Amanda Gefter, contributor
PHYSICISTS try to understand the universe by seeking out its patterns and regularities, all of which are most successfully expressed in the language of mathematics. Amid seemingly endless strings of equations, a handful of numbers stand out. These are the physical constants, numbers that hold their value in any situation - the unbreakable scaffolding of reality.
In Cosmic Numbers, mathematician James Stein offers a tour of some of these constants, from Avogadro's number, the number of particles in the chemical unit of a mole of a substance, to omega, which determines the universe's geometry. These are numbers we take for granted today, but Stein stresses the lengths people went to to determine them.
There is plenty of interesting background too. For instance, the chapter on absolute zero, the temperature at which matter has no thermal energy, recalls the 17th century frigorific theory, which suggested that there was a substance, primum frigidum, responsible for coldness. And in the section on Planck's constant, Stein suggests that there ought to be a rock band called Ultraviolet Catastrophe, named after a fear from classical physics that was allayed by Planck's work on the discreteness of matter and energy.
Unfortunately, all these factoids don't serve to make any larger point about the meaning of the constants or the nature of the universe. In his chapter on the gravitational constant, Stein fails to discuss what gravity is, and he writes a chapter on the speed of light without mentioning its implications for space and time. Stein clearly has a mathematician's affection for the numbers and their derivations, but fails to capture their physical significance.
The reason for this becomes clearer after some confessions from Stein near the end of the book. "I've been a physics wannabe all my life, but I have never understood the great ideas of physics with the same clarity that I understand some of the great ideas of mathematics," he writes. And later: "I don't think you can truly appreciate a profound theory unless you really understand it, and I simply don't have the background or the intellectual tenacity needed to comprehend some of the current theories of cosmology." All of which leads me to wonder, if that is the case, why is he writing a book about cosmology?
Stein's professed ignorance doesn't stop him from offering up opinions about facts that are well accepted among cosmologists. For instance, he isn't on board with the big bang theory because despite not having looked carefully at the mathematics - "I shamefacedly confess I haven't" - he "simply cannot conceive of that amount of mass in that infinitesimally tiny volume". With similar unfounded gusto, Stein is willing to bet money against the existence of dark energy because, he says, "it just somehow feels wrong to me".
Cosmic Numbers has some interesting tidbits, but, overall, the book somehow feels wrong to me, too.
Cosmic Numbers: The numbers that define our universe
by James D. Stein
Published by: Basic Books