Thomas Levenson
Forfatter af Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist
Om forfatteren
Thomas Levenson is an award-winning television producer and the author of one previous book, Ice Time. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Værker af Thomas Levenson
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist (2009) 617 eksemplarer
The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the… (2015) 268 eksemplarer
Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and… (2020) 97 eksemplarer
NOVA: Origins: fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution [2004 TV series] (2004) — Instruktør — 12 eksemplarer
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- USA
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- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Erhverv
- film director
film producer - Organisationer
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
WGBH Television - Priser og hædersbevisninger
- Peabody Award
Emmy - Agent
- Theresa Park
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- 10
- Medlemmer
- 1,376
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- #18,685
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- 5
The book opens with Newton’s calculus and gravitation, two ideas that played critical roles in the discovery of ice giants Uranus and Neptune by William Herschel and Urbain Le Verrier, Johann Gottfried Galle, and John Couch Adams. Having proved the ability of calculus and Newtonian physics to map and describe the solar system, Le Verrier went on to refine the calculations for other known bodies. His measurements of Mercury revealed a precession of the perihelion in its orbit. Newtonian mechanics suggested that this must result from the gravity of an object between Mercury and the Sun. Le Verrier and other astronomers thus turned their attention toward finding this object, or set of objects if it were an inner asteroid belt (p. 64). Le Verrier’s reputation was enough that it, combined with possible partial sightings, took hold in the public’s imagination. Levenson writes, “Mercury’s perihelion precession was and is real. Newtonian gravitation provides an obvious solution to such a problem” (p. 78). The public dubbed the would-be planet Vulcan due to its proximity to the sun’s fires. Possible sightings continued to trickle in during the mid-nineteenth century, culminating in a search and possible discovery during the American eclipse of 1878. Over time, the theory remained in use but the popular and scientific press slowly petered off in their coverage of possible sightings or rebuttals to those sightings. As Levenson notes, the idea of Vulcan held on because it fit the known facts of Newtonian physics. Historically, Vulcan is no more unusual a hypothesis than the cosmic microwave background radiation, the Higgs boson, or even Neptune itself, all of which scientists eventually found and refined in their understanding of relevant disciplines. Why, then, would Vulcan not reveal itself to determined searchers?
In the twentieth century, Einstein began to explore his theory of relativity, developing an understanding of how gravitation affects space-time. He predicted that the sun’s gravity well should deflect the light from stars appearing near its edge, an experiment made possible during a total eclipse. The eclipse of August 1914 offered just the chance to test Einstein’s hypothesis. Levenson notes, “The symmetry is obvious: Vulcan, of course, had been sought and seen and unseen again in such conditions” (p. 158). Just as a team got underway to Siberia, war broke out. Einstein continued to refine his calculations for relativity and gravitation during the war. He determined that “a ray of light passing through the sun’s gravitational field would deflect by 1.7 arcseconds, double the number his 1913 theory predicted” (p. 170). Continuing to work the numbers, Einstein discovered that “no chunk of matter was required to explain Mercury’s track, no undiscovered planet, no asteroid belt, no dust, no bulging solar belly, nothing at all – except this new, radical conception of gravity. The sun with its great mass creates its dent in space-time. Mercury, so firmly embraced by our star’s gravitational field, lies deep within that solar gravity well” (p. 172).
Levenson concludes, “It was said of Newton that he was a fortunate man, because there was only one universe to discover, and he had done it. It had been said of Le Verrier that he discovered a planet at the tip of his pen. On the 18th of November, 1915, Einstein’s pen destroyed Vulcan – and reimagined the cosmos” (p. 172). Gµv=8πGTµv neatly summarizes Einstein’s theory and ended Vulcan’s place in the solar system. The Eclipse of May 1919 afforded the opportunity to gather photographic evidence of lensing, with careful checks of the data finding it matched Einstein’s prediction. Vulcan was dead, but Levenson returns to his introductory note to point out how the idea of Vulcan over the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries represents so much of human nature while its ultimate fate represents the best of the scientific method. Levenson’s book manages to capture science in action, placing it in cultural context and weaving a narrative that casual readers will find enthralling.… (mere)