Summer reads for physics fanatics

If you think physics couldn’t possibly provide the makings of a good beach read, you may need to think again. With vacation season in full swing, here are a few books featured in Physics Today this year that would be perfect summer selections.

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (Bold Type Books, 2021, $17.99, paper). Despite efforts to rectify historical inequities, physics remains one of the least diverse fields in the sciences (see the article by Rowan Thomson, Physics Today, January 2022, page 42 ). In her recent book, The Disordered Cosmos, which blends popular science, memoir, and exposé, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein recounts her experiences as a Black, queer woman in physics. Along with examining the history of overt discrimination in physics, Prescod-Weinstein identifies the subtle ways in which the language of physics can be loaded; for instance, physicists describe SU(3)-charged particles as “colored” despite the racial overtones that that word carries in English. Reviewer Seyda Ipek terms it the “rare book that one returns to again and again.”

A Brief History of Timekeeping: The Science of Marking Time, from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks by Chad Orzel (BenBella Books, 2022, $16.95, paper). How do we keep track of time? Why have societies put so much effort into doing so? Those questions are the subject of A Brief History of Timekeeping by Chad Orzel, a professor of physics at Union College. The conversational book focuses on the science of keeping time—from solar and lunar calendars to modern-day atomic clocks—but Orzel also considers the social context of keeping time. As he points out, politics, philosophy, and theology have been part of timekeeping since its beginnings. One cannot help but be amazed by some of the historical anecdotes Orzel relates, such as the remarkable reliability of the Gregorian calendar system, used by most of the world today. Developed in the late 1500s, the Gregorian year differs from the tropical year by only 26 seconds. Ultimately, Orzel notes, measuring time is a “signature preoccupation” of human society.

Cosmic Messengers: The Limits of Astronomy in an Unruly Universe by Martin Harwit (Cambridge U. Press, 2021, $39.99). Will there ever be a point at which our astronomical instruments will not be able to “see” any farther into the cosmos? In Cosmic Messengers, the astronomer Martin Harwit argues that it is possible to answer that question affirmatively. Harwit distinguishes between the titular cosmic messengers, which include cosmic rays and neutrinos, and the astronomical phenomena they help astronomers uncover, such as fast radio bursts and quasars. Coupling statistical inference with a knowledge of history, Harwit argues that there are 100 such phenomena in the universe, of which astronomers have uncovered 60. Harwit concludes that it will take several centuries for researchers to detect the other 40 phenomena, which might be discovered with possible new messengers like extrasolar asteroids. Reviewer James Moran calls Cosmic Messengers “important and thought-provoking.”

The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush, edited by G. Pascal Zachary (Columbia U. Press, 2022, $120.00). The letters, memos, and essays of a mid-20th-century science administrator may not seem like the stuff of a classic beach read, but this collection of Vannevar Bush’s writings, edited by G. Pascal Zachary, is gripping and surprisingly relevant. Perhaps no individual had a greater impact on postwar US science policy than Bush, an engineer and administrator whose advocacy for governmental support of science—famously expressed in the 1945 report Science: The Endless Frontier—laid the groundwork for the founding of NSF. The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush collects more than 50 texts authored by Bush from the 1920s to the 1970s that discuss inventions such as his proposed “memex,” a desk-based microfilm reader that presaged the World Wide Web, and major issues like the Cold War arms race, which Bush futilely tried to slow. Readers will likely be impressed by his prescience. As early as September 1944, for example, Bush predicted that another advanced nation could construct an atomic weapon within three to four years. Sure enough, the USSR tested its first bomb in 1949, a little over four years after the Trinity test.

How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain by Ryan North (Riverhead Books, 2022, $28.00). Have you ever watched a James Bond movie and thought, “Wow, I’d love to have a secret base like the ones those supervillains romp around in”? If so, How to Take Over the World by comic-book writer Ryan North is for you. By outlining how one could theoretically carry out various schemes like cloning dinosaurs, controlling weather, destroying the internet, and becoming immortal (spoiler alert: It’s not possible!), North cleverly introduces readers to subjects as varied as the chemical makeup of Earth’s core and the international treaties governing the use of Antarctica (the ideal location for a secret base). Fun, snarky illustrations by Carly Monardo round out the compelling package.

As a bonus for those of you who may be more into a staycation than a vacation, check out Last Exit: Space, directed by Rudolph Herzog (Discovery+, 2022). In this new documentary, Herzog confronts the techno-utopian fantasies of billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who assert that humanity has an existential need to settle Mars, outer space, and exoplanets. Narrated by Rudolph’s father, the celebrated filmmaker Werner Herzog, Last Exit: Space points out that space is an airless vacuum and that even Mars is a bleak, uninhabitable wasteland. Moreover, being trapped on a spacecraft for months or years would present its own set of problems. In one haunting interview, for example, Judith Lapierre recalls how she was sexually harassed during a monthslong Russian experiment that simulated a long-distance spaceflight. The film isn’t entirely critical: The Herzogs also profile the father–daughter team of Carsten Olsen and Anna Olsen, who are part of the Copenhagen Suborbitals, a hobbyist spaceflight program, and who hope to be the first amateur astronauts. But it’s refreshing to see a bucket of cold water thrown on the delusions of Musk, Bezos, and their ilk.