was controversial (and under apparent pressure from critics, he did add a brief mention of God in an appendix to later editions of Principia). Although Leibniz was a brilliant philosopher (and he was also the co-inventor, with Newton, of calculus), one of his stated reasons for believing in the ether rather than the Newtonian vacuum was that God would show his omnipotence by creating something, like the ether, rather than leaving vast amounts of nothing. (At the quantum level, perhaps his conclusion, if not his reasoning, was right.) He also invoked God to reject Newton’s inspired (and correct) argument that gravitational interactions between the various planets themselves would eventually cause noticeable distortions in their orbits around the sun; Leibniz claimed God would have had the foresight to give the planets perfect, unchanging perpetual motion. But he was on much firmer ground when he questioned Newton’s (reluctant) assumption of absolute rather than relative motion, although it would take Einstein to come up with a relativistic theory of gravity.
Einstein’s theory is even more accurate than Newton’s, especially on a cosmic scale, but within its own terms — that is, describing the workings of our solar system (including, nowadays, the motion of our own satellites) — Newton’s law of gravity is accurate to within one part in ten million. As for his method of making scientific theories, it was so profound that it underlies all the theoretical physics that has followed over the past three centuries. It’s amazing: one of the most religious, most mystical men of his age put his personal beliefs aside and created the quintessential blueprint for our modern way of doing science in the most objective, detached way possible. Einstein agreed; he wrote a moving tribute in the London Times in 1919, shortly after astronomers had provided the first experimental confirmation of his theory of general relativity:
“Let no-one suppose, however, that the mighty work of Newton can really be superseded by [relativity] or any other theory. His great and lucid ideas will retain their unique significance for all time as the foundation of our modern conceptual structure in the sphere of [theoretical physics].”
Robyn Arianrhod is an Honorary Research Associate in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University. She is the author of Seduced by Logic: Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution and Einstein’s Heroes. Read her previous blog posts.
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By Gordon Fraser
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, neither the Atomic Bomb nor the Holocaust were on anybody’s agenda. Instead, the Nazi’s top aim was to rid German culture of perceived pollution. A priority was science, where paradoxically Germany already led the world. To safeguard this position, loud Nazi voices, such as Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard, complained about a ‘massive infiltration of the Jews into universities’.
The first enactments of a new regime are highly symbolic. The cynically-named Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service, published in April 1933, targeted those who had non-Aryan, ‘particularly Jewish’, parents or grandparents. Having a single Jewish grandparent was enough to lose one’s job. Thousands of Jewish university teachers, together with doctors, lawyers, and other professionals were sacked. Some found more modest jobs, some retired, some left the country. Germany was throwing away its hard-won scientific supremacy. When warned of this, Hitler retorted ‘If the dismissal of [Jews] means the end of German science, then we will do without science for a few years’.
Why did the Jewish people have such a significant influence on German science? They had a long tradition of religious study, but assimilated Jews had begun to look instead to a radiant new role-model. Albert Einstein was the most famous scientist the world had ever known. As well as an icon for ambitious young students, he was also a prominent political target. Aware of this, he left Germany for the USA in 1932, before the Nazis came to power.
How to win friends and influence nuclear people
The talented nuclear scientist Leo Szilard appeared to be able to foresee the future. He exploited this by carefully cultivating people with influence. In Berlin, he sought out Einstein.
Like Einstein, Szilard anticipated the Civil Service Law. He also saw the need for a scheme to assist the refugee German academics who did not. First in Vienna, then in London, he found influential people who could help.
Just as the Nazis moved into power, nuclear physics was revolutionized by the discovery of a new nuclear component, the neutron. One of the main centres of neutron research was Berlin, where scientists saw a mysterious effect when uranium was irradiated. They asked their former Jewish colleagues, now in exile, for an explanation.
The answer was ‘nuclear fission’. As the Jewish scientists who had fled Germany settled into new jobs, they realized how fission was the key to a new source of energy. It could also be a weapon of unimaginable power, the Atomic Bomb. It was not a great intellectual leap, so the exiled scientists were convinced that their former colleagues in Germany had come to the same conclusion. So, when war looked imminent, they wanted to get to the Atomic Bomb first. One wrote of ‘the fear of the Nazis beating us to it’.
Szilard, by now in the US, saw it was time to act again. He knew that President Roosevelt would not listen to him, but would listen to Einstein, and wrote to Roosevelt over Einstein’s signature.
When a delegation finally managed to see him on 11 October 1939, Roosevelt said “what you’re after is to see that the Nazis don’t blow us up”. But nobody knew exactly what to do. The letter had mentioned bombs ‘too heavy for transportation by air’. Such a vague threat did not appear urgent.
But in 1940, German Jewish exiles in Britain realized that if the small amount of the isotope 235 in natural uranium could be separated, it could produce an explosion equivalent to several thousand tons of dynamite. Only a few kilograms would be needed, and could be carried by air. The logistics of nuclear weapons suddenly changed. Via Einstein, Szilard wrote another Presidential letter. On 19 January 1942, Roosevelt ordered a rapid programme for the development of the Atomic Bomb, the ‘Manhattan Project’.
Across the Atlantic, the Germans indeed had seen the implications of nuclear fission. But its scientific message had been muffled. Key scientists had gone. Germany had no one left with the prescience of Szilard, nor the political clout of Einstein. The Nazis also had another priority. On 20 January, one day after Roosevelt had given the go-ahead for the Atomic Bomb, a top-level meeting in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee outlined a “final solution of the Jewish Problem”. Nazi Germany had its own crash programme.
US crash programme – on 16 July 1945, just over three years after the huge project had been launched, the Atomic Bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert.
Nazi crash programme – what came to be known as the Holocaust rapidly got under way. Here a doomed woman and her children arrive at the specially-built Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination centre.
As such, two huge projects, unknown to each other, emerged simultaneously on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The dreadful schemes forged ahead, and each in turn became reality. On two counts, what had been unimaginable no longer was.
Gordon Fraser was for many years the in-house editor at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva. His books on popular science and scientists include Cosmic Anger, a biography of Abdus Salam, the first Muslim Nobel scientist, Antimatter: The Ultimate Mirror, and The Quantum Exodus. He is also the editor of The New Physics for the 21st Century and The Particle Century.
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Image credits: Atomic Bomb tested in the New Mexico desert. Photograph courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Auschwitz-Birkenau, alte Frau und Kinder, Bundesarchiv Bild, Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons.
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By John L. Heilbron
Galileo Galilei by Domenico Tintoretto, 1605-1607.
Galileo is not a fresh subject for a biography. Why then another? The character of the man, his discovery of new worlds, his fight with the Roman Catholic Church, and his scientific legacy have inspired many good books, thousands of articles, plays, pictures, exhibits, statues, a colossal tomb, and an entire museum. In all this, however, there was a chink.
Galileo cultivated an interest in Italian literature. He commented on the poetry of Petrarch and Dante and imitated the burlesques of Berni and Ruzzante. His special favorite was Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, which he prized for its balance of form, wit, and nonsense. His special dislike was Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (The Liberation of Jerusalem), which violated his notions of heroic behavior and ordinary prosody. Galileo tried his hand at sonnets, sketched plots in the style of the Commedia dell’Arte, and delivered much of his science in dialogues.
The literary side of Galileo is not a discovery; a large specialist literature is devoted to it. But there is a gap in scholarship between the literary Galileo and the rest of him. How were his choices in science and literature complementary and reinforcing? What might be learned from his pronounced literary preferences about the unusual and creative features of his physics? How does Galileo’s praise of Ariosto and criticism of Tasso, on the one hand, parallel his embrace of Archimedes and rejection of Aristotle on the other?
Usually Galileo enters his biography already possessed of most of the convictions and concerns that prompted his discoveries and precipitated his troubles. One reason for endowing him with such precocity is that the documentation for his life before the age of 35 is relatively sparse. In contrast, a quantity of reliable information exists for his later life, after he had transformed a popular toy into an astronomical telescope and himself from a Venetian professor into a Florentine courtier (that happened in 1609/10 when he was 45). By paying attention to his early literary pursuits and associates, however, it is possible to tease out enough about his circumstances as a young man to give him a character different from the cantankerous star-gazer, abstract reasoner, and scientific martyr he became.
A quarrelsome philosopher, half-professor and half-courtier, whose discoveries refashioned the heavens and whose provocative use of them brought him into hopeless conflict with authority, is an attractive subject for portraiture. Add Galileo’s life-long engagement with imaginative writing and the would-be portraitist has his or her hands full. But the resultant picture, even if well-executed, would be a caricature. Galileo initially made his living and gained his reputation as a mathematician. Leave out his mathematics and you may have a compelling character, but not Galileo.
The mathematician and the littérateur have different ways of arguing. To fit together, one sometimes must give way. Galileo’s great polemical work, Dialogue on the two chief world systems, which misleadingly resembles a work of science, frequently privileges rhetoric over mathematics. When the scientific arguments are weakest, the two protagonists in the Dialogue who represent Galileo (his dead buddies Salviati and Sagredo) outdo one another in praising his contrivances and in twitting the third party to the discussions, the bumbling good-natured school philosopher Simplicio, for ignorance of geometry.
The mathematical inventions of the Dialogue that Galileo’s creatures noisily rate as unsurpassed marvels are precisely those that have given commentators the greatest difficulty. These inventions are extremely clever but evidently flawed if taken to be true of the world in which we live. Commentators tend either to interpret the cleverness as shrewd anticipations of later science or to condemn the shortfalls as just plain errors. From my point of view, these marvels should be interpreted as literary devices, conundrums, extravaganzas, inventions too good not to be true in some world if not in ours. They are hints at the form, not the completed ingredients, of a mathematical physics. Galileo’s old Dialogue and today’s Physical Review belong to different genres. Unfortunately, just as the Dialogue was not intended to meet the requirements of accuracy and verisimilitude of modern science journals, so the journals don’t reward the sort of wit and style with which Galileo brought together his literary aspirations, polemical agenda, and scientific insights.
John Heilbron is Professor of History and Vice Chancellor Emeritus of the University of California at Berkeley. One of the most distinguished historians of science, his books include Galileo, The Sun in the Church (a New York Times Notable Book) and The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science.
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We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs boson. Read the previous posts: “What is the Higgs boson?”, “Why is the Higgs boson called the ‘god particle’?”, “Is the particle recently discovered at CERN’s LHC the Higgs boson?”, and “How does the Higgs mechanism create mass?”
By Jim Baggott
The 4 July discovery announcement makes it clear that the new particle is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson. The next step is therefore reasonably obvious. Physicists involved in the ATLAS and CMS detector collaborations at the LHC will be keen to push ahead and fully characterize the new particle. They will want to know if this is indeed the Higgs boson.
How can they tell?
I mentioned in the third post in this series that the physicists at Fermilab’s Tevatron and CERN’s LHC have been searching for the Higgs boson by looking for the tell-tale products of its different predicted decay pathways. The current standard model of particle physics is used to predict the rates of production of the Higgs boson in high-energy particle collisions and the rates of its various decay modes. After subtracting the ‘background’ that arises from all the other ways in which the decay products can be produced, the physicists are left with an excess of events that can be ascribed to Higgs boson decays.
Now that we know the new particle has a mass of between 125-126 billion electron-volts (equivalent to the mass of about 134 protons), both the calculations and the experiments can be focused tightly on this specific mass value.
So far, excess events have been observed for three important decay pathways. These involve the decay of the Higgs boson to two photons ( H → γγ), two Z bosons (H → ZZ → ι+ι-ι+ι-) and two W particles (H → W+W- → ι+υ ι-υ). You will notice that these pathways all involve the production of bosons. This should come as no real surprise, as the Higgs field is responsible for breaking the symmetry between the weak and electromagnetic forces, giving mass to the W and Z particles and leaving the photon massless.
The decay rates to these three pathways are broadly as predicted by the standard model. There is an observed enhancement in the rate of decay to two photons compared to predictions, but this may be the result of statistical fluctuations. Further data on this pathway will determine whether or not there’s a problem (or maybe a clue to some new physics) in this channel.
But the Higgs field is also involved in giving mass to fermions (matter particles, such as electrons and quarks). The Higgs boson is therefore also predicted to decay into fermions, specifically very large massive fermions such as bottom and anti-bottom quarks, and tau and anti-tau leptons. Bottom quarks and tau leptons (heavy versions of the electron) are third-generation matter particles with masses respectively of about 4.2 billion electron volts (about 4 and a half proton masses) and 1.8 billion electron volts (about 1.9 proton masses).
These decay pathways are a little more problematic. The backgrounds from other processes are more significant and considerably more data are required to discriminate the background from genuine Higgs decay events. The decay to bottom and anti-bottom quarks was studied at the Tevatron before it was shut down earlier this year. But the collider had insufficient collision energy and luminosity (a measure of the number of collisions that the particle beams can produce) to enable independent discovery of the Higgs boson.
ATLAS physicist Jon Butterworth, who writes a blog for the British newspaper The Guardian, recently gave his assessment:
If and when we see the Higgs decaying in these two [fermion] channels at roughly the predicted rates, I will probably start calling this new boson the Higgs rather than a Higgs. It won’t prove it is exactly the Standard Model Higgs boson of course, and looking for subtle differences will be very interesting. But it will be close enough to justify [calling it] the definite article.
When will this happen? This is hard to judge, but perhaps we will have an answer by the end of this year.
Jim Baggott is author of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ and a freelance science writer. He was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Reading but left to pursue a business career, where he first worked with Shell International Petroleum Company and then as an independent business consultant and trainer. His many books include Atomic: The First War of Physics (Icon, 2009), Beyond Measure: Modern Physics, Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory (OUP, 2003), A Beginner’s Guide to Reality (Penguin, 2005), and A Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments (OUP, 2010). Read his previous blog posts.
On 4 July 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility in Geneva announced the discovery of a new elementary particle they believe is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, or ‘god particle’. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter — everything in our visible universe and everything we are — is about to take a giant leap forward. So, what is the Higgs boson and why is it so important? What role does it play in the structure of material substance? We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs. Read the previous posts: “What is the Higgs boson?”,“Why is the Higgs boson called the ‘god particle’?”, “Is the particle recently discovered at CERN’s LHC the Higgs boson?”, and “How does the Higgs mechanism create mass?”
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By Robyn Arianrhod
29 November 2012 is the 140th anniversary of the death of mathematician Mary Somerville, the nineteenth century’s “Queen of Science”. Several years after her death, Oxford University’s Somerville College was named in her honor — a poignant tribute because Mary Somerville had been completely self-taught. In 1868, when she was 87, she had signed J. S. Mill’s (unsuccessful) petition for female suffrage, but I think she’d be astonished that we’re still debating “the woman question” in science. Physics, in particular — a subject she loved, especially mathematical physics — is still a very male-dominated discipline, and men as well as women are concerned about it.
Of course, science today is far more complex than it was in Somerville’s time, and for the past forty years feminist critics have been wondering if it’s the kind of science that women actually want; physics, in particular, has improved the lives of millions of people over the past 300 years, but it’s also created technologies and weapons that have caused massive human, social and environmental destruction. So I’d like to revisit an old debate: are science’s obstacles for women simply a matter of managing its applications in a more “female-friendly” way, or is there something about its exclusively male origins that has made science itself sexist?
To manage science in a more female-friendly way, it would be interesting to know if there’s any substance behind gender stereotypes such as that women prefer to solve immediate human problems, and are less interested than men in detached, increasingly expensive fundamental research, and in military and technological applications. Either way, though, it’s self-evident that women should have more say in how science is applied and funded, which means it’s important to have more women in decision-making positions — something we’re still far from achieving.
But could the scientific paradigm itself be alienating to women? Mary Somerville didn’t think so, but it’s often argued (most recently by some eco-feminist and post-colonial critics) that the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution, which formed the template for modern science, was constructed by European men, and that consequently, the scientific method reflects a white, male way of thinking that inherently preferences white men’s interests and abilities over those of women and non-Westerners. It’s a problematic argument, but justification for it has included an important critique of reductionism — namely, that Western male experimental scientists have traditionally studied physical systems, plants, and even human bodies by dissecting them, studying their components separately and losing sight of the whole system or organism.
The limits of the reductionist philosophy were famously highlighted in biologist Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, which showed that the post-War boom in chemical pest control didn’t take account of the whole food chain, of which insects are merely a part. Other dramatic illustrations are climate change, and medical disasters like the thalidomide tragedy: clearly, it’s no longer enough to focus selectively on specific problems such as the action of a drug on a particular symptom, or the local effectiveness of specific technologies; instead, scientists must consider the effect of a drug or medical procedure on the whole person, whilst new technological inventions shouldn’t be separated from their wider social and environmental ramifications.
In its proper place, however, reductionism in basic scientific research is important. (The recent infamous comment by American Republican Senate nominee Todd Akin — that women can “shut down” their bodies during a “legitimate rape”, in order not to become pregnant — illustrates the need for a basic understanding of how the various parts of the human body work.) I’m not sure if this kind of reductionism is a particularly male or particularly Western way of thinking, but either way there’s much more to the scientific method than this; it’s about developing testable hypotheses from observations (reductionist or holistic), and then testing those hypotheses in as objective a way as possible. The key thing in observing the world is curiosity, and this is a human trait, discernible in all children, regardless of race or gender. Of course, girls have traditionally faced more cultural restraints than boys, so perhaps we still need to encourage girls to be actively curious about the world around them. (For instance, it’s often suggested that women prefer biology to physics because they want to help people — and yet, many of the recent successes in medical and biological science would have been impossible without the technology provided by fundamental, curiosity-driven physics.)
Like Mary Somerville, I think the scientific method has universal appeal, but I also think feminist and other critics are right to question its patriarchal and capitalist origins. Although science at its best is value-free, it’s part of the broader community, whose values are absorbed by individual scientists. So much so that Yale researchers Moss-Racusin et al recently uncovered evidence that many scientists themselves, male and female, have an unconscious sexist bias. In their widely reported study, participants judged the same job application (for a lab manager position) to be less competent if it had a (randomly assigned) female name than if it had a male name.
In Mary Somerville’s day, such bias was overt, and it had the authority of science itself: women’s smaller brain size was considered sufficient to “prove” female intellectual inferiority. It was bad science, and it shows how patriarchal perceptions can skew the interpretation not just of women’s competence, but also of scientific data itself. (Without proper vigilance, this kind of subjectivity can slip through the safeguards of the scientific method because of other prejudices, too, such as racism, or even the agendas of funding bodies.) Of course, acknowledging the existence of patriarchal values in society isn’t about hating men or assuming men hate women. Mary Somerville met with “the utmost kindness” from individual scientific men, but that didn’t stop many of them from seeing her as the exception that proved the male-created rule of female inferiority. After all, it takes analysis and courage to step outside a long-accepted norm. And so, the “woman question” is still with us — but in trying to resolve it, we might not only find ways to remove existing gender biases, but also broaden the conversation about what sort of science we all want in the twenty-first century.
Robyn Arianrhod is an Honorary Research Associate in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University. She is the author of Seduced by Logic: Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution and Einstein’s Heroes.
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Image credit: Mary Somerville. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
By David Rothery
There’s a Patrick Moore-sized hole in the world of astronomy and planetary science that is unlikely ever to be exactly filled. He presented “The Sky at Night,” a monthly BBC TV astronomy programme, from 1957 until his death. This brought him celebrity, and the books that he wrote for the amateur enthusiast were bought or borrowed in vast numbers from public libraries for half a century — including by myself as a schoolboy. Patrick was the mainstay of the BBC’s Apollo Moon-landing coverage that those of us of a certain age will never forget, and there can be few amateur or professional astronomers who grew up in the UK without having been influenced by him. Tributes posted on the Internet show that he was known and admired beyond these shores too. They also attest to Patrick’s extraordinary generosity, exemplified by numerous accounts of how he replied to letters from strangers (of whom in the early 1970s I was one) or took time to chat after his lectures.
Patrick served with distinction and under age as a navigator with Bomber Command during the war. I believe (on the basis of dark hints made during late night conversations) that he also spent time on special operations in occupied Poland, where his youth and assumed Irish identity afforded him a plausible (but surely high-risk) cover story. An encounter with what he referred to as ‘a working concentration camp’ led to his lifelong professed dislike of Germans (“apart from Werner von Braun, the only good German I ever met”).
After the war, Patrick became a school teacher and also very active in the British Astronomical Association notably in its lunar section on account of his painstaking and careful observations of the Moon, some of which were to prove useful for both the American and Soviet lunar missions. He became a friend of the science fiction visionary Arthur C. Clarke, with whom he shared the authorship of Asteroid (2005) sold in aid of Sri Lankan tsunami relief.
I first met Patrick when we were speakers at a meeting to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the discovery of Neptune, so that must have been 1996. He spoke about Neptune itself, and I about its main satellite Triton. Afterwards he was kind enough to remark that he had read my book (Satellites of the Outer Planets). Our first joint TV appearance was “Live from Mars,” an Open University TV programme on a Saturday morning in 1997 when NASA’s Mars Pathfinder landed, allowing us to broadcast the first new pictures from the surface of Mars for nearly 20 years. I became an occasional guest on “The Sky at Night” more recently, which led to a friendship, as with so many of his guests. The programme was usually recorded at Patrick’s home in Selsey, and Patrick delighted to put his guests up overnight, rather than send them to a nearby hotel. That was a cue for an impressively-laden supper table, copious quantities of lubricant, and entertaining — if sometimes outrageous — conversation. Patrick had a wry sense of humour, and would self-parody his supposed extreme views. However, I think he was being serious when, or several occasions, he styled a certain recent US President as “a dangerous lunatic”.
I witnessed Patrick’s mobility decline from walking sticks, to zimmer frame, to wheelchair. His once famously rapid speech became slurry, but his mind and monocle-assisted eyesight stayed sharp. Co-presenters assumed larger and large roles on “The Sky at Night,” but Patrick was always there as the pivotal host. I last saw him less than three weeks before his death, when I guested on what was to prove his last “Sky at Night.” He was drowsy at first, but his intellect soon kicked in. He steered our discussion as ably as of old, and we were treated to a vintage Patrick moment of scepticism “When someone gives me a cupful of lunar water, then I’ll admit I was wrong.”
I lingered afterwards for a chat — inevitably partly about cats. Noticing the time, Patrick ordered a gin and tonic for each of us, and was soon involved in good-natured banter with his carer about why she would not let him have a second. He encouraged me to write a book about Mercury, and kindly agreed to write the foreword if I did. That’s an offer that I shall no longer be able to take him up on, but wherever you are, Patrick, I hope someone’s brought you that cupful of lunar water by now.
Sir Patrick Moore
4 March 1923 – 9 December 2012
Patrick Moore with David Rothery earlier this year.
David Rothery is a Senior Lecturer in Earth Sciences at the Open University UK, where he chairs a course on planetary science and the search for life. He is the author of Planets: A Very Short Introduction.
Image credit: Image is the personal property of David Rothery. Used with permission. Do not reproduce without explicit permission of David Rothery.
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Over the past year, the SciWhys column has explored a number of different topics, from our immune system to plants, from viruses to DNA. But why is an understanding of topics such as these so important? In short, using science to understand our world can help to improve our lives. In this post and the next, I want to illustrate this point with an example of how progress in science is providing hope for the future for one family, and many others like them.
By Jonathan Crowe
Carys is an angelic-looking two-year old, with a truly winning smile. At first sight, then, she seems no different from any other child her age. Yet Carys’ smile belies a heart-rending reality: Carys has Rett syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system that is as widespread in the population as cystic fibrosis, yet is recognised to only a fraction of the same extent. (I, for one, had never heard of it until just a few months ago.)
Rett syndrome is a delayed onset disorder — something whose effects only become apparent with time. When Carys was born, she appeared perfectly healthy, and developed in much the same way as any other healthy infant. Just as she began to master her first few words, however, she lost the power of speech, and soon lost the use of her hands too. The effects of Rett syndrome were beginning to be felt.
Over time, Rett syndrome robs young girls of their motor control: they lose the ability to walk, to hold or carry objects, and to speak. But there be other complications too: there may be digestive problems; difficulties eating, chewing, and swallowing; and seizures and tremors. It is a truly debilitating disorder.
So what causes Rett syndrome? What’s happened inside the body of young girls like Carys? We know that the syndrome is caused by as little as a single error (a mutation) in a single gene. (As I mention in a previous post, it’s quite unsettling to realise that just one error in the tens of millions of letters that spell out the sequence of our genomes is sufficient to cause certain diseases. Sometimes there’s very little room for error.) The normal, healthy gene (called MECP2) contains the instructions for the cell to manufacture a particular protein; the mutated gene produces a broken form of this protein, which no longer functions as it should.
But how can a single protein affect so many processes – from speech to the movement of limbs? The answer lies in the way the protein interacts with other genes, particularly in brain cells. Essentially, the protein acts like a cellular librarian by helping the cells in the brain to make use of the information stored in their genomes (their libraries of genes). If the protein is broken, the cells can no longer make use of all of the genetic information needed for them to work properly (a bit like trying to use an instruction manual with some of the pages blacked out), so normal processes begin to break down. The broken protein doesn’t just affect the ability of the brain cells to use one or two other genes, but a whole range of them – and that’s why the effects of Rett syndrome are so wide-ranging.
But the story of Rett syndrome runs deeper than this. The mutation that causes Rett syndrome occurs in sperm; it happens after the sp
By: Nicola,
on 2/27/2012
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Over the past year, the SciWhys column has explored a number of different topics, from our immune system to plants, from viruses to DNA. But why is an understanding of topics such as these so important? In short, using science to understand our world can help to improve our lives. In my last post and in this one, I want to illustrate this point with an example of how progress in science is providing hope for the future for one family, and many others like them.
By Jonathan Crowe
In my last post, I introduced you to Carys, a young girl living with the effects of Rett syndrome. Thanks to scientific research, we now understand quite a lot about why Rett syndrome occurs – what is happening among the molecules within our cells to mean that some cells don’t behave as they should. Simply knowing about something is one thing, though; making constructive use of this knowledge is another thing entirely. During this post I hope to show you how our understanding of what causes Rett syndrome is being translated into the potential for its treatment – a cure for Carys, and the other young girls like her.
In my previous post I mentioned how Rett syndrome is caused by a faulty gene called MECP2 that affects the proper function of brain cells. However, the syndrome doesn’t actually kill the cells (unlike neurodegenerative diseases that do cause cells to die). Instead, the cells affected by Rett syndrome just function improperly. This leads us to an intriguing question: if the faulty gene that causes the syndrome could be ‘fixed’ somehow, would the cells start to behave properly? In other words, could the debilitating symptoms associated with Rett syndrome be relieved?
Obviously, researchers can’t simply play around with humans and their genes to answer questions such as these. Instead, researchers have studied Rett syndrome by using “mouse models.” But what does this mean? In short, mice and humans have biological similarities that allow the mouse to act as a proxy – a model – for a human. How can this be? Well, even though the huge variety of creatures that populate the earth look very different to a casual observer, they’re not all that different when considered at the level of their genomes. In fact, around 85% of the human and mouse genomes are the same.
Now, if the biological information – the information stored in these genomes – is similar, the outcome of using this information will also be similar. If we start out with two similar recipes, the foods we prepare from them will also be very similar. Likewise, if two creatures have similar genes, their bodies will work in broadly similar ways, using similar proteins and other molecules. (It is the bits of the mouse and human genomes that aren’t the same that make mice and humans different.)
In essence, the mouse Mecp2 gene is to all intents and purposes the same as the human MECP2 gene, and has the same function in both mice and humans. Equally, if this gene malfunctions, the consequences are the same in both mouse and human: a mouse with a mutation in its Mecp2 gene exhibits symptoms that are very like a human with a mutation in the same gene – that is, someone with Rett syndrome. In short, mice with a Mecp2 gene mutation are a model for humans with the same mutation.
With all this in mind, if we can learn how to overcome the effects of the Mecp2 mutation in the mouse, we might gain valuable insights into how we can overcome the equivalent effects in humans.
And this is wh
By: Alice,
on 3/6/2012
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This Day in World History
March 6, 1869
Mendeleev’s Periodic Table presented in public
Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. Source: NYPL.
On March 6, 1869,
Dmitri Mendeleev’s breakthrough discovery was presented to the
Russian Chemical Society. The chemist had determined that the known elements — 70 at the time — could be arranged by their atomic weights into a table that revealed that their physical properties followed regular patterns. He had invented the periodic table of elements.
In his early twenties, Mendeleev had intuited that the elements followed some kind of order, and he spent thirteen years trying to discover it. In developing his system, he drew on the data and ideas of scientists around the world. Two — Lothar Meyer and British chemist John Alexander Reina Newlands — had published ideas about the periodicity of elements. But Mendeleev’s addressed every known element, which theirs had not.
His system also surpassed the others because he accounted for gaps in the sequence of elements. Mendeleev said that an element would be discovered to fill each gap and even predicted the properties of those elements. The discovery of the one of these missing elements — gallium, in 1875 — helped spur wide acceptance of Mendeleev’s system.
Later work showed that Mendeleev’s reliance on atomic weight to determine periodicity is not completely correct. While atomic weight tends to increase as one moves from element to element, there are exceptions. Mendeleev also did not have the theoretical understanding to explain why the elements exhibited these periodic characteristics. Nevertheless, his achievement marked an important milestone in the understanding of the physical world.
Mendeleev did not personally present his breakthrough to the Chemical Society. Ill on the day of the meeting, he asked a colleague to deliver the report.
Interestingly, the date celebrated for this event reflects Russia’s use of the “Old Style” Julian calendar. According to the “New Style” Gregorian calendar — not adopted in Russia until after 1918 — Mendeleev’s periodic table was presented twelve days later, on March 18.
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By: Alice,
on 4/1/2012
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April 1, 1948
Scientists Propose Big Bang Theory
Poet T.S. Eliot might still be right — the world might end with a whimper. But on April 1, 1948, physicists George Gamow and Ralph Alpher first proposed the now prevailing idea of how the universe began — with a big bang.
Gamow worked closely in the 1930s and 1940s with Edward Teller to understand beta decay — a kind of nuclear decay that results in the loss of electrons — and to understand the makeup of red giant stars.
From this work, Gamow and Alpher — one of his students — developed the idea that the universe was highly compressed until a vast thermonuclear explosion occurred. The explosion released neutrons, protons, and electrons. As the universe cooled, it became possible for neutrons to combine with other neutrons or with protons to form chemical elements.
Time Line of the Universe. Source: NASA/WMAP Science Team.
Gamow and Alpher published their findings in the journal Physical Review on April 1, 1948. The title of the paper — “The Origin of Chemical Elements” — suggests the link between cosmology and particle physics that the big-bang theory represents.
The paper’s authorship showed a bit of Gamow’s whimsy. Thinking it wrong to have a paper on particle physics written by one author whose name began with A (as in positively charged alpha particles) and G (as in gamma rays) without having a B (as in negatively charged beta particles), Gamow asked friend Hans Bethe to add his name to the byline. Bethe agreed, and thereby became part of history.
Just five years later, Gamow made a brilliant addition to a wholly different field. After learning of James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the double helical structure of DNA, Gamow wrote Crick suggesting that the genetic code was made up of three-part segments. Gamow’s suggestion set Watson, Crick, and other researchers to investigate the possibility, which turned out — in essence (though not in the details Gamow had suggested) — to be true.
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By: Alice,
on 9/3/2012
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On 4 July 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility in Geneva announced the discovery of a new elementary particle they believe is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, or ‘god particle’. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter — everything in our visible universe and everything we are — is about to take a giant leap forward. So, what is the Higgs boson and why is it so important? What role does it play in the structure of material substance? We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the next week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs.
By Jim Baggott
We know that the physical universe is constructed from elementary matter particles (such as electrons and quarks) and the particles that transmit forces between them (such as photons). Matter particles have physical characteristics that we classify as fermions. Force particles are bosons.
In quantum field theory, these particles are represented in terms of invisible energy ‘fields’ that extend through space. Think of your childhood experiences playing with magnets. As you push the north poles of two bar magnets together, you feel the resistance between them grow in strength. This is the result of the interaction of two invisible, but nevertheless very real, magnetic fields. The force of resistance you experience as you push the magnets together is carried by invisible (or ‘virtual’) photons passing between them.
Matter and force particles are then interpreted as fundamental disturbances of these different kinds of fields. We say that these disturbances are the ‘quanta’ of the fields. The electron is the quantum of the electron field. The photon is the quantum of the electromagnetic field, and so on.
In the mid-1960s, quantum field theories were relatively unpopular among theorists. These theories seemed to suggest that force carriers should all be massless particles. This made little sense. Such a conclusion is fine for the photon, which carries the force of electromagnetism and is indeed massless. But it was believed that the carriers of the weak nuclear force, responsible for certain kinds of radioactivity, had to be large, massive particles. Where then did the mass of these particles come from?
In 1964, four research papers appeared proposing a solution. What if, these papers suggested, the universe is pervaded by a different kind of energy field, one that points (it imposes a direction in space) but doesn’t push or pull? Certain kinds of force particle might then interact with this field, thereby gaining mass. Photons would zip through the field, unaffected.
One of these papers, by English theorist Peter Higgs, included a footnote suggesting that such a field could also be expected to have a fundamental disturbance — a quantum of the field. In 1967 Steven Weinberg (and subsequently Abdus Salam) used this mechanism to devise a theory which combined the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. Weinberg was able to predict the masses of the carriers of the weak nuclear force: the W and Z bosons. These particles were found at CERN about 16 years later, with masses very close to Weinberg’s original predictions.
By about 1972, the new field was being referred to by most physicists as the Higgs field, and its field quantum was called the Higgs boson. The ‘Higgs mechanism’ became a key ingredient in what was to become known as the standard model of particle physics.
Jim Baggott is author of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ and a freelance science writer. He was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Reading but left to pursue a business career, where he first worked with Shell International Petroleum Company and then as an independent business consultant and trainer. His many books include Atomic: The First War of Physics (Icon, 2009), Beyond Measure: Modern Physics, Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory (OUP, 2003), A Beginner’s Guide to Reality (Penguin, 2005), and A Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments (OUP, 2010). Read his previous blog post “Putting the Higgs particle in perspective.”
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By: Alice,
on 9/4/2012
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We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the next week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs boson. Read the previous post: “What is the Higgs boson?”
By Jim Baggott
The Higgs field was invented to explain how otherwise massless force particles could acquire mass, and was used by Weinberg and Salam to develop a theory of the combined ‘electro-weak’ force and predict the masses of the W and Z bosons. However, it soon became apparent that something very similar is responsible for the masses of the matter particles, too.
The way the Higgs field interacts with otherwise massless boson fields and the way it interacts with massless fermion fields is not the same (the latter is called a Yukawa interaction, named for Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa). Nevertheless, the Higgs field clearly has a fundamentally important role to play. Without it, both matter and force particles would have no mass. Mass could not be constructed and nothing in our visible universe could be.
In his popular book The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?, first published in 1993, American physicist Leon Lederman (writing with Dick Teresi) explained why he’d chosen this title:
This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one…
Lederman went on to quote a passage from the Book of Genesis.
This is a nickname that has stuck. Most physicists seem to dislike it, as they believe it exaggerates the importance of the Higgs boson. Higgs himself doesn’t seem to mind.
Jim Baggott is author of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ and a freelance science writer. He was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Reading but left to pursue a business career, where he first worked with Shell International Petroleum Company and then as an independent business consultant and trainer. His many books include Atomic: The First War of Physics (Icon, 2009), Beyond Measure: Modern Physics, Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory (OUP, 2003), A Beginner’s Guide to Reality (Penguin, 2005), and A Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments (OUP, 2010). Read his previous blog post “Putting the Higgs particle in perspective.”
On 4 July 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility in Geneva announced the discovery of a new elementary particle they believe is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, or ‘god particle’. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter — everything in our visible universe and everything we are — is about to take a giant leap forward. So, what is the Higgs boson and why is it so important? What role does it play in the structure of material substance? We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the next week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs. Read the previous post: “What is the Higgs boson?”
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By: Alice,
on 9/5/2012
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We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs boson. Read the previous posts: “What is the Higgs boson?” and “Why is the Higgs boson called the ‘god particle’?”
By Jim Baggott
Experimental physicists are by nature very cautious people, often reluctant to speculate beyond the boundaries defined by the evidence at hand.
Although the Higgs mechanism is responsible for the acquisition of mass, the theory does not give a precise prediction for the mass of the Higgs boson itself. The search for the Higgs boson, both at Fermilab’s Tevatron collider and CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has therefore involved elaborate calculations of all the different ways a Higgs boson might be created in high-energy particle collisions, and all the different ways it may decay into other elementary particles.
At CERN, the attentions of physicists working in the two main detector collaborations, ATLAS and CMS, have been drawn to Higgs decay pathways involving the production of two photons (which we write as H → γγ), a pathway leading to two Z bosons and thence four leptons (particles such as electrons and positrons, written H → ZZ → ι+ι-ι+ι-) and a pathway leading to two W particles and thence to two leptons and two neutrinos (H → W+W- → ι+υ ι-υ).
Finding the Higgs boson is then a matter of looking for its decay products — in this case the photons and leptons that result — at all the different masses that the Higgs may in theory possess. Just to make life more difficult, at the particle collision energies available at the LHC, there are lots of other processes that can produce photons and leptons, and this background must be calculated and subtracted from the observed decay events. Any events above background that produce two photons, four leptons or two leptons (and ‘missing’ energy, as neutrinos cannot be detected) then contribute to the evidence for the Higgs boson.
What the CERN scientists announced on 4 July was a statistically significant excess of decay events consistent with a Higgs boson with a mass between 125-126 billion electron volts, about 134 times the mass of a proton. This is definitely a new boson, one that decays very much like a Higgs boson is expected to decay. But, until the scientists can gather more data on its physical properties, they can’t say for sure precisely what kind of boson it is.
It’s also important to note that although the Higgs boson is predicted by the standard model of particle physics, there are theories that also predict the existence of a Higgs boson (actually, they predict many Higgs bosons). Until the scientists gather more data, they can’t be sure the new particle is precisely the particle predicted by the standard model.
We just need to be patient and stay tuned.
Jim Baggott is author of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ and a freelance science writer. He was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Reading but left to pursue a business career, where he first worked with Shell International Petroleum Company and then as an independent business consultant and trainer. His many books include Atomic: The First War of Physics (Icon, 2009), Beyond Measure: Modern Physics, Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory (OUP, 2003), A Beginner’s Guide to Reality (Penguin, 2005), and A Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments (OUP, 2010). Read his previous blog posts.
On 4 July 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility in Geneva announced the discovery of a new elementary particle they believe is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, or ‘god particle’. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter — everything in our visible universe and everything we are — is about to take a giant leap forward. So, what is the Higgs boson and why is it so important? What role does it play in the structure of material substance? We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs. Read the previous posts: “What is the Higgs boson?” and “Why is the Higgs boson called the ‘god particle’?”
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By: Alice,
on 9/6/2012
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We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs boson. Read the previous posts: “What is the Higgs boson?”, “Why is the Higgs boson called the ‘god particle’?”, and “Is the particle recently discovered at CERN’s LHC the Higgs boson?”
By Jim Baggott
Through thousands of years of speculative philosophy and hundreds of years of hard empirical science, we have tended to think of mass as an innate property (a ‘primary quality’) of material substance. We figured that, whatever they might be, the basic building blocks of matter would surely consist of microscopic lumps of some kind of ‘stuff’.
But this is not quite how it has worked out. There was a clue in the title of one of Albert Einstein’s most famous research papers, published in 1905: ‘Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content?’ This was the paper in which Einstein suggested that there was a deep connection between mass and energy, through what would subsequently become the world’s most famous equation, E = mc2.
We experience the mass of an object as inertia (the object’s resistance to acceleration) and Einstein was suggesting that the latter is determined not by mass as a primary quality, but rather by the energy that the object contains.
So, when an otherwise massless particle travelling at the speed of light interacts with the Higgs field, it is slowed down. The field ‘drags’ on it, as though the particle were moving through molasses. In other words, the energy of the interaction is manifested as a resistance to acceleration. The particle acquires inertia, and we think of this inertia in terms of the particle’s ‘mass’.
In the Higgs mechanism, mass loses its status as a primary quality. It becomes secondary — the result of massless particles interacting with the Higgs field.
So, does the Higgs mechanism explain all mass? Including the mass of me, you, and all the objects in the visible universe? No, it doesn’t. To see why, let’s just take a quick look at the origin of the mass of the heavy paperweight that sits on my desk in front of me.
The paperweight is made of glass. It has a complex molecular structure consisting primarily of a network of silicon and oxygen atoms bonded together. Obviously, we can trace its mass to the protons and neutrons which account for 99% of the mass of every silicon and oxygen atom in this structure.
According to the standard model, protons and neutrons are made of quarks. So, we might be tempted to conclude that the mass of the paperweight resides in the masses of the quarks from which the protons and neutrons are composed. But we’d be wrong again. Although it’s quite difficult to determine precisely the masses of the quarks, they are substantially smaller and lighter than the protons and neutrons that they comprise. We would estimate that the masses of the quarks, derived through their interaction with the Higgs field, account for only about 1% of the mass of a proton, for example.
But if 99% of the mass of a proton is not to be found in its constituent quarks, then where is it? The answer is that the rest of the proton’s mass resides in the energy of the massless gluons — the carriers of the strong nuclear force — that pass between the quarks and bind them together inside the proton.
What the standard model of particle physics tells us is quite bizarre. There appear to be ultimate building blocks which do have characteristic physical properties, but mass isn’t really one of them. Instead of mass we have interactions between elementary particles that would otherwise be massless and the Higgs field. These interactions slow the particles down, giving rise to inertia which we interpret as mass. As these elementary particles combine, the energy of the massless force particles passing between them builds, adding greatly to the impression of solidity and substance.
Jim Baggott is author of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ and a freelance science writer. He was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Reading but left to pursue a business career, where he first worked with Shell International Petroleum Company and then as an independent business consultant and trainer. His many books include Atomic: The First War of Physics (Icon, 2009), Beyond Measure: Modern Physics, Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory (OUP, 2003), A Beginner’s Guide to Reality (Penguin, 2005), and A Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments (OUP, 2010). Read his previous blog posts.
On 4 July 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility in Geneva announced the discovery of a new elementary particle they believe is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, or ‘god particle’. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter — everything in our visible universe and everything we are — is about to take a giant leap forward. So, what is the Higgs boson and why is it so important? What role does it play in the structure of material substance? We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs. Read the previous posts: “What is the Higgs boson?”, “Why is the Higgs boson called the ‘god particle’?”, and “Is the particle recently discovered at CERN’s LHC the Higgs boson?”
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By: Kirsty,
on 4/25/2011
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This is the third post in our latest regular OUPblog column: SciWhys. Every month OUP editor and author Jonathan Crowe will be answering your science questions. Got a burning question about science that you’d like answered? Just email it to us, and Jonathan will answer what he can. Today: How is the information in a gene used by a cell?
By Jonathan Crowe
In my last two posts I’ve introduced the notion that DNA acts as a store of biological information; this information is stored in a series of chromosomes, each of which are divided into a number of genes. Each gene in turn contains one ‘snippet’ of biological information. But how are these genes actually used? How is the information stored in these genes actually extracted to do something useful (if ‘useful’ isn’t too flippant a term for something that the very continuation of life depends upon).
Many (but not all) genes act as recipes for a family of biological molecules called proteins: they literally tell the cell what the ingredients for a particular protein are, and how they should be combined to create the protein itself. (Proteins have a range of essential roles in the human body. Some act as building materials for different components of the body, such as the keratin we find in our hair and nails. Others act as molecular transporters: haemoglobin, which is found in our red blood cells, carries oxygen from our lungs to other parts of the body. A family of proteins called the enzymes are arguably the most important, however. Enzymes cajole different chemicals in our body into reacting with one another. Without enzymes, our bodies would be unable to generate energy from the food we eat (and you’d not be reading this blog post).)
So, somehow, the information stored in a DNA molecule is deciphered by the cell and used as the recipe for a protein. But how?
To answer this question, let’s take a journey inside the cell. We can imagine a cell to be like a factory, but one that has been divided into a series of physically separated compartments. Unlike a factory filled with air, a cell is filled with a jelly-like fluid called the cytoplasm, which surrounds the various compartments enclosed within it. In an earlier post I likened a genome to a biological library. And, inside the cell, this library is stored within a particular compartment called the nucleus.
I mentioned earlier that genes often act as recipes for proteins. But here comes a bit of a quandary: chromosomes – and the genes they contain – are locked away inside the cell’s nucleus. By contrast, proteins are manufactured by the cell in the cytoplasm, outside of the nucleus. So, for the genetic information to be used, it has to get out of nucleus and into the cytoplasm. How does this happen? Well, if we’re in a library with a book that contains information we really need, but we’re unable to take the book out of the library, we might make a photocopy of the page that holds the information we’re after. To get the information it needs out of the nucleus and into the cytoplasm the cell does something remarkably similar. The chromosome containing the gene of interest has to stay inside the nucleus, so the cell makes a copy of the gene – and that copy is then transported to where it is to be used: out of the nucleus and into the cytoplasm.
The copy of the gene generated during this cellular photocopying is made not of DNA but of a close cousin called RNA. RNA is made of three of the same building blocks as DNA – A, C and G. Instead of the T found in DNA, however, RNA uses a different block represented by the letter U (for ‘uracil’). Despite this
By: Lauren,
on 4/26/2011
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On April 26, 1986, the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. Now, 25 years later, the current crisis in Fukushima is being called the “worst since Chernobyl.” Will we avoid another disaster? And further more, in another 25 years, how will we feel about nuclear energy?
Below a comprehensive article on Chernobyl by Philip R. Pryde, as it appears in The Oxford Companion to Global Change (Ed. David Cuff & Andrew Goudie). For further reading, I suggest looking to the newly published volume Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know.
The most catastrophic accident ever to occur at a commercial nuclear power plant took place on April 26 , 1986, in northern Ukraine at Chernobyl (Chornobyl’ in Ukrainian). Intense radioactive fallout covered significant portions of several provinces in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian Federation, and lesser amounts fell out with precipitation in numerous other European countries. The resultant health and environmental consequences are ongoing, widespread, and serious.
The Chernobyl power station is one of several such complexes built in Ukraine. At the time, it was believed that nuclear energy would entail negligible damage to the environment. Four other large nuclear power complexes have been constructed and Ukraine has a major uranium-mining complex and numerous research facilities.
The Chernobyl reactors utilize a graphite-moderated type of nuclear reactor (Russian acronym, RBMK), with a normal output of 1,000 megawatts. These units are water-cooled and employ graphite rods to control core temperatures. Each reactor houses 1,661 fuel rods that contain mainly uranium-238 plus much smaller amounts of enriched uranium-235. There are several dangers inherent in the design of RBMK-1000 reactors, including the ability of the operators to disengage safety controls, the lack of a containment dome, and the possibility that, at very low power levels, a rapid and uncontrollable increase in heat can occur in the reactor’s core and may result in a catastrophic explosion ( Haynes and Bojcun , 1988 , pp. 2–4).
This was what happened early in the morning of April 26 , 1986. A series of violations of normal safety procedures, committed during a low-power experiment being run on reactor number 4, resulted in a thermal explosion and fire that destroyed the reactor building, exposed the core, and vented vast amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Pieces of the power plant itself were found up to several kilometers from the site of the explosion.
This radiation continued to be released into the atmosphere over a period of nine days, with the prevailing winds carrying the radioactive material initially in a northwesterly direction over northern Europe. The winds later shifted to the northeast, carrying fallout southwestward into central Europe and the Balkan peninsula. The overall result was significant radioactive fallout (mainly associated with rainfall) in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Germany (mainly Bavaria), the United Kingdom, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and Switzerland. Lower levels of radioactive deposition were reported in Denmark, France, the Benelux countries, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Yugoslavia, and several other European nations (Medvedev 1990 , chap. 6). The republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were also directly in the path of the initial plume.
In the Soviet Union, the regions that received the highest levels of radioactive contamination were in the northern Ki
By: Kirsty,
on 5/30/2011
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This is the latest post in our regular OUPblog column SciWhys. Every month OUP editor and author Jonathan Crowe will be answering your science questions. Got a burning question about science that you’d like answered? Just email it to us, and Jonathan will answer what he can. Today: what is gene mutation?
By Jonathan Crowe
In my last three posts I’ve introduced you to the world of biological information, taking you from the storage of biological information in libraries called genomes, which house information in individual books called chromosomes (themselves divided into chapters called genes), to the way the cell makes use of that stored information to manufacture the molecular machines called proteins.
But what happens when the storage of information goes wrong? If we’re reading a recipe and that recipe contains a mistake, chances are that the end-result of our culinary endeavour won’t end up as it should. And so it is at the level of cells. If the information the cell is using is somehow wrong, the end result will also be wrong – sometimes with catastrophic results.
I’ve mentioned in previous posts how biological information is captured by the sequence of the building block ‘letters’ from which DNA is constructed. The sequence of letters is ultimately deciphered by a molecular machine called the ribosome, which reads the sequence of letters in sets of three, and uses each trio to determine which amino acid – the building block of proteins – should be used next in its mission to construct a particular protein. It should come as no surprise that, if the recipe for the protein is changed – if the sequence of DNA ‘letters’ is altered – the protein that is manufactured will probably contain errors as a result. And if a protein contains errors, it won’t be able to function correctly, just as flat-packed furniture will end up being decidedly wobbly if you construct it from the wrong parts.
Imagine a snippet of DNA has the sequence GGTGCTAAG. The ribosome would ‘read’ this sequence, and would use it as the recipe for building a chain of three amino acids: Glycine-Alanine-Lysine. Now imagine that we alter just one letter in our original sequence so that it becomes GGTCCTAAG. All we’ve done is swap a G for a C at the fourth position in the DNA sequence. However, this change is sufficient to affect the composition of the protein that is produced when the sequence is deciphered: the ribosome will now build a chain with the composition Glycine-Proline-Lysine.
Surely such a small change won’t actually cause significant problems in a cell, though. Right? Wrong. Amazingly (and perhaps unnervingly) the tiniest error can have really quite significant consequences.
Let’s take just one example. Sickle cell anaemia is a condition that affects the red blood cells of humans. Red blood cells fulfil the essential role of transporting oxygen from our lungs to all the living cells of our body: they continually circulate through our arteries and veins, shuttling oxygen from one place to another. A healthy red blood cell looks a bit like a ring doughnut (though it doesn’t actually have a hole right through the middle); by contrast, the red blood cells of individuals with sickle cell anaemia become warped into crescent-like shapes (like a sickle, the grass-cutting tool, after which the disease is named). These sickle cells no longer pass freely through our arteries and veins. Instead, they tend to get entangled with each other. As a result, the flow of oxygen round the body is impeded, and
By: Kirsty,
on 6/27/2011
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This is the latest post in our regular OUPblog column SciWhys. Every month OUP editor and author Jonathan Crowe will be answering your science questions. Got a burning question about science that you’d like answered? Just email it to us, and Jonathan will answer what he can. Today: how do organisms evolve?
By Jonathan Crowe
The world around us has been in a state of constant change for millions of years: mountains have been thrust skywards as the plates that make up the Earth’s surface crash against each other; huge glaciers have sculpted valleys into the landscape; arid deserts have replaced fertile grasslands as rain patterns have changed. But the living organisms that populate this world are just as dynamic: as environments have changed, so too has the plethora of creatures inhabiting them. But how do creatures change to keep step with the world in which they live? The answer lies in the process of evolution.
Many organisms are uniquely suited to their environment: polar bears have layers of fur and fat to insulate them from the bitter Arctic cold; camels have hooves with broad leathery pads to enable them to walk on desert sand. These so-called adaptations – characteristics that tailor a creature to its environment – do not develop overnight: a giraffe that is moved to a savannah with unusually tall trees won’t suddenly grow a longer neck to be able to reach the far-away leaves. Instead, adaptations develop over many generations. This process of gradual change to make you better suited to your environment is called what’s called evolution.
So how does this change actually happen? In previous posts I’ve explored how the information in our genomes acts as the recipe for the cells, tissues and organs from which we’re constructed. If we are somehow changing to suit our environment, then our genes must be changing too. But there isn’t some mysterious process through which our genes ‘know’ how to change: if an organism finds its environment turning cold, its genome won’t magically change so that it now includes a new recipe for the growth of extra fur to keep it warm. Instead, the raw ‘fuel’ for genetic change is an entirely random process: the process of gene mutation.
In my last post, I considered how gene mutation alters the DNA sequence of a gene, and so alters the information stored by that gene. If you change a recipe when cooking, the end product will be different. And so it is with our genome: if the information stored in our genome – the recipe for our existence – changes, then we must change in some way too.
I mentioned above how the process of mutation is random. A mutation may be introduced when an incorrect DNA ‘letter’ is inserted into a growing chain as a chromosome is being copied: instead of manufacturing a stretch of DNA with the sequence ATTGCCT, an error may occur at the second position, to give AATGCCT. But it’s just as likely that an error could have been introduced at the sixth position instead of the second, with ATTGCCT becoming ATTGCGT. Such mutations are entirely down to chance.
And this is where we encounter something of a paradox. Though the mutations that occur in our genes to fuel the process of evolution do so at random, evolution itself is anything but random. So how can we reconcile this seeming conflict?
To answer this question, let’s imagine a population of sheep, all of whom have a woolly coat of similar thickness. Quite by chance, a gene in one of the sheep in the population picks up a mutation so that offspring of that sheep develop a slightly thicker coat. However, the thick-coated sheep is in a minority: most of the population carry the normal, non-mutated gene, and so have coats of normal thickness. Now, the sheep population live in a fairly tempera
By: Kirsty,
on 7/25/2011
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By Jonathan Crowe
Each day of our lives is a battle for survival against an army of invaders so vast in size that it outnumbers the human population hugely. Yet, despite its vastness, this army is an invisible threat, each individual so small that it cannot be seen with the naked eye. These are the microbes – among them the bacteria and viruses – that surround us every day, and could in one way or another kill us were it not for our immune system, an ingenious defence mechanism that protects us from these invisible foes.
By: Kirsty,
on 10/19/2011
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By Frank James
I have been pondering these questions recently in the course of researching and writing the biographical memoir for the British Academy of the distinguished and influential historians of science Rupert Hall (1920-2009) and his wife Marie Boas Hall (1919-2009). Before the 1939-1945 war history of science was practiced almost exclusively by scientists of one form or another such as Charles Singer (1876-1960) in England and George Sarton (1884–1956) in the United States.
By: Nicola,
on 10/26/2011
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By Frank Close
To readers of Neutrino, rest assured: there is no need yet for a rewrite based on news that neutrinos might travel faster than light. I have already advertised my caution in The Observer, and a month later nothing has changed. If anything, concerns about the result have increased.
By: Nicola,
on 11/30/2011
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By Eric Scerri
As far back as I can remember I have always liked sorting and classifying things. As a boy I was an avid stamp collector. I would sort my stamps into countries, particular sets, then arrange them in order of increasing monetary value shown on the face of the stamp. I would go to great lengths to select the best possible copy of any stamp that I had several versions of. It’s not altogether surprising that I have therefore ended up doing research and writing books on what is perhaps the finest example of a scientific system of classification – the periodic table of the elements. Following degrees in chemistry I wrote a PhD thesis in the history and philosophy of science and specialised in the question of whether chemistry has been explained by quantum mechanics. A large part of this work dealt with the periodic table, the explanation of which is considered as one of the major triumphs of quantum theory, and the notion of atomic orbitals.
As I often mention in public lectures, it is curious that the great 20th century physicist, Ernest Rutherford, looked down on chemistry and compared it to stamp collecting. But we chemists had the last laugh since Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry and not for his beloved field of physics.
In 2007 I published a book called The Periodic Table, Its Story and Its Significance, which people tell me has become the definitive book on the subject. More recently I was asked to write a Very Short Introduction to the subject, which I have now completed. Although I first thought this would be a relatively easy matter it turned out not to be. I had to rethink almost everything contained in the earlier book, respond to comments from reviewers and had to deal with some new areas which I had not developed fully enough in the earlier book. One of these areas is the exploration of elements beyond uranium or element number 92, all of which are of a synthetic nature.
At the same time there has been a veritable explosion of interest in the elements and the periodic table especially in the popular imagination. There have been i-Pad applications, YouTube videos, two highly successful popular books, people singing Tom Leher’s element song in various settings as well as artists and advertisers helping themselves to the elegance and beauty of the periodic table. On the scientific side, elements continue to be discovered or more precisely synthesised and there are official deliberations concerning how the recently discovered elements should be named.
On November 4th The International Union for Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) officially announced that elements 110, 111 and 112 are to be known officially as darmstadtium (Ds), roentgenium (Rg) and copernicium (Cn). The names come from the German city of Darmstadt where several new elements have been artificially created; Wilhelm Konrad Roentgenm, the discoverer of X-rays; and the astronomer Nicholas Copernicus who was one of the first to propose the heliocentric model of the solar system. Of the three names it is the last one that has caused the most controversy. Apart from honouring a great scientist it was chosen because the structure of the atom broadly speaking resembles that of a miniature solar system in which the nucleus plays the role of the sun and the electrons behave as the planets do, an idea that originated with the work of Rutherford incidentally. Except
By: Nicola,
on 1/30/2012
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Every month OUP editor and author Jonathan Crowe answers your science questions in the monthly SciWhys column. Got a burning question about science that you’d like answered? Just email it to us, and Jonathan will answer what he can. Today: Why do we eat food?
By Jonathan Crowe
You may well be thinking that the question posed in the title of this blog has an all-too-obvious answer. We all know that we eat food to keep ourselves alive. But why do we find ourselves slaves to our appetites and rumbling stomachs? What is actually happening inside each of us that couldn’t happen without another slice of toast, or piece of fruit, or that most vaunted of mid-afternoon pick-me-ups, the sneakily-consumed bar of chocolate?
We’re all familiar with the concept of something needing fuel to keep it going. Just as a power station requires gas or coal to power its turbines and generate energy, so we need fuel – in the form of food – to power our continued existence.
The foods we eat provide us with a range of nutrients: vitamins, minerals, water, fat, carbohydrates, fibre, and protein. These nutrients are put to different uses — as building materials to construct the tissues and organs from which our bodies are made; as the components of the molecular machinery that keeps our cells running as they should. All of these uses are unified by a common theme: a requirement for energy to make them happen. And this is where one particular type of nutrient comes into its own. Step forward the carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates are better known to us as sugars, but in fact the sweet crystals we know as sugar are only part of this group. Carbohydrates come in very different shapes and sizes. One of the smallest is glucose, which acts as a chemical building block — multiple copies of glucose can join together to form a range of much larger molecules. For example, starch – found in potatoes and flour – is a carbohydrate formed from many individual molecules of glucose joined together in long chains. (Based on taste alone, you wouldn’t think that starch was made of glucose. Even though individual molecules of glucose taste sweet to us, once they are linked together to form starch the sweetness is lost.)
To understand how the sugar in our food can power the processes occurring in our cells every minute of every day, let’s follow some starch on its journey through the body. Many of the foods we consume aren’t in a form with which our bodies can do anything useful. Instead, they need to be digested. And so it is with carbohydrates such as starch. This process of digestion starts as soon as the food enters our mouth; our saliva contains special substances (called enzymes) that start attacking the long chains of starch, breaking it into smaller fragments.
Digestion continues as our food is swallowed and slides down into our stomach, where an arsenal of other chemical weapons set to work on the mouthful we’ve just consumed. Before long, what were initially mouth-watering morsels are reduced to something rather less appetising and leave the stomach to enter the long, snaking tunnel of our intestines. By now, the long chains of starch have been broken down into glucose, which is small enough to pass through the lining of our intestine and into our bloodstream. Our bloodstream acts as a short- and long-distance transport network, carrying the newly-arrived sugar molecules to cells all over the body.
When glucose arrives at its destination and first enters the cell, it u
By: Nicola,
on 2/2/2012
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By Nicholas P. Money
A grown-up neighbor in the English village of my childhood told stories about angels that sat upon our shoulders and fairies that lived in her snapdragons. Like the other kids, I searched her flowers for a glimpse of the sprites, but agnosticism imbibed from my parents quickly overruled this innocent play. Yet there was magic in my neighbor’s garden and I had seen real angels on her lawn: little stalked bells that poked from the dew-drenched grass on autumn mornings; evanescent beauties whose delicately balanced caps quivered to the touch. By afternoon they were gone, shriveled into the greenery. Does any living thing seem more supernatural to a child than a mushroom? Their prevalence in fairy tale illustrations and fantasy movies suggests not. Like no other species, the strangeness of fungi survives the loss of innocence about the limits of nature. They trump the supernatural, their magic intensifying as we learn more about them.
Once upon a time, I spent 30 years studying mushrooms and other fungi. Now, as my scientific interests broaden with my waistline, I would like to share three things that I have learned about the meaning of life from thinking about these extraordinary sex organs and the microbes that produce them. This mycological inquiry has revealed the following: (i) life on land would collapse without the activities of mushrooms; (ii) we owe our existence to mushrooms; and (iii) there is (probably) no God. The logic is spotless.
Mushrooms are masterpieces of natural engineering. The overnight appearance of the fruit body is a pneumatic process, with the inflation of millions of preformed cells extending the stem, pushing earth aside, and unfolding the cap. Once exposed, the gills of a meadow mushroom shed an astonishing 30,000 spores per second, delivering billions of allergenic particles into the air every day. A minority of spores alights and germinates on fertile ground and some species are capable of spawning the largest and longest-lived organisms on the planet. Mushroom colonies burrow through soil and rotting wood. Some hook into the roots of forest trees and engage in mutually supportive symbioses; others are pathogens that decorate their food sources with hardened hooves and fleshy shelves. Mushrooms work with insects too, fed by and feeding leaf-cutter ants in the New World and termites in the Old World. Among the staggering diversity of mushroom-forming fungi we also find strange apparitions including gigantic puffballs, phallic eruptions with revolting aromas, and tiny “bird’s nests” whose spore-filled eggs are splashed out by raindrops.
Mushrooms have been around for tens of millions of years and their activities are indispensable for the operation of the biosphere. Through their relationships with plants and animals, mushrooms are essential for forest and grassland ecology, climate control and atmospheric chemistry, water purification, and the maintenance of biodiversity. This first point, about the ecological significance of mushrooms, is obvious, yet the 16,000 described species of mushroom-forming fungi are members of the most poorly understood kingdom of life. The second point requires a dash of lateral thinking. Because humans evolved in ecosystems dependent upon mushrooms there would be no us without mushrooms. And no matter how superior we feel, humans remain dependent upon the continual activity of these fungi. The relationship isn’t reciprocal: without us there would definitely be mushrooms. Judged against the rest of life (and, so often, we do place ourselves against the rest of nature) humans can be considered as a recent and damag
By: Alice,
on 2/13/2012
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This Day in World History
February 13, 1633
Galileo arrives in Rome for trial before Inquisition
Source: Library of Congress.
Sixty-nine years old, wracked by sciatica, weary of controversy, Galileo Galilei entered Rome on February 13, 1633. He had been summoned by Pope Urban VIII to an Inquisition investigating his
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. The charge was heresy. The cause was Galileo’s support of the Copernican theory that the planets, including Earth, revolved around the sun.
Nicolas Copernicus had published his heliocentric theory in 1543. His ideas were condemned by religious leaders — not only Catholic ones but also Protestants Martin Luther and John Calvin — because they contradicted the Bible. Slowly, though, astronomers began to accept the sun-centered universe.
Galileo’s own acceptance, forged in the 1590s, grew stronger in 1609, when he used a new invention, the telescope, to study the planets. Discovering that the Moon had craters, Jupiter was orbited by moons, and Venus had phases like the Moon, he rejected the accepted belief that the heavens were fixed, perfect, and revolving around Earth.
Church authorities, however, objected to a 1613 letter he wrote supporting the Copernican theory. At a hearing, he was told not to actively promote Copernican ideas. A document placed in the records of the proceeding went further, saying he was ordered never to discuss the theory in any way, but evidence suggests that Galileo’s understanding the document was planted after the meeting by enemies.
By the late 1620s, Galileo believed that Pope Urban would be more open to his ideas than earlier popes. He wrote the Dialogue as a conversation between a Copernican and an adherent of the Church’s geocentric theory, hoping to escape condemnation by presenting both views. The ploy failed, and he was summoned. The panel of cardinals decided to ban his book, force him to abjure Copernican ideas, and sentence him to imprisonment. A few months later, the old man was released to his home, where he lived until 1642.
“This Day in World History” is brought to you by USA Higher Education.
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