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Breakthrough: Spectacular stories of scientific discovery from the Higgs particle to black holes
Marcus Chown explores the way that the mathematical equations of physics led us to foresee the existence of previously unknown things, and then to verify that they are real. His nine case studies include Le Verrier ‘finding†Neptune, Maxwellâ€s electromagnetic waves and Diracâ€s anti-particles, as well as Fred Hoyleâ€s less well-known suggestion that stars create carbon.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
48 people are currently reading
435 people want to read
About the author
Marcus Chown
31 books238 followersMarcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is currently cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist. He is the author of the bestselling Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, The Never Ending Days of Being Dead and The Magic Furnace. He also wrote The Solar System, the bestselling app for iPad, which won the Future Book Award 2011. Marcus Chown has also written a work for children, Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
April 2, 2023
O marturie a capacitatii stiintei de a face predictii exacte. Pozitronul, neutrinul, carbonul-12 in stare excitata de 7,65 MeV, planeta Neptun au fost descoperite initial cu creionul si hartia, prin calcul.
March 23, 2021
Hay tres o cuatro capítulos (de diez) que se me han hecho algo cuesta arriba porque requieren de una base previa de física que ahora mismo tengo completamente oxidada de mi época de estudiante. Sin embargo, Chown nuevamente propone una lectura generalmente amena que aunque no haya disfrutado tanto como Gravedad, lo recomendaría.
Es interesante cómo además de contar el porqué de algunos descubrimientos del último par de siglos, también aporta contexto histórico, social y personal de algunos de los científicos protagonistas y qué claves les ayudó a lograr el descubrimiento.
Es interesante cómo además de contar el porqué de algunos descubrimientos del último par de siglos, también aporta contexto histórico, social y personal de algunos de los científicos protagonistas y qué claves les ayudó a lograr el descubrimiento.
September 16, 2021
Eloquent, well-paced and engagingly written. Brings to fore the astonishing fact that we humans, in our insignificant corner of the cosmos, can correctly predict how the Universe must function by simply sitting down with a paper and pencil. Good stuff.
October 18, 2022
Marcus Chown,
(English) /The Magicians: Great Minds and the Central Miracle of Science/
(Spanish) /El instante Mágico: los diez descubrimientos asombrosos que cambiaron la historia de la ciencia/, translator Francisco J. Ramos Mena, 341 pages. Dewey 530. ISBN 9788418187957.
Ten "wow!" discoveries in physics and astronomy, 1820-2000s. A little on the pasts, personalities, and perspectives of the scientists, and the intellectual environments they were working within--and often against. Many visionaries were ridiculed by their shortsighted peers. Recounts some of the scientists' approaches and thought processes.
Mostly human-interest stories. Makes little attempt to explain the science.
No equations. Chown does /not/ tell us what Maxwell's equations, the Schrödinger equation, and the rest /say/. See Feynman, /Lectures on Physics/. Physics Libre Texts are free online physics textbooks https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves .
Chapters:
Neptune predicted to exist
Maxwell's equations
Relativistic quantum mechanics
How chemical elements were created
Neutrinos
Microwave background radiation
Black holes
Higgs boson
Gravitational waves
Math
NEPTUNE PREDICTED TO EXIST
Le Verrier predicted the existence of the planet Neptune, and where it should be in the sky, from Uranus's slightly-anomalous orbit, 1846, Chapter 1.
Titius-Bode Law:
MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS
1820s-1830s: Faraday realized that magnets and electric charges and currents are surrounded by invisible but real /fields/; discovered that moving magnets produce electric fields, and that electric currents produce magnetic fields. Made the first electric motors and generators. Discovered that magnets can affect /light/. 1860s-1873: Maxwell understood that electricity and magnetism affect each other as do adjacent portions of a medium undergoing wave motion. There should be electromagnetic waves. Their speed should be calculable from the capacity of electric and magnetic fields to permeate space. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuu... Based on these measured values, Maxwell found that electromagnetic waves should travel at a speed about identical to the speed of light Fizeau measured in 1840, about 300,000 kilometers per second (670,000,000 mph). Light, and radiant heat, are electromagnetic waves! Maxwell found equations that describe these electromagnetic interactions. Heaviside put Maxwell's equations in the form we know today, 1885. 1887, Hertz made the radio waves Maxwell predicted. James Clerk Maxwell died at age 47, a giant of classical physics second only to Newton. Chapter 2.
Maxwell's equations served up a couple of problems whose solutions ushered in the modern physics of quantum mechanics and relativity. The predicted infinity of radiant frequencies from an ideal hot object, with its impossible infinity of energy radiated, led Planck to suppose that radiant energy is quantized. The invariability of lightspeed led Einstein to relativity: space-and-time, and electricity-and-magnetism, appear different to observers in motion relative to each other.
RELATIVISTIC QUANTUM MECHANICS
Dirac, 1927. The Schrödinger equation suffices to describe the orbit of an electron in a hydrogen atom, moving at a speed on the order of 1% of the speed of light. But it's valid only for such nonrelativistic speeds. Electrons orbit uranium nuclei at appreciable fractions of lightspeed. A relativistic quantum mechanics is needed. Dirac modified the equation to include additional dimensions. It turned out to predict the electron's spin and magnetic dipole moment just as measured. And also to predict that positrons and other antimatter exist! Positrons were discovered at Caltech and at Cambridge in 1932. Atoms of antihydrogen were created in 1995 at CERN. They last 40 nanoseconds before annihilating with ordinary matter. Chapter 3. https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch...
Absorbing the prerequisites necessary to understand relativistic quantum mechanics is the work of an undergraduate and graduate physics education https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelv.... PDF of Dirac's original paper is downloadable from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/do...
HOW CHEMICAL ELEMENTS WERE CREATED
Fred Hoyle, 1944-1953. Synthesis of the elements in stars. Hoyle correctly predicted that the carbon-12 nucleus must have an allowable quantum state 7.65 MeV above its ground state--because helium-4 has a state of one-third that excitation energy, and Hoyle knew of no other way in which carbon-12 nuclei could be formed of lighter nuclei, than three helium-4 coming together at once. The book does not make clear what it means for a nucleus to have an excited state, nor how the energy levels can be known. Some of that is available here: Nuclear shell model https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch... .
Paper downloadable from https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/artic... Chapter 4.
NEUTRINOS
Pauli postulated the existence of neutrinos, to explain why electrons emitted from decaying nuclei have variable energies. (Some of the energy is carried off by the neutrino instead.) 1930. Neutrinos interact so rarely with matter that they could pass through lead light-years thick. Chapter 5.
The idea, as shown here https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch... , is that a nucleus may decay by changing a proton into a neutron, emitting a positron and a neutrino, as in transforming nitrogen-12 to carbon-12, or, a nucleus may decay by changing a neutron into a proton, emitting an electron and an antineutrino, as in transforming boron-12 to carbon-12.
The inverses of these reactions also occur: a neutron may absorb a neutrino and emit an electron, changing into a proton; a proton may absorb an antineutrino and emit a positron, changing into a neutron.
In no case is the neutrino or antineutrino directly detectable. But--in the latter case, the emitted positron will almost immediately annihilate with an electron, producing two gamma rays in opposite directions, and leaving the neutron.
It is this pair of gamma rays, plus a neutron, that U.S. nuclear physicists detected in 1956, at a nuclear-weapons plant. This was the evidence of the existence of the neutrino. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowan%E...
Unexplained is how this differs from the case of a nucleus decaying by changing a proton into a neutron, emitting a positron and a (postulated but undetectable) neutrino.
As well as the electron neutrinos found in 1956, muon neutrinos were found in 1962, tau neutrinos in 2000. Neutrinos change among these flavors in flight. Since time stops at lightspeed, the fact that neutrinos oscillate among the flavors means they travel at sublight speeds, and have mass. Chapter 5.
Unexplained is how light can oscillate its electric and magnetic fields.
MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION
Hubble discovered in 1929 that all visible galaxies are going away from us: the universe is expanding.
Alpher & Herman predicted microwave background radiation, a vestige of the Big Bang, 1948. It should be a black-body spectrum, of a very cold black body, a few degrees Kelvin. Dicke, Peebles, Roll, & Wilkerson realized that Penzias & Wilson had found it, 1965.
Unsaid is why those photons from the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, haven't for the most part traveled far beyond us. He gives a partial answer, in that photons are repeatedly absorbed and reemitted by matter. Still, interstellar matter is so sparse, I would expect the photons largely to escape into the void, far outpacing the more-slowly-dispersing matter. It takes just a few /thousand/ years for a photon to escape from the center of the sun to its surface. We can detect x-rays from quasars /billions/ of light-years away, meaning that nothing in-between has absorbed them. The microwave background is not starlight but photons that have been losing energy in collisions with occasional bits of interstellar matter for 13.8 billion years.
Free neutrons are unstable and decay into protons, electrons, and antineutrinos in about 10 minutes. Chapter 6.
BLACK HOLES
1915, Schwarzchild solved Einstein's equations of general relativity, realized that black holes can exist, computed their event horizons.
Paul Murdin & Louise Webster, 1971. X-ray astronomy showed a supergiant blue star orbiting apparently nothing. Every 5.6 days. About 7 light-years from us. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnu...
Hawking realized that pairs of particles and antiparticles created in "empty" space just beyond a black hole's event horizon, one going into the black hole, one going away, would cause the black hole to radiate particles. "Hawking radiation," 1974. Black holes lose mass thereby. Eventually they evaporate, but it takes many times the current age of the universe. Chapter 7.
HIGGS BOSON
Emmy Noether theorem, 1918: for every symmetry, there's a conservation law. Time-translation symmetry implies conservation of energy. Phase-factor symmetry in an electron's wave function implies charge conservation. Gauge invariance implies electromagnetism. (None of this is explained.) Hermann Weyl, 1929, Julian Schwinger, 1950s. Yang-Mills equation, 1950s: gauge field. Chapter 8.
The Higgs boson gives mass to force-carrying particles (bosons) and to matter particles (quarks and leptons). It was found in 2012: 126 times a proton's mass, it s the heaviest subatomic particle yet.
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
Predicted by Einstein's general relativity, 1915; detected 2015. Chapter 9.
MATH
Physicists have succeeded in predicting mathematically, unexpected phenomena.
Additions and corrections
Chapter 2 says Faraday found that a magnetic field changed the polarization of light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday... Chapter 8 contradictorily says photons, being uncharged, are immune to electromagnetic forces.
Chapter 5, just after the last text-break before the end of the chapter, says photons that reach us were in the heart of the sun 8 minutes earlier. Actually, they were at the /surface/ of the sun 8 minutes earlier; it takes thousands of years for a photon to go from the center of the sun to the surface: https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/as...
(English) /The Magicians: Great Minds and the Central Miracle of Science/
(Spanish) /El instante Mágico: los diez descubrimientos asombrosos que cambiaron la historia de la ciencia/, translator Francisco J. Ramos Mena, 341 pages. Dewey 530. ISBN 9788418187957.
Ten "wow!" discoveries in physics and astronomy, 1820-2000s. A little on the pasts, personalities, and perspectives of the scientists, and the intellectual environments they were working within--and often against. Many visionaries were ridiculed by their shortsighted peers. Recounts some of the scientists' approaches and thought processes.
Mostly human-interest stories. Makes little attempt to explain the science.
No equations. Chown does /not/ tell us what Maxwell's equations, the Schrödinger equation, and the rest /say/. See Feynman, /Lectures on Physics/. Physics Libre Texts are free online physics textbooks https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves .
Chapters:
Neptune predicted to exist
Maxwell's equations
Relativistic quantum mechanics
How chemical elements were created
Neutrinos
Microwave background radiation
Black holes
Higgs boson
Gravitational waves
Math
NEPTUNE PREDICTED TO EXIST
Le Verrier predicted the existence of the planet Neptune, and where it should be in the sky, from Uranus's slightly-anomalous orbit, 1846, Chapter 1.
Titius-Bode Law:
MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS
1820s-1830s: Faraday realized that magnets and electric charges and currents are surrounded by invisible but real /fields/; discovered that moving magnets produce electric fields, and that electric currents produce magnetic fields. Made the first electric motors and generators. Discovered that magnets can affect /light/. 1860s-1873: Maxwell understood that electricity and magnetism affect each other as do adjacent portions of a medium undergoing wave motion. There should be electromagnetic waves. Their speed should be calculable from the capacity of electric and magnetic fields to permeate space. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuu... Based on these measured values, Maxwell found that electromagnetic waves should travel at a speed about identical to the speed of light Fizeau measured in 1840, about 300,000 kilometers per second (670,000,000 mph). Light, and radiant heat, are electromagnetic waves! Maxwell found equations that describe these electromagnetic interactions. Heaviside put Maxwell's equations in the form we know today, 1885. 1887, Hertz made the radio waves Maxwell predicted. James Clerk Maxwell died at age 47, a giant of classical physics second only to Newton. Chapter 2.
Maxwell's equations served up a couple of problems whose solutions ushered in the modern physics of quantum mechanics and relativity. The predicted infinity of radiant frequencies from an ideal hot object, with its impossible infinity of energy radiated, led Planck to suppose that radiant energy is quantized. The invariability of lightspeed led Einstein to relativity: space-and-time, and electricity-and-magnetism, appear different to observers in motion relative to each other.
RELATIVISTIC QUANTUM MECHANICS
Dirac, 1927. The Schrödinger equation suffices to describe the orbit of an electron in a hydrogen atom, moving at a speed on the order of 1% of the speed of light. But it's valid only for such nonrelativistic speeds. Electrons orbit uranium nuclei at appreciable fractions of lightspeed. A relativistic quantum mechanics is needed. Dirac modified the equation to include additional dimensions. It turned out to predict the electron's spin and magnetic dipole moment just as measured. And also to predict that positrons and other antimatter exist! Positrons were discovered at Caltech and at Cambridge in 1932. Atoms of antihydrogen were created in 1995 at CERN. They last 40 nanoseconds before annihilating with ordinary matter. Chapter 3. https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch...
Absorbing the prerequisites necessary to understand relativistic quantum mechanics is the work of an undergraduate and graduate physics education https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelv.... PDF of Dirac's original paper is downloadable from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/do...
HOW CHEMICAL ELEMENTS WERE CREATED
Fred Hoyle, 1944-1953. Synthesis of the elements in stars. Hoyle correctly predicted that the carbon-12 nucleus must have an allowable quantum state 7.65 MeV above its ground state--because helium-4 has a state of one-third that excitation energy, and Hoyle knew of no other way in which carbon-12 nuclei could be formed of lighter nuclei, than three helium-4 coming together at once. The book does not make clear what it means for a nucleus to have an excited state, nor how the energy levels can be known. Some of that is available here: Nuclear shell model https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch... .
Paper downloadable from https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/artic... Chapter 4.
NEUTRINOS
Pauli postulated the existence of neutrinos, to explain why electrons emitted from decaying nuclei have variable energies. (Some of the energy is carried off by the neutrino instead.) 1930. Neutrinos interact so rarely with matter that they could pass through lead light-years thick. Chapter 5.
The idea, as shown here https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch... , is that a nucleus may decay by changing a proton into a neutron, emitting a positron and a neutrino, as in transforming nitrogen-12 to carbon-12, or, a nucleus may decay by changing a neutron into a proton, emitting an electron and an antineutrino, as in transforming boron-12 to carbon-12.
The inverses of these reactions also occur: a neutron may absorb a neutrino and emit an electron, changing into a proton; a proton may absorb an antineutrino and emit a positron, changing into a neutron.
In no case is the neutrino or antineutrino directly detectable. But--in the latter case, the emitted positron will almost immediately annihilate with an electron, producing two gamma rays in opposite directions, and leaving the neutron.
It is this pair of gamma rays, plus a neutron, that U.S. nuclear physicists detected in 1956, at a nuclear-weapons plant. This was the evidence of the existence of the neutrino. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowan%E...
Unexplained is how this differs from the case of a nucleus decaying by changing a proton into a neutron, emitting a positron and a (postulated but undetectable) neutrino.
As well as the electron neutrinos found in 1956, muon neutrinos were found in 1962, tau neutrinos in 2000. Neutrinos change among these flavors in flight. Since time stops at lightspeed, the fact that neutrinos oscillate among the flavors means they travel at sublight speeds, and have mass. Chapter 5.
Unexplained is how light can oscillate its electric and magnetic fields.
MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION
Hubble discovered in 1929 that all visible galaxies are going away from us: the universe is expanding.
Alpher & Herman predicted microwave background radiation, a vestige of the Big Bang, 1948. It should be a black-body spectrum, of a very cold black body, a few degrees Kelvin. Dicke, Peebles, Roll, & Wilkerson realized that Penzias & Wilson had found it, 1965.
Unsaid is why those photons from the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, haven't for the most part traveled far beyond us. He gives a partial answer, in that photons are repeatedly absorbed and reemitted by matter. Still, interstellar matter is so sparse, I would expect the photons largely to escape into the void, far outpacing the more-slowly-dispersing matter. It takes just a few /thousand/ years for a photon to escape from the center of the sun to its surface. We can detect x-rays from quasars /billions/ of light-years away, meaning that nothing in-between has absorbed them. The microwave background is not starlight but photons that have been losing energy in collisions with occasional bits of interstellar matter for 13.8 billion years.
Free neutrons are unstable and decay into protons, electrons, and antineutrinos in about 10 minutes. Chapter 6.
BLACK HOLES
1915, Schwarzchild solved Einstein's equations of general relativity, realized that black holes can exist, computed their event horizons.
Paul Murdin & Louise Webster, 1971. X-ray astronomy showed a supergiant blue star orbiting apparently nothing. Every 5.6 days. About 7 light-years from us. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnu...
Hawking realized that pairs of particles and antiparticles created in "empty" space just beyond a black hole's event horizon, one going into the black hole, one going away, would cause the black hole to radiate particles. "Hawking radiation," 1974. Black holes lose mass thereby. Eventually they evaporate, but it takes many times the current age of the universe. Chapter 7.
HIGGS BOSON
Emmy Noether theorem, 1918: for every symmetry, there's a conservation law. Time-translation symmetry implies conservation of energy. Phase-factor symmetry in an electron's wave function implies charge conservation. Gauge invariance implies electromagnetism. (None of this is explained.) Hermann Weyl, 1929, Julian Schwinger, 1950s. Yang-Mills equation, 1950s: gauge field. Chapter 8.
The Higgs boson gives mass to force-carrying particles (bosons) and to matter particles (quarks and leptons). It was found in 2012: 126 times a proton's mass, it s the heaviest subatomic particle yet.
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
Predicted by Einstein's general relativity, 1915; detected 2015. Chapter 9.
MATH
Physicists have succeeded in predicting mathematically, unexpected phenomena.
Additions and corrections
Chapter 2 says Faraday found that a magnetic field changed the polarization of light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday... Chapter 8 contradictorily says photons, being uncharged, are immune to electromagnetic forces.
Chapter 5, just after the last text-break before the end of the chapter, says photons that reach us were in the heart of the sun 8 minutes earlier. Actually, they were at the /surface/ of the sun 8 minutes earlier; it takes thousands of years for a photon to go from the center of the sun to the surface: https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/as...
January 9, 2022
Özellikle fizik ve astronomi alanındaki dönüm noktalarının ardında yatan gerçek hikayeleri anlatan çok güzel bir kitap. Üslup akıcı, okuyucuyu sıkmamak adına teknik detaylara da olmazsa olmaz seviyede girildiği için rahat okunuyor...Tavsiye ediyorum.
March 3, 2020
The scientific process is an iterative one, ask a question, test that hypothesis, understand the result and ask a slightly different question and test again. Slowly an understanding of that specific process will be gained and revealed to the world. But every now and again a scientist will have an idea or revelation that leads to a body of work that fundamentally changes everything that we have understood until that point.
In this book, Marcus Chown takes 10 of the most significant developments and discoveries in physics since 1846. There he begins with Johann Galle looking through a giant brass refractor at the sky calling out the coordinates of the stars to his assistant. He was getting a crick in his neck and getting very cold when he called out the next set of coordinates. HE didn’t hear a response, just moments later the crash of a chair and looked up to see his Heinrich running towards him shouting, ‘The Star is not on the map!’ Using the Newton calculation he had predicted the location of a planet and he had discovered Neptune.
This and other significant discoveries like the discovery of electrical transmission predicted by Maxwell and proven by Hertz. How Friedmann used the latest gravitational theory from Einstein to predict that there was a time before the universe existed and how it took 48 years and several billion pounds before one man’s prediction came true on particles. Finally in September 2015 a new sensor with two laser beams 4 km long detected a shudder in space-time shortly after being turned on. This was the first time a gravitational wave had ever been seen and these had been predicted 99 years before by a certain Mr Einstein.
We have learned so much and yet still know almost nothing about the function of the universe, but each step is a revelation in its own way. I thought that this was a very accessible book on some of the most significant discoveries in physics. Chown has taken some liberties to fictionalise the accounts of these physicists and their breakthroughs, but I thought it worked really well. The stories are rooted in the facts and there is a strong narrative that kept my interest all the way through the book. Highly recommended.
In this book, Marcus Chown takes 10 of the most significant developments and discoveries in physics since 1846. There he begins with Johann Galle looking through a giant brass refractor at the sky calling out the coordinates of the stars to his assistant. He was getting a crick in his neck and getting very cold when he called out the next set of coordinates. HE didn’t hear a response, just moments later the crash of a chair and looked up to see his Heinrich running towards him shouting, ‘The Star is not on the map!’ Using the Newton calculation he had predicted the location of a planet and he had discovered Neptune.
This and other significant discoveries like the discovery of electrical transmission predicted by Maxwell and proven by Hertz. How Friedmann used the latest gravitational theory from Einstein to predict that there was a time before the universe existed and how it took 48 years and several billion pounds before one man’s prediction came true on particles. Finally in September 2015 a new sensor with two laser beams 4 km long detected a shudder in space-time shortly after being turned on. This was the first time a gravitational wave had ever been seen and these had been predicted 99 years before by a certain Mr Einstein.
We have learned so much and yet still know almost nothing about the function of the universe, but each step is a revelation in its own way. I thought that this was a very accessible book on some of the most significant discoveries in physics. Chown has taken some liberties to fictionalise the accounts of these physicists and their breakthroughs, but I thought it worked really well. The stories are rooted in the facts and there is a strong narrative that kept my interest all the way through the book. Highly recommended.
December 3, 2025
Marcus Chown,
(English) /The Magicians: Great Minds and the Central Miracle of Science/
(Spanish) /El instante Mágico: los diez descubrimientos asombrosos que cambiaron la historia de la ciencia/, translator Francisco J. Ramos Mena, 341 pages. Dewey 530. ISBN 9788418187957.
Ten "wow!" discoveries in physics and astronomy, 1820-2000s. A little on the pasts, personalities, and perspectives of the scientists, and the intellectual environments they were working within--and often against. Many visionaries were ridiculed by their shortsighted peers. Recounts some of the scientists' approaches and thought processes.
Mostly human-interest stories. Makes little attempt to explain the science.
No equations. Chown does /not/ tell us what Maxwell's equations, the Schrödinger equation, and the rest /say/. See Feynman, /Lectures on Physics/. Physics Libre Texts are free online physics textbooks https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves .
Chapters:
Neptune predicted to exist
Maxwell's equations
Relativistic quantum mechanics
How chemical elements were created
Neutrinos
Microwave background radiation
Black holes
Higgs boson
Gravitational waves
Math
NEPTUNE PREDICTED TO EXIST
Le Verrier predicted the existence of the planet Neptune, and where it should be in the sky, from Uranus's slightly-anomalous orbit, 1846, Chapter 1.
Titius-Bode Law:
MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS
1820s-1830s: Faraday realized that magnets and electric charges and currents are surrounded by invisible but real /fields/; discovered that moving magnets produce electric fields, and that electric currents produce magnetic fields. Made the first electric motors and generators. Discovered that magnets can affect /light/. 1860s-1873: Maxwell understood that electricity and magnetism affect each other as do adjacent portions of a medium undergoing wave motion. There should be electromagnetic waves. Their speed should be calculable from the capacity of electric and magnetic fields to permeate space. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuu... Based on these measured values, Maxwell found that electromagnetic waves should travel at a speed about identical to the speed of light Fizeau measured in 1840, about 300,000 kilometers per second (670,000,000 mph). Light, and radiant heat, are electromagnetic waves! Maxwell found equations that describe these electromagnetic interactions. Heaviside put Maxwell's equations in the form we know today, 1885. 1887, Hertz made the radio waves Maxwell predicted. James Clerk Maxwell died at age 47, a giant of classical physics second only to Newton. Chapter 2.
Maxwell's equations served up a couple of problems whose solutions ushered in the modern physics of quantum mechanics and relativity. The predicted infinity of radiant frequencies from an ideal hot object, with its impossible infinity of energy radiated, led Planck to suppose that radiant energy is quantized. The invariability of lightspeed led Einstein to relativity: space-and-time, and electricity-and-magnetism, appear different to observers in motion relative to each other.
RELATIVISTIC QUANTUM MECHANICS
Dirac, 1927. The Schrödinger equation suffices to describe the orbit of an electron in a hydrogen atom, moving at a speed on the order of 1% of the speed of light. But it's valid only for such nonrelativistic speeds. Electrons orbit uranium nuclei at appreciable fractions of lightspeed. A relativistic quantum mechanics is needed. Dirac modified the equation to include additional dimensions. It turned out to predict the electron's spin and magnetic dipole moment just as measured. And also to predict that positrons and other antimatter exist! Positrons were discovered at Caltech and at Cambridge in 1932. Atoms of antihydrogen were created in 1995 at CERN. They last 40 nanoseconds before annihilating with ordinary matter. Chapter 3. https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch...
Absorbing the prerequisites necessary to understand relativistic quantum mechanics is the work of an undergraduate and graduate physics education https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelv.... PDF of Dirac's original paper is downloadable from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/do...
HOW CHEMICAL ELEMENTS WERE CREATED
Fred Hoyle, 1944-1953. Synthesis of the elements in stars. Hoyle correctly predicted that the carbon-12 nucleus must have an allowable quantum state 7.65 MeV above its ground state--because helium-4 has a state of one-third that excitation energy, and Hoyle knew of no other way in which carbon-12 nuclei could be formed of lighter nuclei, than three helium-4 coming together at once. The book does not make clear what it means for a nucleus to have an excited state, nor how the energy levels can be known. Some of that is available here: Nuclear shell model https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch... .
Paper downloadable from https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/artic... Chapter 4.
NEUTRINOS
Pauli postulated the existence of neutrinos, to explain why electrons emitted from decaying nuclei have variable energies. (Some of the energy is carried off by the neutrino instead.) 1930. Neutrinos interact so rarely with matter that they could pass through lead light-years thick. Chapter 5.
The idea, as shown here https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch... , is that a nucleus may decay by changing a proton into a neutron, emitting a positron and a neutrino, as in transforming nitrogen-12 to carbon-12, or, a nucleus may decay by changing a neutron into a proton, emitting an electron and an antineutrino, as in transforming boron-12 to carbon-12.
The inverses of these reactions also occur: a neutron may absorb a neutrino and emit an electron, changing into a proton; a proton may absorb an antineutrino and emit a positron, changing into a neutron.
In no case is the neutrino or antineutrino directly detectable. But--in the latter case, the emitted positron will almost immediately annihilate with an electron, producing two gamma rays in opposite directions, and leaving the neutron.
It is this pair of gamma rays, plus a neutron, that U.S. nuclear physicists detected in 1956, at a nuclear-weapons plant. This was the evidence of the existence of the neutrino. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowan%E...
Unexplained is how this differs from the case of a nucleus decaying by changing a proton into a neutron, emitting a positron and a (postulated but undetectable) neutrino.
As well as the electron neutrinos found in 1956, muon neutrinos were found in 1962, tau neutrinos in 2000. Neutrinos change among these flavors in flight. Since time stops at lightspeed, the fact that neutrinos oscillate among the flavors means they travel at sublight speeds, and have mass. Chapter 5.
Unexplained is how light can oscillate its electric and magnetic fields.
MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION
Hubble discovered in 1929 that all visible galaxies are going away from us: the universe is expanding.
Alpher & Herman predicted microwave background radiation, a vestige of the Big Bang, 1948. It should be a black-body spectrum, of a very cold black body, a few degrees Kelvin. Dicke, Peebles, Roll, & Wilkerson realized that Penzias & Wilson had found it, 1965.
Unsaid is why those photons from the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, haven't for the most part traveled far beyond us. He gives a partial answer, in that photons are repeatedly absorbed and reemitted by matter. Still, interstellar matter is so sparse, I would expect the photons largely to escape into the void, far outpacing the more-slowly-dispersing matter. It takes just a few /thousand/ years for a photon to escape from the center of the sun to its surface. We can detect x-rays from quasars /billions/ of light-years away, meaning that nothing in-between has absorbed them. The microwave background is not starlight but photons that have been losing energy in collisions with occasional bits of interstellar matter for 13.8 billion years.
Free neutrons are unstable and decay into protons, electrons, and antineutrinos in about 10 minutes. Chapter 6.
BLACK HOLES
1915, Schwarzchild solved Einstein's equations of general relativity, realized that black holes can exist, computed their event horizons.
Paul Murdin & Louise Webster, 1971. X-ray astronomy showed a supergiant blue star orbiting apparently nothing. Every 5.6 days. About 7 light-years from us. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnu...
Hawking realized that pairs of particles and antiparticles created in "empty" space just beyond a black hole's event horizon, one going into the black hole, one going away, would cause the black hole to radiate particles. "Hawking radiation," 1974. Black holes lose mass thereby. Eventually they evaporate, but it takes many times the current age of the universe. Chapter 7.
HIGGS BOSON
Emmy Noether theorem, 1918: for every symmetry, there's a conservation law. Time-translation symmetry implies conservation of energy. Phase-factor symmetry in an electron's wave function implies charge conservation. Gauge invariance implies electromagnetism. (None of this is explained.) Hermann Weyl, 1929, Julian Schwinger, 1950s. Yang-Mills equation, 1950s: gauge field. Chapter 8.
The Higgs boson gives mass to force-carrying particles (bosons) and to matter particles (quarks and leptons). It was found in 2012: 126 times a proton's mass, it's the heaviest subatomic particle yet.
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
Predicted by Einstein's general relativity, 1915; detected 2015. Chapter 9.
MATH
Physicists have succeeded in predicting mathematically, unexpected phenomena.
Additions and corrections
Chapter 2 says Faraday found that a magnetic field changed the polarization of light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday... Chapter 8 contradictorily says photons, being uncharged, are immune to electromagnetic forces.
Chapter 5, just after the last text-break before the end of the chapter, says photons that reach us were in the heart of the sun 8 minutes earlier. Actually, they were at the /surface/ of the sun 8 minutes earlier; it takes thousands of years for a photon to go from the center of the sun to the surface: https://web.archive.org/web/201201221...
(English) /The Magicians: Great Minds and the Central Miracle of Science/
(Spanish) /El instante Mágico: los diez descubrimientos asombrosos que cambiaron la historia de la ciencia/, translator Francisco J. Ramos Mena, 341 pages. Dewey 530. ISBN 9788418187957.
Ten "wow!" discoveries in physics and astronomy, 1820-2000s. A little on the pasts, personalities, and perspectives of the scientists, and the intellectual environments they were working within--and often against. Many visionaries were ridiculed by their shortsighted peers. Recounts some of the scientists' approaches and thought processes.
Mostly human-interest stories. Makes little attempt to explain the science.
No equations. Chown does /not/ tell us what Maxwell's equations, the Schrödinger equation, and the rest /say/. See Feynman, /Lectures on Physics/. Physics Libre Texts are free online physics textbooks https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves .
Chapters:
Neptune predicted to exist
Maxwell's equations
Relativistic quantum mechanics
How chemical elements were created
Neutrinos
Microwave background radiation
Black holes
Higgs boson
Gravitational waves
Math
NEPTUNE PREDICTED TO EXIST
Le Verrier predicted the existence of the planet Neptune, and where it should be in the sky, from Uranus's slightly-anomalous orbit, 1846, Chapter 1.
Titius-Bode Law:
MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS
1820s-1830s: Faraday realized that magnets and electric charges and currents are surrounded by invisible but real /fields/; discovered that moving magnets produce electric fields, and that electric currents produce magnetic fields. Made the first electric motors and generators. Discovered that magnets can affect /light/. 1860s-1873: Maxwell understood that electricity and magnetism affect each other as do adjacent portions of a medium undergoing wave motion. There should be electromagnetic waves. Their speed should be calculable from the capacity of electric and magnetic fields to permeate space. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuu... Based on these measured values, Maxwell found that electromagnetic waves should travel at a speed about identical to the speed of light Fizeau measured in 1840, about 300,000 kilometers per second (670,000,000 mph). Light, and radiant heat, are electromagnetic waves! Maxwell found equations that describe these electromagnetic interactions. Heaviside put Maxwell's equations in the form we know today, 1885. 1887, Hertz made the radio waves Maxwell predicted. James Clerk Maxwell died at age 47, a giant of classical physics second only to Newton. Chapter 2.
Maxwell's equations served up a couple of problems whose solutions ushered in the modern physics of quantum mechanics and relativity. The predicted infinity of radiant frequencies from an ideal hot object, with its impossible infinity of energy radiated, led Planck to suppose that radiant energy is quantized. The invariability of lightspeed led Einstein to relativity: space-and-time, and electricity-and-magnetism, appear different to observers in motion relative to each other.
RELATIVISTIC QUANTUM MECHANICS
Dirac, 1927. The Schrödinger equation suffices to describe the orbit of an electron in a hydrogen atom, moving at a speed on the order of 1% of the speed of light. But it's valid only for such nonrelativistic speeds. Electrons orbit uranium nuclei at appreciable fractions of lightspeed. A relativistic quantum mechanics is needed. Dirac modified the equation to include additional dimensions. It turned out to predict the electron's spin and magnetic dipole moment just as measured. And also to predict that positrons and other antimatter exist! Positrons were discovered at Caltech and at Cambridge in 1932. Atoms of antihydrogen were created in 1995 at CERN. They last 40 nanoseconds before annihilating with ordinary matter. Chapter 3. https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch...
Absorbing the prerequisites necessary to understand relativistic quantum mechanics is the work of an undergraduate and graduate physics education https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelv.... PDF of Dirac's original paper is downloadable from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/do...
HOW CHEMICAL ELEMENTS WERE CREATED
Fred Hoyle, 1944-1953. Synthesis of the elements in stars. Hoyle correctly predicted that the carbon-12 nucleus must have an allowable quantum state 7.65 MeV above its ground state--because helium-4 has a state of one-third that excitation energy, and Hoyle knew of no other way in which carbon-12 nuclei could be formed of lighter nuclei, than three helium-4 coming together at once. The book does not make clear what it means for a nucleus to have an excited state, nor how the energy levels can be known. Some of that is available here: Nuclear shell model https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch... .
Paper downloadable from https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/artic... Chapter 4.
NEUTRINOS
Pauli postulated the existence of neutrinos, to explain why electrons emitted from decaying nuclei have variable energies. (Some of the energy is carried off by the neutrino instead.) 1930. Neutrinos interact so rarely with matter that they could pass through lead light-years thick. Chapter 5.
The idea, as shown here https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/ch... , is that a nucleus may decay by changing a proton into a neutron, emitting a positron and a neutrino, as in transforming nitrogen-12 to carbon-12, or, a nucleus may decay by changing a neutron into a proton, emitting an electron and an antineutrino, as in transforming boron-12 to carbon-12.
The inverses of these reactions also occur: a neutron may absorb a neutrino and emit an electron, changing into a proton; a proton may absorb an antineutrino and emit a positron, changing into a neutron.
In no case is the neutrino or antineutrino directly detectable. But--in the latter case, the emitted positron will almost immediately annihilate with an electron, producing two gamma rays in opposite directions, and leaving the neutron.
It is this pair of gamma rays, plus a neutron, that U.S. nuclear physicists detected in 1956, at a nuclear-weapons plant. This was the evidence of the existence of the neutrino. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowan%E...
Unexplained is how this differs from the case of a nucleus decaying by changing a proton into a neutron, emitting a positron and a (postulated but undetectable) neutrino.
As well as the electron neutrinos found in 1956, muon neutrinos were found in 1962, tau neutrinos in 2000. Neutrinos change among these flavors in flight. Since time stops at lightspeed, the fact that neutrinos oscillate among the flavors means they travel at sublight speeds, and have mass. Chapter 5.
Unexplained is how light can oscillate its electric and magnetic fields.
MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION
Hubble discovered in 1929 that all visible galaxies are going away from us: the universe is expanding.
Alpher & Herman predicted microwave background radiation, a vestige of the Big Bang, 1948. It should be a black-body spectrum, of a very cold black body, a few degrees Kelvin. Dicke, Peebles, Roll, & Wilkerson realized that Penzias & Wilson had found it, 1965.
Unsaid is why those photons from the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, haven't for the most part traveled far beyond us. He gives a partial answer, in that photons are repeatedly absorbed and reemitted by matter. Still, interstellar matter is so sparse, I would expect the photons largely to escape into the void, far outpacing the more-slowly-dispersing matter. It takes just a few /thousand/ years for a photon to escape from the center of the sun to its surface. We can detect x-rays from quasars /billions/ of light-years away, meaning that nothing in-between has absorbed them. The microwave background is not starlight but photons that have been losing energy in collisions with occasional bits of interstellar matter for 13.8 billion years.
Free neutrons are unstable and decay into protons, electrons, and antineutrinos in about 10 minutes. Chapter 6.
BLACK HOLES
1915, Schwarzchild solved Einstein's equations of general relativity, realized that black holes can exist, computed their event horizons.
Paul Murdin & Louise Webster, 1971. X-ray astronomy showed a supergiant blue star orbiting apparently nothing. Every 5.6 days. About 7 light-years from us. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnu...
Hawking realized that pairs of particles and antiparticles created in "empty" space just beyond a black hole's event horizon, one going into the black hole, one going away, would cause the black hole to radiate particles. "Hawking radiation," 1974. Black holes lose mass thereby. Eventually they evaporate, but it takes many times the current age of the universe. Chapter 7.
HIGGS BOSON
Emmy Noether theorem, 1918: for every symmetry, there's a conservation law. Time-translation symmetry implies conservation of energy. Phase-factor symmetry in an electron's wave function implies charge conservation. Gauge invariance implies electromagnetism. (None of this is explained.) Hermann Weyl, 1929, Julian Schwinger, 1950s. Yang-Mills equation, 1950s: gauge field. Chapter 8.
The Higgs boson gives mass to force-carrying particles (bosons) and to matter particles (quarks and leptons). It was found in 2012: 126 times a proton's mass, it's the heaviest subatomic particle yet.
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
Predicted by Einstein's general relativity, 1915; detected 2015. Chapter 9.
MATH
Physicists have succeeded in predicting mathematically, unexpected phenomena.
Additions and corrections
Chapter 2 says Faraday found that a magnetic field changed the polarization of light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday... Chapter 8 contradictorily says photons, being uncharged, are immune to electromagnetic forces.
Chapter 5, just after the last text-break before the end of the chapter, says photons that reach us were in the heart of the sun 8 minutes earlier. Actually, they were at the /surface/ of the sun 8 minutes earlier; it takes thousands of years for a photon to go from the center of the sun to the surface: https://web.archive.org/web/201201221...
Read
January 18, 2024I feel in no way qualified to rate this book but found it fascinating despite totally identifying with Enrico Fermi (quoted in this book): “Before I came here, I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture, I am still confused but on a higher level.” - I am still confused, on a very high level, about physics in general and would never have persisted had I not chosen the audiobook version. However, I very much enjoyed hearing about the scientists, their lives and amazing discoveries, their antics and quirky behaviour and their relationships with each other. Ideally, for me, more of that and less of the particles :D I guess a fabulous read for the more scientifically minded!
July 4, 2020
3.5/5.0
December 12, 2022
A fantastic book on modern physics.
The book is intended to a wide public, so the math layer so seemingly inevitable for a book on physics is totally skipped. It is replaced with an impressive storytelling.
Each chapter (which is dedicated to one breakthrough in physics) is started with a description of some experiment. And then the author jumps back several decades back, to the point when some other physician based just on a mathematical model made a prediction. A prediction that nobody took seriously until it was confirmed by an experiment in a beginning of story. And the experiment, that in beginning seemed kind of irrelevant, gains weight and meaning.
The ending of each such story is not just an end of a quest. Its consequences are vast, it establishes a new understanding of universe.
Really enjoyable read and for some, I guess, it might awaken an interest in that frightening but beautiful math...
The book is intended to a wide public, so the math layer so seemingly inevitable for a book on physics is totally skipped. It is replaced with an impressive storytelling.
Each chapter (which is dedicated to one breakthrough in physics) is started with a description of some experiment. And then the author jumps back several decades back, to the point when some other physician based just on a mathematical model made a prediction. A prediction that nobody took seriously until it was confirmed by an experiment in a beginning of story. And the experiment, that in beginning seemed kind of irrelevant, gains weight and meaning.
The ending of each such story is not just an end of a quest. Its consequences are vast, it establishes a new understanding of universe.
Really enjoyable read and for some, I guess, it might awaken an interest in that frightening but beautiful math...
Read
March 8, 2023Cuando Isaac Newton formuló, en 1687, la Ley de la gravitación universal, dejó para después el problema de que la atracción entre los cuerpos ocurre aun existiendo un vacío entre ellos, como en el caso de los planetas y el sol. ¿Cómo podría darse esta atracción no existiendo un medio que transmita esta fuerza? Años más tarde, hacia 1821, el Michael Faraday comenzó a concebir la idea de los campos de fuerza: algo así como una niebla invisible que llenaba el espacio vacío. Así, “un campo cargado eléctricamente creaba un campo de fuerza eléctrica sobre el espacio que lo rodeaba”, explica Marcus Chown, el autor de este libro. El conocimiento de la gravedad permitió inferir la existencia de nuevos cuerpos celestes. En 1846 se descubrió Neptuno, el primer planeta descubierto sólo con anotaciones en un cuaderno y no con ayuda del telescopio. Actualmente, el descubrimiento de Newton continúa haciendo descubrimientos: Chown dice que el más importante de ellos es la materia oscura, la cuarta parte del universo, pero de la cual se ignora casi todo. Mientras leía este libro, iba comprendiendo la construcción intelectual que los descubrimientos científicos han ido acumulando. Un científico seguido de otro desmenuza la idea de partícula, de universo, de masa… Pero al cerrar sus páginas, mi mente otra vez se convertía en una nebulosa de ideas. No obstante, aun cuando es muy pequeño mi conocimiento en torno a la física, alcanzo a vislumbrar que existe una íntima relación entre lo infinitamente pequeño y lo monstruosamente inmenso. Es importante decir que, en el campo de la ciencia, los honores y los premios tienen la misma importancia que los protones y las ondas electromagnéticas. Así que los científicos tienen un sencillo movimiento oscilatorio que va del desánimo a la confianza. En el caso del campo electromagnético, varios científicos se disputan el honor de haber descubierto la “radiación de fondo de microondas”. Sin embargo, dos investigadores de los Laboratorios Bell, en New Jersey, fueron reconocidos con el Premio Nobel de Física en 1978 por este descubrimiento: Arno Penzias y Robert Woodrow Wilson. ¿Qué significa este descubrimiento? Se trata del residuo que el Big Bang dejó en forma de radiación en todo el universo. Según Chown, si esta radiación fuera visible, entonces todo el espacio tendría un brillo completamente blanco. Así que ese descubrimiento permitió fundamentar la teoría del Big Bang, teoría que indica que durante los primeros minutos de vida del universo fueron creados los elementos más ligeros, en tanto que los elementos más pesados fueron posteriormente fabricados dentro de las estrellas. Este tipo de lecturas causan un vértigo cósmico que posteriormente me conducen a aferrarme a los tangibles días, kilos, metros, años y centímetros.
Marcus Chown. El instante mágico / The Magicians (2020), tr. Franciso J. Ramos Mena. Barcelona, Blackie Books, 2021.
Marcus Chown. El instante mágico / The Magicians (2020), tr. Franciso J. Ramos Mena. Barcelona, Blackie Books, 2021.
September 14, 2020
"Magicians" recounts several stories on how different scientists (or groups of scientists) figured out something profound based on not much more than pure maths and a hunch. These include, for example, the discovery of the planet Neptune, and Einstein's prediction of the gravitational waves -- which he first believed in, then changed his mind and thought that they cannot exist, and finally settled on believing in them after all. For a nerdy mind this should be a very interesting book. There are no mathematical formulas in the book, save for the obligatory E=mc², as the author has tried their best to explain the complex phenomena in, let's say, advanced high school physics level.👍
November 22, 2022
Es sorprendente que las Matemáticas funcionen tan estupendamente bien para describir la Naturaleza. En este libro se describen nueve ocasiones en las que los teóricos predijeron algo sobre el mundo real usando solamente papel y lápiz, mirando con desconfianza sus propios hallazgos, y cómo posteriormente fueron comprobados experimentalmente.
May 29, 2023
Note: My copy of this was called “Breakthrough” but it’s the same book.
Just wow. Possibly the best popular science book (for non-scientist like me) that I have ever read. So clear, yet so poetic.
Every so often, I had to stop and smile - sometimes laughing out loud - at the elegance of what Chown is describing, and the exuberance of his writing. I don’t often give out 5 stars.
Just wow. Possibly the best popular science book (for non-scientist like me) that I have ever read. So clear, yet so poetic.
Every so often, I had to stop and smile - sometimes laughing out loud - at the elegance of what Chown is describing, and the exuberance of his writing. I don’t often give out 5 stars.
October 2, 2025
Markus Čon-Čarobnjaci
Priznajem da se sa Čonovim pisanjem nisam družila duži niz godina, od poslednje pročitanje knjige Beskrajni dani provedeni u smrti, ali da je njegov pristup popularnoj nauci ,još od te knjige ,ostao upečatljiv i donosio neki vrlo šarmantan ton.
Knjiga Čarobnjaci vodi nas u svet nauke sa svežinom i energijom koja pomera granicu između suve teorije i očaravajućeg pripovedanja. Čon uspeva da objasni fenomene koji oblikuju naše razumevanje svemira tako da zvuče gotovo magično, a ipak ostaju naučno utemeljeni.
Njegov stil je jednostavan, ali nipošto pojednostavljen – on povezuje svakodnevne pojmove sa složenim konceptima, ostavljajući čitaocu osećaj da je upravo prisustvovao razgovoru sa prijateljem koji se slučajno razume u tajne kosmosa.
Umesto da se čitalac izgubi u lavirintu formula, Čon ga vodi kroz priču o ljudskoj radoznalosti, otkrićima i granicama znanja.
Posebno je upečatljiv način na koji autor podseća da su naučnici današnjice u neku ruku moderni „čarobnjaci“ – njihova otkrića menjaju naš pogled na svet i otvaraju vrata mogućnostima koje su ranije bile nezamislive.
Ono što knjigu čini privlačnom nije samo jasnoća objašnjenja, već i duh pripovedanja: Čon se ne boji da bude duhovit, ironičan ili da zastane i zapita se zajedno sa čitaocem. Tako se stvara osećaj bliskosti i zajedničkog istraživanja.
Autor nas vodi kroz svojevrsni vremeplov jos od doba Vavilona, današnjeg Irana , i tajni koje su zaintrigirale naučnike, pa preko Heršela, Maksvela, Faradeja, Diraka, Herca i ostalih znamenitih ljudi koji su smatrani čarobnjacima svoga doba jer su fizici i matematici, samom kosmosu, pristupali na neoubičajen i inovativan način. Isticala ih je hrabrost da se upute putevima kojima nisu smeli mnogi, pa i po cenu toga da ispadnu smešni i ludi.
Upravo ta naučna neutrašivost vodjena radoznalošću, otkrivala je i koliko su strastveno voleli ono čime se bave, ma koliko to kompleksno bilo.
U čestim slučajevima, i bez konkretnih dokaza pravile su se prognoze o mogućem postojanju nebeskog tela koje bi se tek kasnijem, kroz godine ,slučajnim otkrićem moglo potvrditi.
Nauka je dala prostora da pretpostavke deluju kao magija koja se kasnije ostvarivala, sve zato što su ljudi neumoljivo radili na eksperimentima i proračunima dok nisu došli do svojih čudesa.
Za neke, to je trajalo decenijama.
Otkrića su sama po sebi mistična i kompleksna, od elektomagnetnog polja, preko pronalaženja planeta, higsovog polja, kvarkova, pozitrona, svaki mali pomak bio je jedan korak ka razumevanju ljudskog postojanja u svemiru ali i svemira samog po sebi.
To večno pitanje -ko smo, odakle dolazimo i kuda smo se uputili, univerzalno je pitanje celoga sveta. A određeni naučnici ,za svog života su svojom posvećenošću, neobičnim metodama, saradnjom sa drugima, velikim znanjem koje su sticali i primenjivali, uspeli da nam primaknu i makar delimično predstave odgovore na ta ključna pitanja.
Zato, ova knjiga, sa pričama o prošlosti, vodi nas pravo u budućnost.
Priznajem da se sa Čonovim pisanjem nisam družila duži niz godina, od poslednje pročitanje knjige Beskrajni dani provedeni u smrti, ali da je njegov pristup popularnoj nauci ,još od te knjige ,ostao upečatljiv i donosio neki vrlo šarmantan ton.
Knjiga Čarobnjaci vodi nas u svet nauke sa svežinom i energijom koja pomera granicu između suve teorije i očaravajućeg pripovedanja. Čon uspeva da objasni fenomene koji oblikuju naše razumevanje svemira tako da zvuče gotovo magično, a ipak ostaju naučno utemeljeni.
Njegov stil je jednostavan, ali nipošto pojednostavljen – on povezuje svakodnevne pojmove sa složenim konceptima, ostavljajući čitaocu osećaj da je upravo prisustvovao razgovoru sa prijateljem koji se slučajno razume u tajne kosmosa.
Umesto da se čitalac izgubi u lavirintu formula, Čon ga vodi kroz priču o ljudskoj radoznalosti, otkrićima i granicama znanja.
Posebno je upečatljiv način na koji autor podseća da su naučnici današnjice u neku ruku moderni „čarobnjaci“ – njihova otkrića menjaju naš pogled na svet i otvaraju vrata mogućnostima koje su ranije bile nezamislive.
Ono što knjigu čini privlačnom nije samo jasnoća objašnjenja, već i duh pripovedanja: Čon se ne boji da bude duhovit, ironičan ili da zastane i zapita se zajedno sa čitaocem. Tako se stvara osećaj bliskosti i zajedničkog istraživanja.
Autor nas vodi kroz svojevrsni vremeplov jos od doba Vavilona, današnjeg Irana , i tajni koje su zaintrigirale naučnike, pa preko Heršela, Maksvela, Faradeja, Diraka, Herca i ostalih znamenitih ljudi koji su smatrani čarobnjacima svoga doba jer su fizici i matematici, samom kosmosu, pristupali na neoubičajen i inovativan način. Isticala ih je hrabrost da se upute putevima kojima nisu smeli mnogi, pa i po cenu toga da ispadnu smešni i ludi.
Upravo ta naučna neutrašivost vodjena radoznalošću, otkrivala je i koliko su strastveno voleli ono čime se bave, ma koliko to kompleksno bilo.
U čestim slučajevima, i bez konkretnih dokaza pravile su se prognoze o mogućem postojanju nebeskog tela koje bi se tek kasnijem, kroz godine ,slučajnim otkrićem moglo potvrditi.
Nauka je dala prostora da pretpostavke deluju kao magija koja se kasnije ostvarivala, sve zato što su ljudi neumoljivo radili na eksperimentima i proračunima dok nisu došli do svojih čudesa.
Za neke, to je trajalo decenijama.
Otkrića su sama po sebi mistična i kompleksna, od elektomagnetnog polja, preko pronalaženja planeta, higsovog polja, kvarkova, pozitrona, svaki mali pomak bio je jedan korak ka razumevanju ljudskog postojanja u svemiru ali i svemira samog po sebi.
To večno pitanje -ko smo, odakle dolazimo i kuda smo se uputili, univerzalno je pitanje celoga sveta. A određeni naučnici ,za svog života su svojom posvećenošću, neobičnim metodama, saradnjom sa drugima, velikim znanjem koje su sticali i primenjivali, uspeli da nam primaknu i makar delimično predstave odgovore na ta ključna pitanja.
Zato, ova knjiga, sa pričama o prošlosti, vodi nas pravo u budućnost.
November 11, 2024
Muy en la línea del gran “Un verdor terrible”, aunque con predominio de lo científico frente a lo literario, “El instante mágico” es un ensayo novelado que se divide en diez relatos independientes que tienen como protagonistas a matemáticos “magos” que, impulsados por intuiciones geniales y armados de una paciencia y voluntad excepcionales, hicieron descubrimientos cruciales para la historia de la ciencia.
Le Verrier, Einstein, Schwarzschild, Dirac, Pauli, Higgs… protagonistas de relatos que engloban otros tantos, pues sus hazañas entroncan con las de sus predecesores y/o sucesores.
La idea que impulsa al libro es descubrir cómo las matemáticas, por razones casi mágicas y de un modo casi poético, son el lenguaje con el que está constituido el universo. Y para ello se centra en esos casos en que los que estas han previsto fenómenos en muchos casos inimaginables que han sido después corroborados por la observación y/o por estudios posteriores.
«La enorme utilidad de las matemáticas en las ciencias naturales es algo que raya en lo misterioso . Y no tiene una explicación racional» (aunque tal vez «utilizamos las matemáticas para describir la única parte el universo que estás pueden describir»)
El motivo central no puede por menos que resultar apasionante y el estilo es ameno y entusiasta. Pero, por desgracia para mí, eso no ha sido suficiente: los temas que toca son muy complejos, técnicos y especializados (el descubrimiento de Neptuno por deducción matemática, de los campos magnéticos y las ondas hertzianas, la hermosa ecuación de Dirac, la implosión de las estrellas -origen de los elementos que forman la realidad-, los neutrinos, la antimateria, el rescoldo del Big Bang, las matemáticas del espacio curvo y la curvatura del espacio-tiempo, las ondas gravitacionales, cuya detección exige una precisión inconcebible…); entiendo que requiere de conocimientos previos sobre física y matemáticas, por lo menos. Con esfuerzo, he perseverado en su lectura aunque, honestamente, no he entendido ni jota. He intentado seguir, aturdido, sus explicaciones llenas de datos sorprendentes, fuerzas insondables y números elevados a potencias inauditas, explicaciones que van saltando alegremente de los electrones a los agujeros negros («objeto gravitacionalmente colapsado por completo»), de la partículas al cosmos, de lo mínimo a lo máximo… Pone todo el peso en la relación de la mecánica cuántica con la astrofísica y no hace el menor caso de otras disciplinas de la física o de la biología, quizá más cercanas, quizá menos mágicas. Digo yo.
Me han parecido especialmente acertadas y sugerentes las citas del inicio de los capítulos.
Le Verrier, Einstein, Schwarzschild, Dirac, Pauli, Higgs… protagonistas de relatos que engloban otros tantos, pues sus hazañas entroncan con las de sus predecesores y/o sucesores.
La idea que impulsa al libro es descubrir cómo las matemáticas, por razones casi mágicas y de un modo casi poético, son el lenguaje con el que está constituido el universo. Y para ello se centra en esos casos en que los que estas han previsto fenómenos en muchos casos inimaginables que han sido después corroborados por la observación y/o por estudios posteriores.
«La enorme utilidad de las matemáticas en las ciencias naturales es algo que raya en lo misterioso . Y no tiene una explicación racional» (aunque tal vez «utilizamos las matemáticas para describir la única parte el universo que estás pueden describir»)
El motivo central no puede por menos que resultar apasionante y el estilo es ameno y entusiasta. Pero, por desgracia para mí, eso no ha sido suficiente: los temas que toca son muy complejos, técnicos y especializados (el descubrimiento de Neptuno por deducción matemática, de los campos magnéticos y las ondas hertzianas, la hermosa ecuación de Dirac, la implosión de las estrellas -origen de los elementos que forman la realidad-, los neutrinos, la antimateria, el rescoldo del Big Bang, las matemáticas del espacio curvo y la curvatura del espacio-tiempo, las ondas gravitacionales, cuya detección exige una precisión inconcebible…); entiendo que requiere de conocimientos previos sobre física y matemáticas, por lo menos. Con esfuerzo, he perseverado en su lectura aunque, honestamente, no he entendido ni jota. He intentado seguir, aturdido, sus explicaciones llenas de datos sorprendentes, fuerzas insondables y números elevados a potencias inauditas, explicaciones que van saltando alegremente de los electrones a los agujeros negros («objeto gravitacionalmente colapsado por completo»), de la partículas al cosmos, de lo mínimo a lo máximo… Pone todo el peso en la relación de la mecánica cuántica con la astrofísica y no hace el menor caso de otras disciplinas de la física o de la biología, quizá más cercanas, quizá menos mágicas. Digo yo.
Me han parecido especialmente acertadas y sugerentes las citas del inicio de los capítulos.
February 2, 2021
An excellent account of some of the unexpected leaps in the world of physics . . . predictions that were decades ahead of their time, unlikely collaborations, solutions that magically fell into place as if awaiting discovery. Some are quite remarkable, like the Dirac equation, that seems to have been like a gift from God, unearthed and brought to light by the hard graft and dedication of a very unique and focused individual.
Chown gives quite a bit of background of these 'magicians' at a personal level so that you get a feel for what they were up against and how the development impacted on the world of science. He also goes into a fair amount of depth in his explanations, which, for me, was a definite plus. Some science texts, in the search for accessibility, skip the harder or more convoluted aspects of a stream of thought or replace it with some analogy intended to make the reader feel they've comprehended something but, for me, leaves the uneasy feeling of the vacuum lying behind.
Good work from Mr Chown. Will certainly be looking at his other titles
Chown gives quite a bit of background of these 'magicians' at a personal level so that you get a feel for what they were up against and how the development impacted on the world of science. He also goes into a fair amount of depth in his explanations, which, for me, was a definite plus. Some science texts, in the search for accessibility, skip the harder or more convoluted aspects of a stream of thought or replace it with some analogy intended to make the reader feel they've comprehended something but, for me, leaves the uneasy feeling of the vacuum lying behind.
Good work from Mr Chown. Will certainly be looking at his other titles
June 14, 2020
In 10 hoofdstukken schetst Marcus Chown op verhalende wijze welke grote magische stappen de wetenschap tijdens de afgelopen 150 jaar gezet heeft in ons begrijpen van het universum... wat dat begrijpen dan ook moge wezen. Uiteindelijk komt het er niet op aan onze orde op te leggen aan de chaos, maar wel om orde te zien, te ontdekken in die ogenschijnlijke chaos en die orde te beschrijven in een daarvoor geschikte universeel begrijpbare taal, de wiskunde. De magie zit hem in de voorspellingen die we in die taal kunnen doen op basis van onze kennis, voorspellingen die dan experimenteel gecorroboreerd of gefalsifieerd kunnen worden, met als doel het onzichtbare "zichtbaar" te maken.
Marcus Chown is op zijn manier een magiër in de onnavolgbare wijze waarop hij de magiërs van de wetenschap en hun werk tot leven brengt.
Marcus Chown is op zijn manier een magiër in de onnavolgbare wijze waarop hij de magiërs van de wetenschap en hun werk tot leven brengt.
December 30, 2024
A fabulous,,captivating book and a must read for people having an interest in science. Despite the captivating prose , the subject matter is esoteric and requires focussed reading, but once you take the effort , you can't help marvelling at the intuition of these pioneers in unlocking some of the many mysteries of the Universe simply by using maths . One begets the question why is the universe so mathematical ?what's our role as a species and what's the role of life as such in this mathematic universe ? The book does spawn these questions which hopefully magicians of the future will resolve.
On a separate note , this is an awesome book to gift to your pre-teen / teen kid if they are interested in science .
On a separate note , this is an awesome book to gift to your pre-teen / teen kid if they are interested in science .
May 21, 2023
Four solid stars
An easy to understand and enthralling journey through some of the most groundbreaking physics discovery of the last hundred or so years. Captures the brilliant characters of so many physicist. The science nerd in me geeked out whenever people like Planck or Eddington got mentioned. It's like there's the dude from my school work. Honestly loved it. Looses a star because I completely lost what was happening in the Higgs particle chapter. But it is hard to understand concepts so I suppose it's hard to explain. Overall really good and would recommend for physics nerds or someone qith a passing interest in science.
An easy to understand and enthralling journey through some of the most groundbreaking physics discovery of the last hundred or so years. Captures the brilliant characters of so many physicist. The science nerd in me geeked out whenever people like Planck or Eddington got mentioned. It's like there's the dude from my school work. Honestly loved it. Looses a star because I completely lost what was happening in the Higgs particle chapter. But it is hard to understand concepts so I suppose it's hard to explain. Overall really good and would recommend for physics nerds or someone qith a passing interest in science.
September 1, 2021
A fascinating read that treads the boundary between science fiction narration and a popular science expositor. A lot of these stories are familiar to us; taught to scientists at large to inspire -- and engage -- their thirst for knowledge. Even still, this book manages to suspend and grip, ensuring that even if you know the ending, you very much want to see in what new ways we can get there.
February 18, 2022
I loved the premise of this, the "magicians" who come up with a theory that takes decades to be proved, and I enjoyed their stories. The trouble was with the science, which was generally too far above me. I know he tried hard to make it understandable, but my physics (O level and a long time ago) was just not up to it. Recommended for people with more knowledge (or more patience) than me.
February 22, 2022
I have always being intrigued by scientific discoveries and how they came into being. The book is great. The best part of it was where it goes through the Big bang theory and how the people who predicted the cosmic microwave background did not get the credit but the discoverers were awarded nobel.
3* doesnt mean the book is not good. I am trying to distribute my ratings to a normal curve.
3* doesnt mean the book is not good. I am trying to distribute my ratings to a normal curve.
November 1, 2022
Pretty well-told stories of physicists successfully discovering real phenomena through mathematics. I've read a few books that try to explain quantum physics to a non-technical audience and it always feels like trying to juggle five balls, where I occasionally feel like I'm finally getting it but lose it again right away.
November 7, 2020
Phenomenal book. The predictive power of physicists using mathematics is mind boggling to say the least.
Starting with the prediction of Neptune till the prediction of Gravitational waves, Marcus tales us through a delightful rollercoaster. Bravo!!
Starting with the prediction of Neptune till the prediction of Gravitational waves, Marcus tales us through a delightful rollercoaster. Bravo!!
October 20, 2021
Excellent series of chapters on physics topics - gravity, black holes,neutrinos, the big bang - I loved the chapter title "The Day Without a Yesterday". Well written, well told and accessible to those with little or no science background.
December 27, 2022
This is an enlightening book that I will need to read again as I am not sure I grasp all the concepts explained. I think the title of the last chapter best describes it - “The poetry of logical ideas”.
August 19, 2021
A better than average popular science book that looks at the uncanny ability of mathematics to predict physics. Nine such incidents are explicated, including a few from the past 10 years.
October 16, 2021
Astonishing book! It is because of those magicians, who made the world what we have today. Inspiring book.
November 14, 2021
The physics theories are dumbed down so that us mere mortals may understand them, but it is still a difficult read if physics is not your forte. Otherwise quite an interesting book
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