Table Of ContentTravelling at the Speed of Thought: Einstein and the Quest
for Gravitational Waves
Daniel Kennefick
February 28, 2006
To my parents
Dan and Maura Kennefick
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Contents
Acknowledgements 1
1 The Gravitational Wave Analogy 4
2 The Prehistory of Gravitational Waves 33
3 The Origins of Gravitational Waves 69
4 The Speed of Thought 111
5 Do Gravitational Waves Exist? 132
6 Gravitational Waves and the Renaissance of General Relativity 171
7 Debating the Analogy 201
8 The Problem of Motion 230
9 Portrait of the Skeptics 286
10 On the Verge of Detection 321
11 The Quadrupole Formula Controversy 363
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12 Keeping up with the Speed of Thought 408
Appendix A: The Referee’s Report 446
Appendix B: Interviews and Other New Sources 456
Bibliography 457
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List of Photographs
no. title caption
Chapter 1
1 LIGO The LIGO facility at Hanford, Washington, one of two separate
detectors in the LIGO system. This Laser Interferometer
Gravitational Wave observatory consists primarily of two
4 km beam tubes down which lasers are fired and bounced
back and forth by high quality mirrors. Any changes in
the time taken for the light to travel along the tubes
is possible evidence for the passage of gravitational waves.
One of the two beam tubes can be seen receding into the distance.
(Courtesy LIGO Laboratory)
Chapter 2
2 Laplace Pierre Simon de Laplace, the first scientist to explore the
idea that a finite speed of propagationof gravity would
result in damping of otherwise stable orbits.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives)
3 Poincar´e Henri Poincar´e was, with Laplace, amongst the greatest
theorists of celestial mechanics. He was also a pioneer
in discussing the possible existence of gravitationalwaves.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives
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Chapter 4
4 Eddington Arthur Stanley Eddington, one of the founders of modern
astrophysics. His main influence on the development of
GR was through his celebrated textbook, in which his
sceptical views on gravitationalwaves shone through.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives, Segr´e collection)
Chapter 5
5 Einstein Albert Einstein, pictured during the 1930s.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives,
Francis Simon Collection. Photo by Francis Simon)
6 Einstein’s Einstein’s indignant letter to Tate, the editor
letter of the Physical Review
(Courtesy Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
7 Tate John T. Tate, editor of the Physical Review from 1926-1950made
the journal into the leading physics journal in the world.
(Courtesy University of Minnesota Archives)
8 Phys Rev The logbook of the Physical Review, dating from the
logbook 1930s. The line shown gives Robertson as the name of the
referee of Einstein and Rosen’s paper.
(Courtesy Martin Blume and the Physical Review)
9 Robertson Howard Percy Robertson, the author of the referee’s report which
annoyed Einstein, but which proved correct.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection)
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Chapter 6
10 Landau Lev Davidovich Landau (known as Dau), one of the
and most brilliant physicists of the mid-twentieth century, with one of
Lifshitz his students, and co-author, Evgeny Lifshitz.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection)
Chapter 7
11 Bondi Tommy Gold and Hermann Bondi at an International Astronomical Union
meeting in 1952, with their collaborator on the steady state theory,
Fred Hoyle. Gold and Bondi began as sceptics on the existence of
gravitationalwaves, but Bondi ended up playing a key role in showing
that they exist. (By permission of the Master and Fellows of St. John’s
College, Cambridge)
12 Wheeler John Wheeler, one of the most creative physicists of the twentieth
century. His influence on the subject of gravitationalwaves came
about mostly through the brilliant series of students he mentored.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection)
Chapter 8
13 Feynman This photo of Richard Feynman speaking with Paul Dirac at the
Warsaw conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR2)
in 1962 made the cover of Physics Today, a sign of the
increasing importance of the field. Presumably Dirac wasn’t one
of the 126 idiots Feynman encountered at the conference.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection)
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14 Wager This framed copy of the bet made between Bill Burke and his
advisor Kip Thorne hangs on the wall of the Bridge building
at Caltech. Like many sceptics before him, Burke hoped for
a novel result hidden in the non-linear complexities of GR.
(Courtesy Kip Thorne and Michele Vallisneri.
Photo by Michele Vallisneri)
Chapter 9
15 Infeld Leopold Infeld, at a postwar physics conference, seen with his
former mentor, Max Born. Infeld became one of the leading figures
in General Relativity in the 1950s and 1960s.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives,
Gift of Jost Lemmerich and the Born Collection)
16 Rosen Nathan Rosen and Joseph Weber, key figures in the controversies
surrounding gravitational waves in both theory and experimental
communities. Despite his iconoclasm, which included developing
an alternative theory of gravity in rivalry with GR, Rosen
remained a highly regarded figure in his field for his ready
willingness to admit when his ideas had not proved correct.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives)
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Chapter 10
17 Weber bar Joseph Weber seen with one of his resonant bar gravitational
wave detectors. Despite the controversywhich enveloped him
Weber insisted to the end of his life that his devices had
seen something which was most likely gravitationalradiation.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives)
18 Taylor Joseph Taylor, who led the radio astronomy team which discovered
the first binary pulsar and successfully exploited it as the most
powerful laboratory for testing Einstein’s relativity theory.
(Courtesy AIP Emilio Segr´e Visual Archives, W.G. Meggers
Gallery of Nobel Laureates. Photo by Robert P. Matthews)
Chapter 11
19 Havas Despite (or because of) coming from a backgroundin the apparently
analagous field of electrodynamics, Peter Havas was one of the most
tranchant critics of a too facile reliance on the electromagnetic
analogy. In particular he was highly skeptical that the quadrupole
formula was applicable to binary stars. In the later part of his
career he became a distinguished historian of his own field.
(Courtesy Eva Havas)
Chapter 12
20 MTW Charles Misner, John Wheeler and Kip Thorne with their celebrated
textbook on Gravitation. (Photograph and Copyright Anna Zytkow)
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Acknowledgements
TheresearchwhichledtothisbookwastheideaofmyphysicsadvisoratCaltech,KipThorne,
whohadbeeninvolvedinsomeofthecontroversiesdiscussedinit,andsawthatitwasastorythat
someone should try to tell. I was fortunate in having an advisor who was so open to the idea that
I should combine studies in physics with work in the history of science. I was doubly fortunate in
findingahistoryadvisorasabletofacilitatemynoviceeffortsinsomanywaysasDianaBuchwald,
now the chief editor of the Einstein Papers Project, engaged in editing the Collected Papers of
Albert Einstein. After finishing my thesis work, I benefited greatly from a two year period spent
collaborating with Harry Collins, author of Gravity’s Shadow, a history of experimental gravity
wave physics, at Cardiff University.
DianamadesureIgotmuchexcellentadviceatanearlystagefromthefirsteditorofEinstein’s
papers John Stachel. Another physicist turned historian, Peter Havas, who like Kip was centrally
involved in much of the history I was studying, was initially skeptical that I could objectively tell
this story, given my background and training. Yet he never let this prevent him from helping me
in every way he could, in person and by correspondence.
Ioweaparticulardebtofgratitudetothemanyphysicistswhoagreedtobeinterviewedbyme.
I would like to thank them all. I have provided, at the end of the book, a table of the interviews
andwhentheytookplace. Theyallinformedthetextconsiderably,evenwhentheyarenotquoted
directly. Funding to conduct these interviews was provided by the National Science Foundation,
through a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant.
A number of people kindly read the manuscript and offered much helpful advice, in particular
Martin Krieger and Eric Poisson, as well as Tilman Sauer, Michel Janssen and David Kaiser.
IwouldliketothanktheEinsteinArchivesattheHebrewUniversityofJerusalemforpermission
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