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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
STRANGE MATTERS
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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
ALSO BY TOM SIEGFRIED
The Bit and the Pendulum:
From Quantum Computing to M Theory—
The New Physics of Information
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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
STRANGE MATTERS
undiscovered ideas at the frontiers of space and time
Tom Siegfried
Joseph Henry Press
Washington, D.C.
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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
Joseph Henry Press
2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20418
The Joseph Henry Press, an imprint of the National Academy Press, was created with the goal of making books on science, technology, and health more widely available to professionals and the public. Joseph Henry was one of the founders of the National Academy of Sciences and a leader in early American science.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this volume are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences or its affiliated institutions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Siegfried, Tom, 1950-
Strange matters : undiscovered ideas at the frontiers of space and time / by Tom Siegfried.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-309-08407-5 (cloth with jacket)
1. Cosmology. 2. Physics. I. Title.
QB981 .S535 2002
523.1—dc21
2002006045
Cover image: Artist’s depiction of merging neutron stars. Illustration by Matthew Frey. Copyright Wood Ronsaville Harlin, Inc.
Copyright 2002 by Tom Siegfried. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
CONTENTS
Preface
vii
Introduction
1
PART ONE
STRANGE MATTERS
1
Strange Matter
From Gell-Mann and Quarks to the Search for Quark Nuggets
13
2
Mirror Matter
From Dirac and Antimatter to the “Mirror World”
35
3
Super Matter
From Noether’s Symmetry Theorem to Superparticles
61
4
Dark Matter
From Pauli and the Neutrino to the Universe’s Missing Mass
87
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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
PART TWO
STRANGE FRONTIERS
5
The Best of all Possible Bubbles
From Friedmann and Cosmic Expansion to the Multiverse
111
6
The Essence of Quintessence
From Einstein’s Greatest Mistake to the Universe’s Accelerating Expansion
138
7
Superstrings
From Maxwell and Electromagnetic Waves to a World Made of Strings
160
PART THREE
STRANGE IDEAS
8
Stretching Your Brane
From Schwarzschild and Black Holes to New Dimensions of Space
185
9
Ghosts
From Riemann and the Geometry of Space to the Shape of the Universe
214
10
The Two-Timing Universe
From Einstein and Slow Clocks to a Second Dimension of Time
235
Epilogue
255
Notes
273
Further Reading
287
Index
291
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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
PREFACE
I’ve always had a deep interest in the history of science. I find it fascinating and fun. And it seems to me that history should be an important part of telling any scientific story.
Some scientists agree. “I know of no better way of teaching science to undergraduates than through its history,” the Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg writes. “Science is, after all, part of the history of humanity.”
If you replace “undergraduates” with “general public,” Weinberg’s sentiments are very similar to my own. And so in writing about science I like to draw on its history as much as I can.
But many books by many authors recount the stories from science’s past. And I am not a historian, but a journalist. My job is usually to tell about science in the present.
In this book, though, I mix the present with the past and future. In a sense I’m trying to write the history of the science of the moment, reporting from the frontiers of research where history is in the process of being made. To do that in context I have to say something about the past. And then I try to go a step further, to tell about this history that hasn’t yet been made.
I have focused on physics and cosmology because those fields
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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
provide two of the grandest mysteries for the future to solve. One is the nature of the “dark matter” that, astronomers have deduced, makes up most of the mass of the universe. The other is the question of how to reconcile Einstein’s theory of gravity with quantum mechanics, the two most successful theories in the history of physics, yet seemingly incompatible with one another.
Put another way, the two mysteries might be expressed as two deep questions: “What is the universe made of?” and “How does the universe work?” In the course of trying to answer these questions, scientists have proposed the existence of many strange things: strange forms of matter, strange realms of existence, strange ideas about how time, space, and reality are related to one another. Most of these strange things strike the casual observer as bizarre beyond belief. And many, if not most, will no doubt turn out not to exist after all. But of all the strange matters I discuss in this book, I guarantee that at least one of them will someday be discovered. I just can’t say which one.
My confidence comes from science’s history, which is full of predictions of strange things that have come true. Mathematics possesses a mysterious power to reveal the existence of objects and phenomena before any physical evidence of their presence has been obtained. Just how that is possible is one of the main issues to be explored in the pages to follow.
Just how it was possible to write this book is another mystery that calls for some words of thanks. I extend deep appreciation to all of the scientists who have helped me over the years; most but not all will be mentioned in the text. And I thank my many friends and colleagues in the science journalism community who have politely listened to my verbalizations of this book before I began typing it. I hope they accept my apologies for not listing all of those who know their names deserve to be here.
My special thanks go to K.C. Cole of the Los Angeles Times, who
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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
read virtually the entire manuscript and ripped it to shreds with perceptive demands for clarity, logic, and completeness. Any science writer would be most unwise to publish a book without letting K.C. read it first.
K.C. is my second-favorite critic next to my wife, Chris, who’s the best in the business at telling me when I don’t make sense. (Close behind in this category are my science-journalist colleagues at the Dallas Morning News—Alexandra Witze, Sue Goetinck Ambrose, Laura Beil, and Karen Patterson.)
Thanks and sincere appreciation also go to my agent, Skip Barker, and my editor at Joseph Henry Press, Jeff Robbins, the key players in making this book real—even though it’s a book about things that aren’t real yet.
Tom Siegfried
Arlington, Texas
February 2002
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Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
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