Table Of Content,
ALso
BY A~ ZEE
Fearful The Search for Beauty in Modem Physics
Symmetry.~
~'v Gravity at Work and Play
in Einstein's Universe
MACMILLAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
New York
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Copyright 1989 by Anthony Zee
@
Lines from ClBegin the Beguine" (page 120)t words and music by
Cole Porter @ 1935 by Warner Bros. Inc. (Renewed). All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
Lines from and Ice"' by Robert Frost (page 207) copyright 1923
~tFire
by 1951 by
Ho1t Rinehart and Winston and renewed Robert Frost. Reprinted
t
from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem)
by permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
AU rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
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Macmillan
Publishing Company
866 Third Avenue, New NY 10022
York~
CoUier Macmillan Canada. Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zee, A.
An old man's gravity at work and in universe
toy: p]ay
Einstein~s
/ A. Zee.
p. em.
Includes index.
[SBN 3440-2
~·92-§.3
1. Gravitation Popular works. 2. Gravity-Popu]ar works.
3. Cosmology Popular works. I. Title.
QCI78.Z44 ) 989
531 1 J -f--dc19 88-19013 elP
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Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Prologue: The Apple and the Moon xv
PART I THE RISE OF GRAVITY 1
1. An Old Man's Toy 3
2. Hastening Through Space and Time 18
3. The Mighty Shall Be Weak 32
PART II THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE 47
4. Outward Bound 49
5. Darkness at Night 70
6. From the Big Chill to the Big Bang 8S
PART III STRUCTURES OUT OF THE VOID 103
7. The Universe Begets Matter lOS
8. The Rich Get Richer 123
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Contents ,
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',,,,,n LiLli' , "" Ii" , " , 1m , , un La,
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9. From Hair Whorls to the Edge of Creation 134
10. Ghost Riders in the Sky 155
II. Crowned with a Halo 175
IV THE GRAVITY 189
PART MYSTERY OF
The Fall and Rise of Gravity 191
12~
13. The Music of Strings 211
14. The Thinking Man and the Laughing God 231
Notes 245
Index 265
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Vill
Of the fundamental we are most Inhm!!l'~f'
>mIVUv. In the uttermost rI" .. II',...",,,,, of night, lost in OUT private LUV'U~".""
shut off from the world we still feel incessant
we come into existence than we became aware
bal~lnC(':d by the buoyancy fluid inside .
not know gravity.
man
In Part 1, we
to the quantum
on to a glimpse
2, we follow the
3, we how
evollutU)TI of the
evtll1en!t: at other
ix
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Preface
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tour of the universe, we return in Part 4 to gaze at the innermost secrets
of gravity. ThUS,. a book in four movements: gravity, universe, universe
1
and gravity.
This book is about gravity and about the universe. My ambition
here is to explain the physics of gravity as wen as the physics of phenom ..
ena involving gravity, as represented most dramatically by the dynamic
universe. Cosmology is certainly of deep interest and shares equal bil1ing
with the physics of gravity. Cosmology is also considerably more accessible
to the lay readeL Ultimately, however, the passion of the fundamental
physicist lies more with the mystery of why we fan than with the life of
the universe.
I would also like to say a few words in tribute to George Gamow,
the 1ate Russian-American physicist who fashioned modem physical cos ..
mology out of the genera] notion of the big as I describe in chapter
bang~
6. An ebullient and irreverent jokester, Gamow was notorious for the fun
he managed to have while doing physics. Quite a few physicists now fee]
that the Nobel Prize committee passed him over unjustly. Perhaps they
didn't like the way he treated physics as an amusing hobby rather than
as a serious profession. Dh well, in any case his style appeals to me.
1
Gamow also wrote a delightful series of popular physics books. I went into
physics partly because of a chance encounter with one of his books during
high school I recommend those books.
I did not want to write the kind of popular physics book that
merely serves up headlines. As a physicist and a professor, I want to
explain as much as possible. But in d"iscussing quantum gravity and the
superstring theory in Part 4, when the full subtleties of the quantum field
theory come into play, I can, alas do no more than give you the flavor
7
of the physics For those who want I can only suggest that ,
involved~ more~
you embrace a career in theoretical physics, as I did when I read George
Gamow's confession in one of his popular physics books that he iust
couldn't explain quantum
statistics~
On the other hand, 1 also want to report on the excitement of the
latest developments. The trick is to avoid the kind of developments that
are here today and gone tomorrow. Over the four years or so from the first
writing to the publication of this book, the popular press has reported
breathlessly on quite a few exciting By and large,. I discuss
"discoveries.~'
in this book only what I be1ieve will at least in broad outline".
endure~
When I do talk about speculative suggestions, I try to make clear that they
are just that.
x
