The German physicist Werner Heisenberg, known for his uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, once remarked that science is rooted in conversation.
Louisa Gilder would probably agree. Science as communication was the major theme when the author spoke on Thursday to a standing-room-only audience at McLennan Physical Laboratories. Gilder is author of The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn. The book landed on the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2009 list, making Gilder practically a celebrity in the physics community.
The talk is part of a regular monthly series of colloquia hosted by the physics department, usually given by a notable professor in the field on a technical subject. Gilder is not a scientist. She has a degree in English literature and decided to write the book after reading N. David Mermin’s paper, “Quantum Mysteries For Anyone,” for a philosophy of science class at Dartmouth College.
One of the mysteries in the paper was entanglement, a phenomenon where two particles that become “entangled” can join together, and it becomes impossible to measure one without considering its counterpart. This holds true no matter the distance between the particles. Einstein would famously refer to this as “spooky action at a distance” and say that “no reasonable definition of reality can be expected to permit this.”
“It’s hard to remember, with professors that have to teach you physics, that physics can be exciting,” said Gilder, who originally wanted to be a physics major. She said the book was driven as much by her passion for physics as much as the need to tell a good story.
The personalities and problems behind entanglement took centre stage Thursday as Gilder took the audience through the ranks of the physics pantheon—Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, and John S. Bell—and explained how science is just as much about communication as it is about theory and experimentation. Scientists even have a sense of humour, she said, and mismatched socks can hold the key to the secrets of the universe.
Bell’s famous paper “Bertlmann’s Socks and the Nature of Reality,” was born of his time at the European Center for Nuclear Research where a fellow physicist, Dr. Bertlmann, was in the habit of wearing mismatched socks. “Bertlmann’s socks” illustrates entanglement, said Gilder as she quoted Bell: “If one is pink, you can be sure the other is not pink. There is no accounting for taste, but there is no mystery here.”
Gilder took the audience from the famous Einstein-Bohr debates to quantum cryptography (now used to secure Swiss election results). Audience members gasped when Gilder described how miscommunication—an unread letter, poor editing—lead to poor understanding of entanglement for 30 years after its discovery. Physicists’ one-liners elicited peals of laughter.
“What I would love is if it gave people the sense that science is something people do because they love it,” Gildner said.
And what’s going to be the subject of her next book?
“I was originally going to do a book about [the physicist] Gamoff, but this book took over eight years to write,” she said. “I’m going to take a break. It’s going to be about race horses.”
