João MagueijoKirja-arvosteluja

Mas rapido que la velocidad de la luz es la cronica de una idea "insensata" que ha provocado apasionadas polemicas pues cuestiona la regla fundamental de la fisica moderna enunciada por Einstein en su teoria de la relatividad: que la velocidad de la luz en el vacio es constante. Joao Magueijo -cosmologo y fisico teorico doctorado en la Universidad de Cambridge y profesor en el Imperial College de Londres- presenta una teoria que postula la variacion de la velocidad de la luz y plantea que en los primeros momentos del universo la velocidad de la luz era mayor. Su teoria se propone resolver algunos de los problemas cruciales de la cosmologia y tiene enormes implicancias para diferentes cuestiones de la fisica actual, desde los viajes espaciales y los agujeros negros hasta la dilatacion del tiempo y la teoria de las cuerdas.

The speed of light in a vacuum is supposed to be constant in all time frames. That is the basis of the theory of relativity. Joao Magueijo is a theoretical physicist that supports the Variable Speed of Light (VSL) theory in this book. While the book is not about the theory itself, he does talk a lot about various aspects of cosmology to provide some background.

So if the book is not about the theory itself, then what is it about? Faster Than the Speed of Light focuses on the bias of scientists and how difficult it is to introduce a dissenting theory. I imagine it would help if there was an experiment that a scientist could conduct to verify this theory, but if he mentions it in the book, I didn’t get that far.

Basically, scientists have evidence that the Big Bang was the founding event of the universe as we know it. This is something that we all agree on, there is the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation to back it up and there is the redshifting of the galaxies in the sky. So the idea is that space itself is expanding. However, in the early years of the universe, it is thought that the universe was opaque while the particles and matter cooled down to a state that light could travel through. So it was theorized that the universe underwent a period of rapid expansion. So Magueijo postulates that his VSL theory would solve some intractable problems in physics, and bring about a Grand Unified Theory.

Even when I picked up this book, I didn’t expect this to be covered. From the title, I assumed it was going to talk about a theoretical method of time travel or maybe it would cover the Tachyon. I didn’t particularly like this book. It isn’t that the book isn’t charming, or that it doesn’t have any British Wit. No, the main problem is that he talks about how this theory is supposed to solve everything but doesn’t show what he’s talking about. It is more of a memoir than anything else since it mainly focuses on the history of the VSL theory. It sort of gets into science by talking about a dream that Einstein had about cows.

I do understand in one sense; even though Einstein has become a household name and everyone is familiar with him, he was still a human being prone to making mistakes. So if this theory does hold water in some ways, then what is the problem? Maybe it is a generation too early. I mean, how much energy are we talking about when we need to see light have a different value for c? So in that sense, the book was frustrating. He never gets to the point and I couldn’t get into it.

"Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well-known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc², all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

In “Faster Than the Speed of Light” (p. 250) by João Magueijo.

There was no “cause and effect axiom” in 1905. The two axioms from which Einstein deduced special relativity were the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light. The falsehood of the second axiom killed physics, as suggested in the above quotation. Uhm…Come again?

This reminds me of the sad fact that the proponents of the hidden variable idea despite their failure managed to win popularizations claiming that all the problems of their project are actually some "weirdness" of the quantum theory. Tale about ridiculousness of the quantum theory sells better it seems. Sells so good that even if you don't support the hidden variables it's possible to present a trivial work as some novel fundamental research of cosmic importance by the following recipe. You add enough clichés into introduction of your paper, invent loud names for mundane stuff, and claim that it's relevant for some problematic topic without experimental data like quantum gravity. I'm sorry but you can't derive axioms within theory itself because they are, well, axioms. You can't reformulate your theory or call some objects with different names so that equivalent set of axioms becomes more fundamental or more "justified".

And they say quantum theory is an "ad-hoc patchwork, lacking any obvious physical interpretation or justification"? Seriously? You know, that's exactly the "criticism" used by all those anti-Einstein unrecognized geniuses like Magueijo. They use it for the special relativity they seem not to have any problems with. They use it because they failed to understand it, hearsay seems strange and they want to stop at the preceding level.

One of my favorite interpretations of QM is relational quantum mechanics, which also tries to use only a few axioms and information ideas to deduce QM. (Check it out on wikipedia or the arxiv (Rovelli 1996).) RQM posits that observation is interaction, which creates correlation between the observed and the observer -- yielding some relational notion of a state vector -- and that such an interaction/observation is also in principle given by an interaction Hamiltonian which another system (another observer) might be able to write down. In RQM, instead of trying to rationalize a classical universe with quantum mechanics (by supposing such a thing as wavefunction collapse), we have to give up our notions of the classical universe and suppose it's all interconnected in a quantum way. Great theories (like relativity) trade our "intuitive" or "classical" understanding of the universe for some beautiful (simple yet powerful) axioms. i hope to see space-time emerging along with QM from some concise set of principles, principles like those behind relativity and RQM, which leave us feeling quite wonderfully adrift in this strange universe. Interesting how we may have to give up "time" (causality) to do it :).

I am limited by my own sense of knowledge. Hence, I keep reading, looking, and am forced to keep thinking. I am the dash runner, and am always seeing myself from that sense of gravity I was born with. That keeps me grounded, yet I keep moving. My intention is to keep searching for knowledge. Where that came from is a fact that I picked up on when I became conscious. The thoughts in all of our brains are the universe(s) that surround us, and will be the decaying plasma we will leave behind. While I'm in this conscious state, I feast on. It's a strange custom and habit to carry around an equal sign that I removed and place it at my will and pleasure for selfish satisfaction, or to help where I can. I didn't damage or hurt anything because that equal sign is always where it was. That's not spooky at all when you think about it.

As Josh Billings quipped over a century ago: “The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much that ain’t so.”

This book definitely gives an interesting glimpse into the actual world of scientific research. I recognize much of the process from my own brief time working on computational geometry. The problem is that every few pages the author bitterly rants about how stupid everyone else is, in increasingly crude terms. Ignore that, however, and you get an overview of the theory of the varying speed of light, minus the mathematical details. The best part of this book was the author’s description of the relativity of time using Einstein’s dream of cows. Thanks for that.

Great science book, about the path to get to the VSL theory!

Professor at Imperial College London,proposing, varying speed of light (VSL) theory of cosmology, that the speed of light was much higher in the early universe, of 60 orders of magnitude faster than its present value breakthrough discovery will come before recent discovery CERN research results including Nagoya University in Japan, that neutrinos may travel faster than light particles called neutrinos moving just faster than the speed of light would overturn Albert Einstein’s theory, Joao Magueijo discusses some of the more dramatic implications of a varying speed of light, that indicate the story of his journey in physics with the revolutionary,of a Scientific Speculation, a book that could open and puts forth an extraordinary Scientifique, live source question at this time.

“The dead are the pensioners of remembrance,” João Magueijo writes toward the end of A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana, the Troubled Genius of the Nuclear Age. With his book, Maguijo has built a home for his pensioner, the probably dead but definitely disappeared physicist Ettore Majorana. It may be sometimes a cathouse (and you thought physicists were all serious and cerebral and stuff), sometimes a house of mirrors, but Majorana does indeed dwell on every page.

Ettore Majorana, we learn, was the wunderkind of the early atomic age. In his native Italy, the Sicilian worked with Enrico Fermi — or worked circles around Fermi and his circle of geniuses, according to Magueijo. Himself a physicist of some repute, Magueijo isn’t a great writer (his sentences sometimes get tangled in their dangling participles), but he’s clearly a passionate one who cares enough about his subjects to have done vast amounts of homework.

The underlying metaphor in A Brilliant Darkness is that the mysteriously disappeared Majorana is the elusive neutrino which passes through ordinary matter unperturbed and is notoriously hard to detect. (In the time it took you to read the foregoing sentence some 100 trillion neutrinos passed through your body.)

It’s not just a conceit: Majorana was hot on the trail of the neutrino, whose existence had been theorized, when he disappeared on March 26, 1938. Majorana’s work was important to Fermi’s project during World War II: developing the atomic bomb. Magueijo wonders, if Majorana had disappeared, whether the younger man might have tempered the venerable Fermi’s decision to join the Manhattan project.

We’ll never know, of course, and Magueijo, a physicist who deals in probabilities but never in certainties, revels in the epistemological uncertainty. In any case, we get a mystery story wrapped up in a biography that unfolds the history of particle physics in a most enjoyable way.

Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Brian Charles Clark, 2010

Interesting, but it appears the idea has gained no scientific ground. Maguijo is probably wrong.

(posted on my blog: davenichols.net)

What an unexpected gem of a book this turned out to be! Lee Smolin mentioned this work in his own popular science effort titled The Trouble With Physics, having worked with the author for some time. So, I picked this one up, hoping to get a peak at an alternative to inflation theory. Faster delivered this and a lot more.

João Magueijo is a cosmologist who values his identity as the somewhat anacharistic outsider, concentrating on alternative theories including his groundbreaking work on one called varying speed of light (VSL) which challenges the basic assumptions of special relativity and inflation. Faster explores João's progress toward the VSL concepts as well as serving as a memoir for his own scientific career (through its publication in 2003).

The first chapters of the book offer some history of various individuals and their theories which are central to any cosmological framework. João's explanation of Alan Guth's work toward establishing inflation as a primary theory in the field is outstanding and one I've not seen delivered better in a work not dedicated to inflation itself. His section and references to Einstein, while not terribly new, were humanizing rather than placing him on a golden pedestal as so many other authors like to do. We get glimpses into the mortal genius who we appreciate even more as a result. The author clearly likes to fancy himself an Einstein-like outsider, the kind who had to work around the system rather than through it. Even though I knew much of the history offered, Magueijo produced an excellent and engaging overview that kept me reading regardless.

Once Magueijo himself enters the picture later on, the reader learns of his work which became VSL, introducing numerous famous (and not-so-famous) cosmologists and physicists who partnered with or mentored him. VSL is more accurately a classification of theories rather than a specific one (just as inflation theory and string theory are not single theories). João keeps the math and technical details very light and moves quickly through his points, interweaving solid physical passages with personal stories and experiences. However, he doesn't skimp on the cosmological explanations, so there is plenty here for the science junkie to explore, much of it never presented in another popular science book (to my knowledge).

The writing is excellent, though presented quite differently from most popular science books. Magueijo is brash, sometimes cursing to get his points across, and I've read other reviewers balk at his treatment of such a noble field as cosmology. The cursing is not that bad, maybe a dozen instances in total.

I'd argue those readers missed one of João's main points of the book (other than to describe VSL and his journey toward it), that being his passionate disgust with the way the physics world has behaved and his belief that giving the system a big FU is both healthy and necessary.

I must say, that while I enjoy the delightful and professional presentations of other writers in the field, including Brian Greene, Carl Sagan, and Lee Smolin, this unique style was a very nice change of pace, and I very much appreciated João's honesty and clarity throughtout. This book is as much about Magueijo's impression of his own field as it is about VSL and cosmology, and in that light, his treatment was outstanding, unique, and very enjoyable to read. I've read few science authors capable of writing so clear and engaging in her/his non-native language.

While I have no idea whether Magueijo's VSL theory will stand up to experiment (he offers that even he has no idea if it can), João is convincing in his argument that allowing cosmology to settle comfortably into accepted but far-from-proven theories is flat out wrong. Inflation itself is simply accepted based on postdictions, the dominant theory has yet to be proven as correct despite the fact that it is presented as gospel by most everyone. Work on VSL and other alternative theories, even to the point of undermining long-standing and solidly placed theories such as special relativity (which some versions of VSL do undermine) is vital, Magueijo argues, to continue to break new ground and challenge the way cosmology views the universe.

Maguiejo provides an incredibly enjoyable and fascinating look at VSL theory and his own life. The science is strong but not technical, the personal stories are relevant and revealing, and few popular science books have attempted, let alone delivered, such a fun-to-read experience, delivered in this author's unique way. Maguiejo is passionate about his subject and every page drips with enthusiasm for his work. Five big stars, and very highly recommended to any popular science reader willing to open her/his mind to alternative ideas.½

I was inspired to read FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT after seeing a special on the Science Channel in which Joao Magueijo explained his theory about the speed of light not being constant. He developed the theory that light may have moved faster when the universe was created than it does now, as a way of explaining certain paradoxes about the "Big Bang" theory that have confounded cosmologists (scientists who study the origins of the universe--not to be confused with cosmetologists) for decades. Since this theory contradicts one of the long-held tenets of Einstein's special theory of relativity (that the speed of light is constant), Magueijo's work was widely pooh-poohed and he was called quite a few bad names for his efforts--as I recall, words like "moron" and "heretic" had been tossed about.
Needless to say, I was intrigued. I had to find out more.
Read the entire review at http://thebookgrrl.blogspot.com/2008/...

The author's maverick theory, supported by a few other physicists such as the Univ of Toronto's John Moffat, that c has varied (decreased) since the Big Bang. On journal referees, university bureaucrats, et al, he waxes maledictory.

Only read half