Tasneem Zehra Husain's Blog: Dangling Threads

Only The Longest Threads is one year old today. Party favors were a must. So, here's a soundtrack to make space-time travel smoother, as you move between centuries, and continents and scientific theories.

"Most of our life is spent dealing with ideas that are abstract and cannot be embodied; they can only be held in the mind ... The tools of our trade are also intangible. We have nothing material to clutch or discard, no object that would absorb or reflect our emotions. Theoretical physics is largely a private affair, a life lived out in the mind,"

thinks Sara, wistfully.

It is true that we theorists seldom have a tangible hold on something that represents our intellectual passion, and so the t...

Some time in 1919, Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington was asked whether it was true that only three people in the world understood the general theory of relativity. Apparently he thought for a moment and then asked: “Who's the third?”Depending on your mood, that can sound witty, or arrogant; but either way, once you read his beautiful expositions of Einstein's theory, it isdifficult to dispute the truth behind Eddington’s reply.

Arthur StanleyEddington's expressionis crystal clear, and his language...

For some weird reason, an inordinate number of scientists are also accomplished (or aspiring!) musicians. Inevitably, the theories they think about all day, seep into the music they play. A surprising number of tracks are particle physics inspired, and when I came across these, I just knew I had to compile a playlist.

So, in the now long-ago tradition of mix tapes, I give you Collisions.

Side A:

As far back as I can remember, I have heard Isaac Newton being referred to as a genius; yet it was not until I actually read some of the 'standard texts' of his time that I truly appreciated what Newton had accomplished. As John's father said

"It is only when you compare the nature of [the Principia]to the style and argumentation that dominated Natural Philosophy in the decades hitherto, that you truly appreciate its power.”

The Mysteries of Nature and Art, by John Bate, is one of the books tha...

A third of the way through The Strangest ManGraham Farmelo quotes a few stanzas from a poem that currently resides inthe Cavendish Laboratory Archive at Cambridge University.

O hear the sad petition we electrons make to you

To free us from the dominion of the hated quantum view

For we are all abandoned to its dread uncertainty,

Except by you, our champion. O we pray you, set us free!

Once in a pleasant order, our smooth-flowing time was spent.

As the classical equations told us where to go, we went...

I have been reading about Einstein, in one form or another, for decades now. I have poured over his own writings - both scientific and otherwise - as well ascountless commentaries on theseworks. I have explored his theories in their mathematical intricacy, and studiedseveral detailed biographies - but I still learnt a lot from this video. It appears thathearing someone laughmakes them come alive in a way nothing else will.

When Oskar, the post-doc at Niels Bohr's Institute describes the dramatic personae of quantum mechanics to Anna, here's what he writes about Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac

In many ways, Dirac was an anomaly among his loud, larger-than-life contemporaries. Dirac was fascinated by beauty, but he had little time for literature or the theater and thought philosophy a waste of time; he sought, and found, a majestic beauty in mathematics. Dirac thrived on its enduring nature and its regal lack of ambigui...

On April 21921, Jacob stood among the throngs at Battery Parkto greet the steamship Rotterdam which brought his idol, Einstein, to America for the first time. As he waited, he thought about the theory of relativity - a set of esoteric ideas that had madea scientist into an international celebrity.

Once Einstein headed off on his motorcade andthe crowds began to disperse, Jacob too, headed back.

At last I began winding my way home, taking care to avoid the main streets on the Lower East Side. I...

Musing on the recurrent infinities that showed up in the equations of quantum electrodynamics (QED)confounding and frustratingphysicists, Ingrid compares the situation to a bleak Scandinavian December.

"When the days shrivel up, in preparation for the winter solstice, in every town across Sweden, processions of little girls, following in Saint Lucia’s wake, light up the dark. With voices sweetly harmonizing, the girls sing of brooding shadows and of Night who walks with her hushed, heavy feet,...