Peter Steinberg

Random Connections, Many Worlds

Sometimes, blog material sneaks up on you unannounced: consider this chain of fortuitous connections:

1. A New York Times piece by Stephen Johnson about how TV is making us smarter, focussing in particular on the complexity of '24' in terms of its complex, intersecting plotlines and character development.
2. Stumbling on the season finale of said '24' last monday, after missing 98% of the previous 4 seasons, but triggering on one of the actresses, who looked familiar
3. An IMDB search (just type "imdb x" into google) revealing said actress as Mary Lynn Rajskub, who I had subliminally recognized from a recent Netflixing of P.T. Anderson's Punch Drunk Love.
4. I somehow triggered on a music/comedy piece that Rajskub starred in from 2001 called "Girl's Guitar Club", which I downloaded online.
5. The protagonistas in that film have a few scenes with an "Indie Rock Guy", who turns out to be Mark Everett, frontman (onlyman) of Eels.
6. (Here's where things get interesting) IMDB tells us that Everett's father is Hugh Everett, III, a once well-known physicist who introduced the "Many Worlds" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. 

Although this reads like "six degrees of...", at the time it felt just like bumbling around.  But now even the quasi-linear progression ceases as this story bifurcates into the story of a CD and a physics paper (involving two of my favorite hobbies...):

So on Monday night, I ordered the new Eels album (Blinking Lights and other Revelations) from amazon, which arrives yesterday, just in time for a long drive home.  It's "terrific" in almost every sense listed by the definition posted on dictionary.com (splendid, awesome, terrifying, frightful...).  That is, it's a great album, albeit somewhat harrowing, especially the bits about his father, who was apparently an introverted drunk who died prematurely.  The, um, complicated family drama alluded to in various songs is corroborated by a detailed, but quirky, bio of Everett hosted here. 

But while the son wonders out loud what went on his father's mind, he never seems to allude to his father's life work.  Not surprising, since the father appears to be one of those men who left physics and entered the somewhat amorphous realm of the military industrial complex (working for the Pentagon, and various IT-related contractors).  But this seemed like a golden opportunity for me to actually learn a bit about the "Many Worlds" theory from its primary source, the single paper by Everett listed on SPIRES: "Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, published by Review of Modern Physics in 1957, based on his thesis work at Princeton.

With all the disclaimers of an experimentalist commenting on a piece of pure theory, it's a beautiful work, carefully laid out and unflinching in following its internal logic to its end, even if the result has been somewhat overblown and subject to unnecessary mystification in the intervening years.  And in the context laid out by the nearly-random connections which led me to this paper, and in the context of an emotionally-charged album by the son of the author (which is also unflinching in its meditations on his family and its effect on the rest of his life), this one particular train of thought in the 1957 paper stood out:

It will suffice for our purposes to consider the observers to possess memories (i.e., parts of a relatively permanent nature whose states are in correpondence with past experience of the observers)...

As models for observers we can, if we wish, consider automatically functioning machines, possessing sensory apparatus and coupled to recording devices capable of registering past sensory data and machine configurations.  We can further suppose that the machine is so constructed that its present actions shall be determined noy only by its present sensory data, but by the contents of its memory as well.  Such a machine will then be capable of performing a sequence of observations (measurements), and further more of deciding upon its future experiments on the basis of past results.  If we consider that current sensory data, as well as machine configuration is immediately recorded in the memory, then the actions of the machine at a given instant can be regarded as a function of the memory contents only, and all relevant experience of the machine is contained in the memory.

I try to imagine this construction popping up in a father/son fireside chat. 

Of course, this isn't the core concept of the "Many Worlds" hypothesis, but just a definition of an observer.  In his considerations of the ensemble of "memories" of said observer in the context of quantum mechanical wave functions, he comes to the conclusion that:

The "trajectory" of the memory configuration of an observer performing a sequence of measurements is thus not a linear sequence of memory configuration, but a branching tree, with all possible outcomes existing simultaneously in a final superposition.

But for those people who are attracted to the Many Worlds interpretation since it seems to suggest a universe of endless possibilities, where everything that could have happened somehow did happen and continues on in an alternate universe, Everett is very clear (in a footnote) about the reality of these other branches:

It is unnecessary to suppose that all [branches] but one are somehow destroyed, since all the separate elements of a superposition individually obey the wave equation with complete indifference to the presence of absence ("actuality" or not) or any other elements.  This total lack of effect of one branch on another also implies that no observer will ever be aware of any splitting process.

Again, think about that fireside chat. 

So we've stumbled on an almost-heartbreaking story, with a father who seems fiercely intelligent and scientifically creative but somewhat bleak in his view of the human condition, and a son who is musically prolific and artistically creative but, well, also somewhat bleak in his view of the human condition.  It's also hard to escape a shared sense of an inescapable determinism of the past on the present.  Good thing it's a great CD, 35 tracks evincing a sharp musical sensibility in a variety of styles, all held together by Everett the Younger's voice. Clearly, if we're all trapped on our particular branch, we may as well mine it for material, and at least try to make the best of it as it develops.

Unveiling the Future (of QCD)

Today I took a few minutes out of my schedule (not so busy this week, cf. last week and next week) to attend the dedication (and unveiling) of the new QCD machines at BNL.  Each of the two QCDOC (QCD on a Chip, to those in the know) machines, one funded by DOE and the other by RIKEN, is a wall-sized monster, capable of 10 Teraflops (that is "trillion floating-point operations per second") of Lattice QCD calculations.  This is by means of a massively-parallel array of thousands of 1 Gigaflop daughter cards on hundreds of motherboards.  It's an exciting resource for the folks doing calculations of QCD thermodynamics, a particularly nasty problem in theoretical physics without the aid of such a massive machine.

It even turns out that this machine, which on paper is more powerful by a factor of 10 than the previous-generation QCDSP (also at BNL), is actually more of a boon to RHIC physics than I realized.  Chatting with one of the lattice guys at Brookhaven, I found out that QCDSP was never used for QCD thermodynamics, the core problem for understanding the phase structure (mainly for some thorny technical reasons pertaining to the implementation of fermions - feel free to correct me in the comments if I got that wrong!).  Instead, all of the calculations we discuss and show in seminars and talks were performed with much slower machines.  Thus, we may really be unveiling an interesting future, where we can really make contact with features of data.  Of course, I'm still a little unclear on whether lattice data will ever tell us about dynamical features of QCD, such as the transport properties which affect the hydrodynamic evolution.  But now the ball's in the theorist's court, this bright, clean, white-tiled court (with a whole crowd of lab directors, nobel laureates, scientists and lab staff), and I'm interested to see how they hit it back.

All About Chemistry

So my week is finally over.  As I mentioned last week, I was scheduled to present a seminar to the BNL Chemistry Department as part of my tenure case.  This talk was mainly a way to present my research to my chemist colleagues in a way that didn't rely too heavily on the techniques and jargon of strong interaction physics (read QCD).  So I called it "RHIC Results on the Thermochemistry and Hydrodynamics of the Strong Interaction."  Kind of ambitious sounding, but I've been working along these lines for a couple of years now, making it a really fun experience to put a lot of different ideas together in the same place.  Needless to say, this took a lot out of me, having dominated my "free" time in the last two weeks, but I'm fairly happy with the results.  If you're game, you can check it out here.

Science and the City

As a quick follow-up to my post on Einstein's Gift, I wanted to mention the excellent "Science and the City" website run by the New York Academy of Sciences.  I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it, but every week there are dozens of science-related events, and S&C covers them all: from lectures to readings, from plays to visual arts.  OK, two quibbles: 1) some of the content is restricted to NYAS members ($95/year), but there's a lot of free stuff, including nice feature articles, and 2) not enough physics (but there's only one way to change this...)

That said, Sarah Greene (the creator of the site whom I met at Einstein's Gift) pointed me to one particularly nice physics article about Simon Singh's presentation to the academy on his recent book on the Big Bang.  In this talk, Singh makes an excellent demonstration of the psychology behind scientific paradigms (featured near the top of the page).  When you listen to parts of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven backwards, some people hear backwards gobbledy-gook and some people hear Satanic verses.  Singh followed an ears-only version with one where these lyrics were projected for the audience:

It's my sweet Satan
The one whose little path would
make me sad whose power is Satan.
Oh, he'll give you, give you 666.
There was a little toolshed where
he made us suffer, sad Satan.

And lo and behold, as you stare at the words, they become an undeniable part of Heaven to Stairway.  It even becomes tempting to imagine that Plant & Co. designed the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven to encode the backwards version.  And so Singh proves his point:

"Once a theory provides an explanation for a set of facts, it becomes very easy to accept that explanation, even if it is manifestly wrong, as this one obviously is..."

Einstein's Gift

On friday night, I got to make good on my theoretical interest in the convergence of science and culture, by participating in the post-show discussion of a performance of "Einstein's Gift", as part of the Epic Theatre Center spring workshop series.

"Einstein's Gift" is an award-winning play by Vern Thiessen (who attended the same performance as I did, as if anyone told me...) mainly about the life and work of Fritz Haber, recipient of the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (whose bio is detailed, but radically incomplete).  I must admit that I had never heard of Haber before (even coming from a chemistry department at BNL!) but he's a fascinating figure.  Even after major advances in electrochemistry and Bunsen flames, he made a huge contribution to European agriculture before World War I by developing nitrogen capture, allowing the industrial-scale manufacture of artificial fertilizer.  Unfortunately, he also developed the use of chlorine gas as a tool for war, deployed by the German's in WWI, and his later research turned out to be the seed for the Zyklon B used by the Nazi's in WWII.  This latter tragedy was especially tragic in light of the fact that Haber was a Jew by birth, but converted to Christianity to aid in his professional advancement.  And none of this, which followed his Nobel work, emerges in the official bio.  For other details, you should poke around Google a bit.

Einstein and Haber are portrayed as having an intermittent friendship, anchored by a deep respect for each other's scientific ability.  This persisted despite obvious differences in their philosophies of scientific practice: Einstein focussing on uncovering secrets of nature through theoretical investigation, Haber insisting time and time again that science without obvious application had little value.  Of course, Haber did not envision the unintended consequences of his work -- but then again, neither did Einstein, the parallel being a central theme of the play. 

Needless to say, I found "Einstein's Gift" to be a compelling play and a powerful reading, with very moving performances from the leads (some of whose names I want to give, but this will have to wait for an update -- I somehow didn't get a program!  several others are mentioned below...).  It should be returning to New York as a full production this September, and shouldn't be missed.

But the play wasn't the only part of the evening.  Afterwards, the producer of the play, Zak Berkman, moderated a discussion between the audience and a panel of guest speakers, consisting of myself, Dr. Rosamond Rhodes (a bioethicist from the CUNY graduate center), and three actors from the show: Melissa Friedman (Haber's doomed first wife), Jim Wallert (Haber's former research assisant), and Sarah Winkler (Haber's second wife).  I must admit that I was suffering from a mild case of stage fright the whole...week...but I quickly drawn in by the increasingly animated conversation that developed. 

The main focus was on the responsibility of the scientist for technologies derived from basic research, especially those technologies capable of mass destruction.  There was also a lot of discussion of the role of religion in the lives of these two scientific men, especially in the context of the ethical and moral decisions both men made, and didn't make, in the course of their lives.  Of course, being part of the conversation, rather than carefully listening and taking notes, makes it difficult to recount the details (although there were some moments that were obviously funny to the audience and the actors, when Rosamond and I were clearly arguing how much we agreed with each other...).  Ultimately, I was quite impressed by how passionate all involved felt about the issues raised by the play, and was very honored to have been invited to be a participant.

The invitation was a funny story in itself, having happened last Saturday at about 1am after a few beers at the party of mutual friends.  I overheard one of the performers, (you know who you are, and thanks again!) discussing a play about Einstein with a friend of mine and I didn't hesitate to interject myself into the conversation -- I mean, I'm a physics blogger in the Einstein Year; it's my job to get into conversations like this!  Next thing I knew, I was committed to participating in the post-show despite my obvious lack of knowledge of Haber, and my lack of relevant knowledge about Einstein -- but nothing a bit of Google and a few Einstein books couldn't fix.

Tumbling Down

This is insane.  As the NY Times (whose photo I have clipped) reports:

"A sizable section of retaining wall collapsed onto the Henry Hudson Parkway in hilly northern Manhattan this afternoon, sending tons of dirt, rock and trees onto the roadway, snarling traffic for miles around and leading to the evacuation of nearby buildings."

Fortunately, no-one seems to have been hurt, but check out that red car (it's easier to see on TV).  It seems that the Mayor's office and city agencies are all over this and they think there is no additional danger.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

On a personal note, this is a wall just north of the George Washington Bridge, where I hang a right on the way to work in the morning.  Needless to say, I'm taking the train tomorrow.

Feynman @ BNL [Updated!]

So while I'm at it, here's a little bit about the Feynman lecture mentioned in the previous post.  After the presentation by the illustrator, we got a short drumming concert by Ralph Leighton (son of Robert Leighton, a co-author of the Feynman Lectures in Physics) and Tom Rutishauser, shown to the right (Leighton seated).  This was effective in giving a sense of the music that interested Feynman, who was an inspired amateur, but apparently won a local drumming contest in Brazil. 

The next part was a little confusing to me, since I hadn't really read the poster before dropping by the lecture.  A tall man with a heavy Brooklyn accent appeared and explained, "Apparently, I died a few days ago."  Took a few seconds to remember that there was supposed to be an actor (Norman Parker) reading from Feynman's autobiographical stories.  And yet, I didn't expect him to actually be Feynman for 45 minutes.  Considering that I am theoretically in support of physics intruding into culture, and theater in particular (big fan of Copenhagen that I am), I finally let myself adjust and have a bit of fun with it.  But the after-effect was a little sad; having never seen Feynman in real life, except in documentary footage, I definitely got a sense that I (and my peers) really missed something great.

[Update: the BNL video people have pointed me to a video link to the performance.  Let me know if it doesn't work off-site...]

Stamping Out Ignorance...

...37 cents at a time.

I just got back from a Brookhaven Distinguished Lecture "Celebrating Richard Feynman", partially inspired by this being his birthday (would have been his 87th) but well-timed with the introduction of a set of commemorative stamps by the USPS (And what an amazing group of scientists.)

The illustrator who designed this set spoke briefly at the lecture, and gave an excellent explanation for the mysterious value for the dimensionless "fine structure constant" so important to Feynman's Quantum Electrodynamics: "The 1 is for 1st class, and the 37 is for 37 cents". 

QED.

May Flowers

Brookhaven doesn't have a reputation for physical beauty (not helped by a plethora of archival images [however cool] of magnets and machines, and nearly none about the site itself).  And yet, there's been a lot of effort in the last few years in sprucing up the place.  I'm kind of sucker for these pink (apple?) blossoms which appear in late-April, early-May, wow passers-by, and then fall to earth only a few weeks later.  Who thought up these kind of schedules: New York media promoters?

Breakdown on I87

Sometimes I feel like I have the commute down to a science.  I mean, I am a scientist after all.  But then other times I remember that traffic is not simply an incompressible fluid, but something formed by real people making real decisions, and real mistakes, in real time. 

I worked from home this morning to take in a phone meeting and thought I could zip to work just after lunch.  Instead I found myself on I87, just outside Manhattan heading towards the Triboro Bridge, sitting still, with my engine off, and watching other people pace outside their cars.  For 20 minutes.  Anyway, we eventually got going again and I managed to capture a shot of the culprit.  Poor guy.