Plurk paste

Notes
Chapter One 1. H. Eichenbaum, “Time Cells in the Hippocampus: A New Dimension for Mapping Memories,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 15 (2014): 732–44.
2. M. Kozhenvnikov webpage, “Allocentric vs. Egocentric Spatial Processing,” Imagery Lab, n.d., http://www.mariakozhevnikov.com/project-egocentric.html.
3. S. Vann, J. Aggleton, and E. Maguire, “What Does the Retrosplenial Cortex Do?,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10 (2009): 792–803.
4. Lera Boroditsky, “How Language Shapes Thought,” Scientific American 304, no. 2 (2011).
5. R. Quian Quiroga, L. Reddy, G. Kreiman, C. Koch, and I. Fried, “Invariant Visual Representation by Single Neurons in the Human Brain,” Nature 435 (2005): 1102–7.
6. M. Schafer and D. Schiller, “Navigating Social Space,” Neuron 100 (2018): 476–89.
7. Susan Montague, “Space and Person in the Trobriands: The Self as Living and Dead,” Structure and Dynamics 9, no. 1 (January 2016), https://doi.org/10.5070/SD991031892.
8. G. Holton, Einstein, History, and Other Passions (Addison Wesley, 1995), 143. Chapter Two 1. Dugan Arnett, “The Point of No Turn: For a Dogged Flat-Earther, It’s a Lonely New World,” Boston Globe, November 29, 2017, 1.
2. Dr. Kandiss Taylor “Jesus, Guns, and Babies,” podcast with Flat Earth Dave and Matt Long, n.d., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03HGxlWIqlE.
3. Dr. Brian Cox, “Science Page,” Facebook video, December 18, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/SciencePagecom/videos/395449294224699/.
4. Richard Feinberg, Polynesian Seafaring and Navigation: Ocean Travel in Anutan Culture and Society (Kent State University Press, 1988).
5. Quote from Cicero, Academica, circa 45 BCE.
6. Archimedes, The Sand Reckoner, n.d., https://www.ucolick.org/~laugh/reckoner.shtml.
Chapter Three 1. For a detailed in-depth discussion consult the following website article: Anthony Mallama, “How Bright Are the Planets?,” Sky and Telescope, May 26, 2020, https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/measuring-planetmagnitudes/#:~:text=Mercury’s%20b rightness%20depends%20most%20strongly,functions%20of %20Mercury%20and%20Venus.
2. The only minor problem with star-finding apps is that they often go unsupported after some time, so you may have to hunt around. As of this writing the Stellarium app seems to be a good choice: https://stellarium-web.org/. You can consult my previous book, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015), for details on star-finding. Chapter Four 1. L. Payton and D. Tran, “Moonlight Cycles Synchronize Oyster Behavior,” Biology Letters 15, no.
1 (2019): 20180299, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6371907/. Chapter Five 1. Christian Blauvelt, “Dante and The Divine Comedy: He Took Us on a Tour of Hell,” BBC Culture, June 5, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180604-dante-and-the-divine-comedy-hetook-us-on-atour-of-hell.
2. Not being a poet, I did not try to create a meter or rhyming schema, simply paying attention to the words.
3. Translations by Allen Mandelbaum can be accessed at Digital Dante: Original Research and Ideas, https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/.
4. “John F. Kennedy Quotations: Responsibility, Personal,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/life-of-john-f-kennedy/john-f-kennedyquotations. 5. Gabriele Vanin, “The Dating of Dante’s Voyage in the Divine Comedy,” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 26, no. 4 (2023): 903–22.
6. Vanin, “The Dating of Dante’s Voyage.” Chapter Six 1. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans. and with an introduction by Martin Ferguson Smith, Kindle ed. (Hackett Publishing, 2007), 62–63.
2. Bruno was known for a number of treatises on the art of memory based on the memory palace technique.
3. Steven Dick, Live on Other Worlds (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 11.
4. C. Huygens, Cosmotheoros: Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants of the Planets, https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/huygens/huygens_ct_en_book_1.htm.
5. Huygens, Cosmotheoros.
6. Thomas Dobbins and William Sheehan, Solving the Martian Flares Mystery, https://alpoastronomy.org/jbeish/MartianFlaresALPO.pdf.
7. “A Strange Light on Mars,” Nature 50 (August 2, 1894): 319.
8. William Sheehan and Thomas Dobbins, “The Spokes of Venus: An Illusion Explained,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 34, pt. 1, no. 114 (2003): 53–63. Others have disputed this claim.
9. F. Drake and D. Sobel, Is Anyone Out There? (Delacorte Press, 1992), 62.
10. S. Sheikh et al., “Analysis of the Breakthrough Listen Signal-of-Interest blc1 with a Technosignature Verification Framework,” Nature Astronomy 5 (2021): 1153–62.
11. Seth Shostak, “LaserSETI,” Laser Institute, https://www.seti.org/laserseti.
12. Jennifer Chu, “E.T., We’re Home,” MIT News, November 4, 2018, https://news.mit.edu/2018/laser-attract-alien-astronomers-study-1105.
13. R. Bracewell, “Communications from Superior Galactic Communities,” Nature 186 (1960): 670–71.
14. Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, 131–32.
15. Report by NASA UAP Independent Study, 2023, 25, https://science.nasa.gov/uap/.
Chapter Seven 1. Galileo, “Third Letter on Sunspots to Mark Wesler,” in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. with an introduction and notes by Stillman Drake (Doubleday, 1957), 134–35.
2. Owen Gingerich, “The Great Martian Catastrophe and How Kepler Fixed It,” Physics Today 64, no. 9 (September 2011): 50–54.
3. Gingerich, “The Great Martian Catastrophe,” 54.
4. Gerald Holton, “Johannes Kepler’s Universe: Its Physics and Metaphysics,” American Journal of Physics 24 (May 1, 1956): 340–51.
5. Gale Christianson, “Birth of a Masterpiece,” Newton’s Dark Secrets, NOVA, November 2005, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/newton/principia.html.
6. Marquis de Laplace Pierre-Simon, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, trans. Frederick Truscott and Frederic Emory (Wiley and Sons, 1902), 4.
7. Cicero, On Divination, Loeb Classical Library, trans. William Armistead Falconer, Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press, 1923). Chapter Eight 1. This is held by a number of people, most notably Paul Johnson, who wrote Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, rev. ed. (Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2001).
2. Jeroen van Dongen, Einstein’s Unification (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 38.
3. G. Holton, Einstein, History, and Other Passions (Addison Wesley, 1995), 117.
4. “A Mystic Universe,” New York Times, January 28, 1928, 14.
5. Einstein recalled this conversation in a lecture he gave in Japan in 1922, concerning the origins of relativity theory. 6. Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Annalen der Physik 17 (1905): 891–921.
7. David Hume, “Of the Other Qualities of Our Idea of Space and Time,” pt. 2, sec. 3, of A Treatise of Human Nature, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4705/4705-h/4705-h.htm.
8. Many copies are readily available from different publishers.
9. Martin Gardner, Relativity for the Million (Macmillan, 1962), 51.
10. Peggy Rosenthal, Words and Values: Some Leading Words and Where They Lead Us (Hamilton Books, Rowman and Littlefield Publishing, 1984), 119–20.
11. Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, rev. ed.
(Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2001), 3.
12. H. Wildon Carr, “Metaphysics and Materialism,” Nature 108 (October 20, 1921): 247–48.
13. Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Modern Theme, trans. James Cleugh (Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 136.
14. Jacques Derrida, quoted by Alan Sokal in “Hermeneutics of Classical General Relativity,” his classic “hoax.” https://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2/node2.html.
15. Karl Anderson, “How America Lost Its Mind,” The Atlantic, September 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/.
16. David Ernst, “Donald Trump Is the First President to Turn Postmodernism Against Itself,” The Federalist, January 23, 2017, https://thefederalist.com/2017/01/23/donald-trump-first-presidentturn-postmodernism/.
17. Sean Coughlan, “What Does Post-Truth Mean for a Philosopher?” BBC News, January 12, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/education-38557838.
18. This argument about a person spinning is often attributed to Steven Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity (John Wiley and Sons, 1972), 17. Chapter Nine 1. Some caution is needed for the curious reader who may wish to investigate The Sand Reckoner.
The term “universe” is sometimes used to denote the Earth–Sun–Moon system and sometimes used for the sphere of the fixed stars. Care should be exercised to see which Archimedes is referring to.
2. NASA Hubble Mission Team, “Hubble Views the Star That Changed the Universe,” NASA, May 27, 2011, https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-views-the-star-that-changed-theuniverse/.
3. Edwin Hubble, The Realm of the Nebulae (Yale University Press, 1982), 105.
4. Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser, “The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel,” New York Times, September 2, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/02/opinion/cosmology-crisiswebb-telescope.html.
5. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (Bantam Books, 1977), 154. Chapter Ten 1.
Craig Callendar, “Nothing to See Here: Demoting the Uncertainty Principle,” New York Times, July 21, 2013.
2. Jim Holt, “Uncertainty About the Uncertainty Principle,” Slate, March 6, 2002.
3. Robert P. Crease, “Too Confident About Uncertainty,” Physics World, December 2001, 18.
4. There are multiple quotes of Einstein to this effect.
5. Charles Darwin, quoted in “Recollections from the First Copenhagen Conference,” in Selected Papers of Leon Rosenfeld, ed. Robert Cohen and J. J. Stachel (Springer Verlag, 1979), 310.
6. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, 5th ed. (Shambhala Publications, 2010).
7. David Mermin, “What’s Wrong with This Pillow,” Physics Today, April 1989, 9. 8. Peggy Landsman, “Schrödinger’s Cat,” originally published in Scientific American 326, no.
4 (2022): 24.
9. Jesse Emspak, “Quantum Entanglement: Love on a Subatomic Scale,” Space.com, February 14, 2016.
10. Alexander Wendt, interviewed by Cathy Becker, Mershon Center for International Studies, Ohio State University, 2015, https://mershoncenter.osu.edu/news/q-and-alexander-wendt-quantummind-and-social-scien ce.
11. Marilynne Robinson, “Humanism, Science, and the Radical Expansion of the Possible,” The Nation, October 22, 2015, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/humanism-science-and-theradical-expansion-of-th e-possible/.
12. Dr. Laura Berman, “Quantum Love: Use Your Body’s Atomic Energy to Create the Relationship You Desire,” 2024, https://drlauraberman.com/product/quantum-love-use-your-bodys-atomicenergy-to-create-th e-relationship-you-desire.
13. Barbara Ehrenreich, Smile or Die, RSA lecture, January 11, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJGMFu74a70.
14. Peter Byrne, The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III (Oxford University Press, 2012), 142.
15. Sean Carroll, “Are Many Worlds and the Multiverse the Same Idea?,” Sean Carroll (blog), https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/05/26/are-many-worlds-and-the-multiverse -thesame-idea/.
16. As a postscript, Hugh Everett left academia after completing his dissertation and went to work for the Defense Department. He died of a sudden heart attack in 1982, at age fifty-one.
His daughter Elizabeth suffered from what appeared to be depression and drug addiction.
She committed suicide in 1996. According to Byrne, she left a note: “Funeral requests: I prefer no church stuff. Please burn me and DON’T FILE ME. Please sprinkle me in some nice body of water or the garbage, maybe that way I’ll end up in the correct parallel universe to meet up with Daddy” (Byrne, The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III, 342). Chapter Eleven 1. Hans Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight, and Kate Kohn, “Status of World Nuclear Forces,” Federation of American Scientists, March 29, 2024, https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/.
2. Author’s note: I was asked to blog about the discovery in context for July 5, 2012, but found that just about every science journalist on the planet had already written about it.
Personally, I found it a bit annoying that the journalists mostly interviewed theorists and not experimentalists about the discovery. In the end, I wrote a snarky blog post where I imagined the reincarnation of Mark Twain covering the discovery. Huth, “The Celebrated God Particle, by Mark Twain,” Quantum Diaries, July 5, 2012, https://www.quantumdiaries.org/2012/07/05/the-celebrated-god-particleby-mark-twain/.
Chapter Twelve 1. Ethan Siegel, “Could the Large Hadron Collider Make an Earth-Killing Black Hole?,” Forbes, March 11, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/03/11/could-the-lhc-makean-earth-killingblack-hole/.
2. Dennis Overbye, “Gauging a Collider’s Odds of Creating a Black Hole,” New York Times, April 15, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15risk.html.
3. Stephanie Pappas, “German Court Rules that Collider Won’t Destroy Earth,” NBC News, October 19, 2012, https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna49483243. 4. Michelangelo Mangano, personal communication via e-mail on his recollection of the conversation.
5. Rowan Hooper, “Multiverse Me: Should I Care About My Other Selves?,” New Scientist, September 24, 2014.
6. Sam Kris, “The Multiverse Idea Is Rotting Culture,” The Atlantic, August 29, 2016.
7. James Peebles, “The Physicists Philosophy of Physics,” January 29, 2024, https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.16506.
8. Peebles, “The Physicists Philosophy of Physics.” 9. Leonard Susskind, interviewed on the PBS series Closer to the Truth, March 3, 2020, transcribed by the author.
10. Paul Steinhardt, interview by David Dierter, June 4, 18, and 30, and July 8, 2020, Neils Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, https://repository.aip.org/steinhardt-paul-2020-june- 4-june-18-june-30-july-8.
11. Neil Turok and Latham Boyle, “Gravitational Entropy and the Flatness, Homogeneity and Isotropy Puzzle,” January 2022, https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.07279.
12. Charlie Wood, “Why This Universe? A New Calculation Suggests Our Cosmos Is Typical,” Quanta Magazine, November 17, 2022, https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-this-universe-newcalculation-suggests-our-cosmos-is-t ypical-20221117/.
13. Alexandre Alves, Alex Dias, and Roberto da Silva, “Maximum Entropy Principle and the Higgs Boson Mass,” August 4, 2014, https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.0827. Chapter Thirteen 1. “A Severe Strain on Credulity,” Topics of the Times, New York Times, January 13, 1920, 12, col 5, accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20070217065558/http://it.is.rice.edu/~rickr/goddard.editorial.html .
2. This transfer was part of a larger Operation Paperclip that secretly brought a large number of German scientists, engineers and their families to the United States to tap their expertise.
3. President Dwight Eisenhower, Address to the Nation on Future of US Security, Municipal Auditorium, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, November 13, 1957, American Rhetoric: Online Speech Bank, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowernationalsecurityfuture.htm.
4. John F. Kennedy, in a speech to Congress, May 26, 1961, https://www.nasa.gov/history/thedecision-to-go-to-the-moon/.
5. Brant Clark and Ashton Graybiel, “The Break-Off Phenomenon: A Feeling of Separation from the Earth Experienced by Pilots at High Altitude,” Journal of Aviation Medicine 28, no. 2 (April 1957): 121–26, 122.
6. Clark and Graybiel, “The Break-Off Phenomenon.” 7. David Simons, “The Breakoff Phenomenon During Balloon Flight in the Stratosphere,” in Environmental Effects on Consciousness, ed. Karl Schaefer (Macmillan, 1958), 91.
8. David Simons, Manhigh: An Account of a Balloon Flight Into Space (Doubleday, 1960), 257.
9. Martin Giffen, “Break Off: A Phase of Spatial Disorientation,” US Armed Forces Medical Journal 10, pt. 2 (1959): 1301.
10. Patricia Santy, Choosing the Right Stuff: The Psychological Selection of Astronauts and Cosmonauts (Praeger, 1994), 39.
11. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922); see, for example, https://www.rsgs.org/blog/sir-ernestshackleton-and-t-s-eliots-third-man.
12. Margaret Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 3. 13. NASA, “Project Mercury Overview—Astronaut Selection,” November 30, 2006, last updated 2017, https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mercury/missions/astronaut.html.
14. Albert Harrison and Edna Fielder, “Behavioral Health,” in Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective, ed. Douglas Vakoch, NASA History Series (NASA, 2011).
15. Santy, Choosing the Right Stuff, 28.
16. Santy, Choosing the Right Stuff, xvi.
17. Santy, Choosing the Right Stuff, 30.
18. Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journey (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), 402.
19. Jamie Carter, “NASA Should Send $17 Billion Human Mission to Mars in 2033, Say Experts,” Forbes, May 18 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2023/05/18/nasa-shouldsend-17-billion-hum an-mission-to-mars-in-2033-say-experts/.
20. Bryan Burrough, Dragonfly: An Epic Adventure of Survival in Outer Space (HarperCollins, 1998), 513.
21. Sheryl L. Bishop, “From Earth Analogs to Space: Getting There from Here,” in Psychology of Space Exploration, ed. Vakoch, 65–66. 22. “The Greely Expedition,” American Experience, PBS, February 2019, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/greely/#part01.
23. Ian Sample, “Fake Mission to Mars Leaves Astronauts Spaced Out,” The Guardian, January 2013 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jan/07/fake-mission-mars-astronauts-spaced-out.
24. Frank White, The Overview Effect, 3rd ed. (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2014), 2.
25. L. Marguils and O. West, “Gaia and the Colonization of Mars,” GSA Today 11 (1993): 277–80. Chapter Fourteen 1. The original proposal, appropriately available on the web: https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html.
2. I hesitate to give numbers because data storage and computing capabilities are constantly changing, so quoting number as of this writing may be obsolete by the time these words are read.
3. Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Annalen der Physik 17 (1905): 891–921.
4. Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein (Harvard University Press, 1988), 245.
5. Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, 246.
6. Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, 248.