Table Of ContentTHE
COSMIC
CODE
QuantulD Physics
as the Language of Nature
Heinz R. Pagels
A BANTAM NEW AGE BOOK
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THE COSMIC CODE
Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature
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"Quantum physics clarified-with a passion to convey
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THE COSMIC CODE QUA~Tl'~ PHYSICS :\S THE LANCUAGE OF NATURE
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Acknowledgments
IN November 1977 I attended a symposium at Columbia
University to honor Professor Isidor Isaac Rabi, and experimental
physicist of the Los Alamos generation, a Nobel laureate, and
a statesman of science. He was a founder of Brookhaven
National Laboratory and the European Organization for Nuclear
Research (CERN). After a day of speeches by his colleagues,
Rabi made a few remarks of his own. He chided physicists for
failing to bring the excitement of physics to a larger public
and said that they had done less than science fiction writers
to communicate the spirit of science. Upon hearing his remarks
I resolved to write this book-a resolution supported by my
friend John Brockman's instinct for intellectual excitement.
With John's gentle prodding I wrote a book proposal.
Many people, all friends, have made suggestions regarding
style and content which have found their way into the final
product-Kathryn Burkhart, Ashton Carter, Sidney Coleman,
Rodney Cool, Gerald Feinberg, Daniel Greenberger, Mark
Kac, Tony King, Linda Hess, Emily McCully, Richard Ogust,
Hilary Putnam, and especially Eugene Schwartz and Arthur
Miller whose criticisms helped me enonnously. Many of my
views on the problem of quantum reality grew out of
delightfully humorous and infonnative discussions with Nicholas
Herbert. I was also fortunate that the writing of this book
coincided with the centennial year of Einstein's birth, 1979.
In that year I attended three centennial symposia, one held
at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., another
in Jerusalem sponsored by the Israeli Academy of Science and
the van Leer Foundation, and a third in New York City
sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences. I benefited
greatly from lectures at these meetings, especially those by
Daniel Bell, Jeremy Bernstein, Erik Erikson, Loren Graham,
Gerald Holton, Martin Klein, Arthur Miller, Abraham Pais,
Wolfgang Panofsky, Dennis Sciama, Irwin Shapiro, Steven
Weinberg, and John Wheeler. Articles by A. Pais and C.
vii
viii THE COS\llC CODF
Holton on the early work of Einstein were especially useful.
The second part of the book has been influenced by U.
Amaldi's CERN article on accelerators and scientific culture
as well as the 1977 Dedalus article of Steven Weinberg. The
third part of the book grew out of conversations with my
friend Joseph H. Hazen.
It was my good fortune to find Ylatthew Zimet, who
illustrated the book. His novel and humorous drawings do
much to ease the burden of the text by delighting mind and
eye.
A scientist's greatest asset, the ability to concentrate
productively on specific problems until they yield, can become
a liability when he attempts to communicate his ideas to a
nonscientist. Therefore my deepest debt is to my editors,
Alice Mayhew and Catherine Shaw, who showed me how
such communication was possible without a sacrifice in the
clarity or integrity of ideas. If the reader obtains a better view
of the forest of physics rather than of the trees, then lowe
much to them.
I would like to thank the Aspen Center for Physics for its
hospitality during the writing of this book.
Finally I want to thank my wife, Elaine, and my son,
Mark, whose loving support made writing less a labor and
more a creative challenge.
For my parents
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword xiii
Part I-THE ROAD TO QUANTUM REALITY
1. The Last Classical Physicist 3
2. Inventing General Relativity 24
3. The First Quantum Physicists 46
4. Heisenberg on Helgoland 56
5. Uncertainty and Complementarity 67
6. Randomness 82
7. The Invisible Hand 90
8. Statistical Mechanics 99
9. Making Waves 113
10. Schrodinger's Cat 125
11. A Quantum Mechanical Fairy Tale 132
12. Bell's Inequality 137
13. The Reality Marketplace 153
Part II-THE VOYAGE INTO MATTER
1. The Matter Microscopes 169
2. Beginning the Voyage: Molecules, Atoms, and Nuclei 183
3. The Riddle of the Hadrons 192
4. Quarks 198
5. Leptons 211
6. Gluons 222
7. Fields, Particles, and Reality 235
8. Being and Nothingnes's 243
9. Identity and Difference 248
10. The Gauge Field Theory Revolution 256
11. Proton Decay 271
12. The Quantum and the Cosmos 278
Part III-THE COSMIC CODE
1. Laying Down the Law 291
2. The Cosmic Code 307
Bibliography 314
Index 317
Foreword
As a physicist. want to share the excitement of the recent
discoveries of physics with other people-discoveries giving
insights into the ultimate structure of matter, thc origin and
end of the universe, and the new quantum reality. In the last
ten years physicists have learned more about the universe
than in previous centuries-they have seen a new picture of
reality requiring a conversion of our imaginations. The visible
world is neither matter nor spirit but the invisible organiza
tion of energy.
This book is divided into three parts. The first part, "The
Road to Quantum Reality," describes the development of the
quantum theory of the atom. Grasping quantum reality re
quires changing from a reality that can be seen and felt to an
instrumentally detected reality that can be perceived only
intellectually. The world described by the quantum theory
does not appeal to our immediate intuition as did the old
classical physics. Quantum reality is rational but not visualizable.
Another way the old physics differs from quantum phys
ics is the wav the determinism of a clock differs from the
contingency o'f a pinball machine. Albert Einstein, who never
accepted the randomness at the foundation of reality implied
by the quantum theory, expressed his objection by stating, ".
cannot believe that God plays dice." Yet almost every physi
cist today believes He does. We will look at randomness in
the hand of a dice-playing God and see what it implies about
reality.
The second part of the book describes "The Voyage into
Matter." Physicists, extending human consciousness into the
mthest reaches of space and time, deep into the structure of
matter, find that beyond the molecule and atom lies a new
realm. The core of the atom is the nucleus. The same forces
that bind the atomic nucleus together produce a new set of
particles-forms of matter never before seen-called hadrons,
and these in turn are made out of yet more fundamental
.puticles called quarks. Physicists have voyaged into the realm
xiii
