Knocking on Heaven's Door - Lisa Randall [209]
ISBN 978-0-06-172372-8
1. Science—Social aspects. 2. Physics—Social aspects. I. Title.
Q175.5.R365 2011
500—dc22
2011010521
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062096890
11 12 13 14 15 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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ENDNOTES
1. I will often approximate this as 27 kilometers.
2. The Large Hadron Collider is quite big, but it is used to study infinitesimal distances. The reasons for its large size are described later on when we discuss the LHC in detail.
3. Unlike in the movie, Herman Hupfield’s famous song “As Time Goes By” written in 1931 began with an unmistakable reference to people’s familiarity with the latest physics developments:
This day and age were living in
Gives cause for apprehension,
With speed and new invention,
And things like fourth dimension,
Yet we get a little weary
From Mr. Einstein’s theory
4. Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones. (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 1986).
5. Quantum mechanics can have macroscopic effects in carefully prepared systems or when measurements apply to high statistics situations, or very precise devices so that small effects can emerge. However, that does not invalidate using an approximate classical theory for most ordinary phenomena. It depends on precision as Chapter 12 will further address. The effective theory approach allows for the approximation and makes precise when it is inadequate.
6. I will sometimes employ exponential notation, which I will use here to explain what I mean in the middle in terms of powers of ten. The size of the universe is 1027 meters. This number is a one followed by 27 zeroes, or one thousand trillion trillion. The smallest imaginable scale is 10-35 meters. This number is a decimal point followed by thirty-four zeroes followed by a one, or one hundredth of one billionth of one trillionth of one trillionth. (You can see why exponential notation is easier.) Our size is about 101. The exponent here is 1, which is reasonably close to the middle between 27 and -35.
7. Levenson, Tom. Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science (Simon & Schuster, 1994).
8. During the Inquisition, the Romans didn’t include Tycho’s books in their Index, as would have been expected based on his Lutheran faith, because they wanted his framework to keep the Earth stationary yet consistent with Galileo’s observations.
9. Hooke, Robert. An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations (1674), quoted in Owen Gingerich, Truth in Science: Proof, Persuasion, and the Galileo Affair, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, vol. 55.
10. Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies (1922).
11. Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Sign of the Four (originally published in 1890 in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, chapter 1), in which Sherlock Holmes comments on Watson’s pamphlet, “A Study in Scarlet.”
12. Browne, Sir Thomas. Religio Medici (1643, pt. 1, section 9).
13. Augustine. The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 1, books 1–6, trans. and ed. by John Hammond Taylor, S. J. (New York: Newman Press, 1982). Book 1, chapter 19, 38, pp. 42–43.
14. Augustine. On Christian Doctrine, trans. by D. W. Robertson (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1958).
15. Augustine. Confessions, trans. by R. S. Pine-Coffin