Physics on the Fringe Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything

by Wertheim, Margaret

• ISBN13: 9780802715135
• ISBN10: 0802715133
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-10-25
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

"Gravity is not the result of things falling down but of the earth falling up," according to a trailer park owner named Jim Carter. He believes everything is constantly expanding and the earth itself is doubling in size every 19 minutes-thus, the ground is rushing up to meet whatever you drop. For many years acclaimed science writer Margaret Wertheim has collected the works of "outsider physicists," most without formal training and all convinced they have discovered an alternative theory of relativity, the origin of the universe, and so on. Fifteen years ago she became fascinated by Jim's theories because of his do-it-yourself attitude, the totality of his thinking, and his sense of humor. To build a model to illustrate his theory that "circlon rings" rather than atoms are nature's building blocks, he needed to observe how 3-foot wide smoke rings interacted. His first failed effort to make large smoke rings involved a dog bowl and a sack of gunpowder! Learning from each failure, six months later, with the neighbors gathered in the yard, Jim used a rented disco smoke machine, a huge piece of rubber sheeting, and a rope to send giant white smoke rings sailing across the yard, some of them colliding and bouncing apart like billiard balls. Their movement confirmed his prediction of how his theoretical circlons would behave. Regardless of whether any of Jim's theories are right or not, his story and that of other outsider physicists is fundamental to our understanding of the evolution of science--from natural philosophers who puzzled out the laws of nature using observation and experimentation, to modern professional scientists whose work has grown theoretical and inscrutable, and back to outsider physicists whose creative theories strive to make complicated science accessible to the masses.

Author Biography

Margaret Wertheim is a science writer with degrees in physics and matchematics. She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian, and is the author of Pythagoras' Trousers and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace. In her pioneering work in new methods of science communication, she founded the nonprofit Institute For Figuring, through which she organized the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project, a touring exhibition at the intersection of science and art.

Table of Contents

"Margaret Wertheim writes beautifully, passionately, and with great humanity about a most unusual mind. This book is ultimately about big things: What is science? What is the universe? And who says?"—Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein

“With a vivid storyteller’s glee, Margaret Wertheim spins us one of those wide looping yarns that starts out all in good antic fun, only to become more and more confoundingly profound.  Her sagas of outsider physicists open out onto some of the most intriguing of questions, not least of which are: Who and what gives anyone the right to decide on the legitimacy of anyone else’s passions, on what gets to be deemed ‘in bounds’ and what not?”—Lawrence Weschler, author of Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder

 “Margaret Wertheim's fascinating portrait of Jim Carter wonderfully captures both the pathos and the brilliance hidden in a venerable tradition of science: the quixotic amateur who thinks he might have figured out the answer to the mysteries of the universe.” —Paul Collins, author of The Murder of the Century

"Physics on the Fringe is a compelling, sympathetic study of the outsiders who challenge the gates of official science with impassioned theories of the universe, much the way outsider artists challenged the art establishment.”—Lisa Stone, curator, Roger Brown Study Collection, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago