EINSTEIN, PLANCK, LAWS OF NATURE AND RELATED THINGS IN ONE OF POUL ANDERSON'S PARALLEL UNIVERSES
B. Lukács
CRIP RMKI, H-1525 Bp. 114. Pf. 49., Budapest, Hungary
and
Matter Evolution Subcommittee of the Geonomic Scientific Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
ABSTRACT
History of Science is (or should be) not Scholarship but Science. I, as a physicist, now review physicist Poul Anderson’s Alternative Reality novels and short stories. Anderson guesses that Physics would have taken a quite different alternative path if Planck and Einstein had collaborated since 1901. I do not think so.
1. INTRODUCTION
Poul Anderson (aka Sir Béla of Eastmarch from the Western Kingdom), who died in 2001, has caused a great impact about laymen's opinion about Future, because he wrote a great amount of sci-fi novels, novelettes and essays read by multitudes. This fact in itself, of course, would not be enough for me to write extended studies about his ideas. However he was a colleague of mine; he graduated at the University of Minnesota. I do not know anything about his work in physics; it seems that he switched to litterary careeer immediately after graduation; still, a physics graduation means virtual entrance into the world community of physicists, closed for almost everybody else (because of the formalism and way of thinking of this particular science). This means that one can analyse the physics behind the plot of a sci-fi of a physicist the same way as a new physical theory.
In the present study I will deal with the "multiverse", or, more properly, "parallel Universes" stories of Anderson. In the next Chapter I will try to define exactly what stories do belong here; now I tell only that Time Travel stories do not; although at Anderson Past is alterable. Parallel Universe ideas generally mean that Present is not unique, and its different, but not too different, representations all exist simultaneously. As we shall see, this idea is rather commonplace (although not proven) in today's physics. However, the next step, almost obligatory for storytelling, is not.
Namely, Parallel Universe stories generally postulate that you can travel amongst these simultaneous "realities". (If interreality travel does not happen in the story, it is difficult to distinguish it from an Alternative History.) There is a practical consideration behind: that otherwise there would be no story. But there is also common sense: if something does exist in my neighbourhood, it must be possible to go thither somehow. Now, you had better be careful with Common Sense in the fundaments of Physics. In a lot of cases measurements disproved clear Common Sense predictions. This happened, because Common Sense is based on the old and in many cases macroscopical experiences.
But almost surely parallel or alternative realities do simultaneously exist (the more important question would be: in what sense?); and if they exist, it is not absurd to look for travel between two. To be sure: today no way of it has been suggested even in the theory most friendly with the robust existence of the parallel realities.
But science fiction is literature. Science is developing; the future will bring new knowledge. Writers have the right to imagine physical laws until they do not contradict themselves or well established observations. Of course a physicist sci-fi writer is judged more strictly from this point of view. Also, a writer does not have to use the same kind of invention in all his works [1]. But a subset of novels and novelettes of Anderson can be clearly separated using the same "parallel Universe" ideas. This subset will be determined in the next Chapter.
2. ON ANDERSON'S PARALLEL UNIVERSE CANON
Anderson wrote a tremendous amount of sci-fi stories, and some of them cannot be bought now outside of US second-hand bookshops. So here the list of Anderson's coherent parallel Universe stories will not necessarily be full; however I did not use any story not in the list below for this study. Henceforth I will not refer Anderson's stories by editor & year. Rather, I give the title in a special font not used for anything else, and I suggest that the reader use [2] as a big enough bibliography.
First, there are stories where somebody or something definitely travels between realities. But interreality travel is not a necessary, only a sufficient condition. Namely if a physicist author describes an alternative reality in itself, we can assume that still he did not want to be in contradiction with his "theory". Note that I would exclude Time Travel scenarios from this group, because in Anderson's numerous Time Patrol stories the realities are "not simultaneous". "First" "our" reality R exist in them; then somebody goes into the past, changes it and then only the "new" R' exists.
Then my list used in this analysis will be as follows.
{Merman’s Children}
{Operation Chaos [3]
Operation Luna
Losers' Night}
{Uncleftish Beholdings}
{Midsummer Tempest}
[4]{Three Hearts and Three Lions}
{Eutopia}
{House of Sorrows}
{The Lady of the Winds
The Valor of Cappen Varra
Fairy Gold} [5]
Sure it is not complete; e.g. I took only one independent Old Phoenix story, but Old Phoenix is a place outside of realities, has no time ordering &c. Groups mean that within a group the Universe is the same, only time differs; groups are arranged according to increasing distance from OTL, within a group the sequence is from oldest to newest.Losers' Night is included only for the later career of one person in the previous two books. In the The Lady of the Winds, The Valor of Cappen Varra, Fairy Gold triad only the second contains interreality travel: Cappen Varra sees a book with illustrations inside; and one picture shows Venetian gondoliers; however the other 2 books demonstrate Magic in that Reality. It is not sure that Merman's Children is a Parallel Reality story at all, although it does contain Magic; see in due course.
3. ON ALTERNATIVE REALITIES
The best known Alternative Reality scenarios are Alternative Histories. In their best realisations a key event is postulated to have happened otherwise than in OTL (Orthodox/Our TimeLine); and the key event (Point of Divergence) is chosen in such a way that its different outcome was not very improbable. Afterwards History goes on, but the different result of the key event results in a new history. As an example, consider the outcome of the Battle of Poitiers in 732 AD. The Arab Governor of Moslim Hispania sent some troops through the Pyrenees. Surely his primary goal was not the conquest of the Frankish Empire but simply the uprooting of the Visigothic leaders of Septimania. Arabs/Berbers occupied some 20 years ago the main part of Visigothic Hispania, but had problems in mountainous Asturia & Navarra. Now, Visigothic Septimania might support the Asturians; by weeding them out Al-Andaluz is safe.
So far everything is clear. But the Moslems attacked Toulouse too. Maybe the Moslem leaders believed that Provencal Christians would support the Nothern Visigoths. For any reason the troops went to Toulouse, and won. And then the next step was to go Northward.
I do not know, why. My guess is that it would have been impossible for the Moslims to hold Northern France anyway. But maybe the idea was to weaken the Frank Kingdom; and maybe the Moslem host was strong enough. Or maybe the Moslim leader was stupid; this belongs to historic scholars, but the details of the war culminating at Poitiers are far from clear. True, the Merowingian royal dynasty of the Franks was utterly weak.
But their palatine (Pfalzgraf), Charles, was not. He led an army to Poitiers, defeated the Moslims, got the name Martellus (Hammer), and his son, Pippin the Short, dethronized the last Merowing King in two decades.
Now, imagine the opposite outcome of the Battle of Poitiers. Gibbon believed that it would have led to Islamization of Europe, but this is improbable. Central Hungary was for 150 years under Turkish occupation in the XVI-XVIIth century, but the ratio of converts was surely below 1% of the population. However, a Moslim victory at Poitiers surely would have seriously weakened the Frankish Kingdom, and most specifically, the family of Palatine Charles. So: then no dethronization of Childeric III in 751. No Karolings, weak Merowingians remain on the throne; maybe even until the Lindisfarne raid of Vikings in 793. No Charlemagne, because he would have been the grandson of Charles the Un-Martel. Viking raids weaken Western Christianity, and surely the Magyar raids from 896 upwards prevent the formation of a Western Empire.
This is not my "prediction" but Eutopia’s hero’s one, as you will see. However this analysis demonstrates Alternative History, and a lot of sci-fi books exist in the topics. (Some are logical, some are not.) But not only sci-fi books. See the analysis of famous Toynbee [6], from p. 421 about the different World History if Philip II of Macedon were not murdered on the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra in 336 (which definitely would not have happened if he could cross to Asia at Byzance in 341). Everybody can know that Philip planned the liberation of Asian Greece (=Aiolis & Ionia). He did not want to go further East, so the Greek-Persian border would have probably become the R. Halys (as between Lydia & Persia until 547, and then the border of the satrapies Dascyleon & Cappadocy). Then he might turn West (as some years later his son-in-law Alexander of Illyria did it), and then what about Rome? For some more discussion see [7].
For such analyses not even the physical reality of the other timeline is needed. However Quantum Mechanics since 1926 has seriously destroyed our belief in a unique reality. While we still have some doubts even in the formalism even after three-quarter century, it is experimentally proven that between two measurements a physical system generally is being in a superponed state. In a two-slot interference experiment in a very weak light flux in each time moment there is no more than one photon in the system; that one photon enters the apparatus through both slots and "is" at each possible places with varying probabilities. The wave packet reduces only at the photoemulsion, or not even there but only after developing it [8].
This is ghastly first; but after 5 years of Quantum Mechanics at university one becomes familiar with the idea, and after some more years of work it becomes a commonplace. Anyway, I can calculate what will happen, and the predicted outcome is then observed.
Good; between two measurements indeed "alternative realities" are present, but they differ "only microscopically", ne c'est pas?
Non. At least, not always. One counterexample is Schrödinger's Cat. The original article you can find at [9]. I tell it slightly loosely. Take an intercontinental rocket, with a small passenger cabin. There is a cat in the cabin, a bomb, a detonator, a detector and a very weak radioactive source, so weak that in expectation value the detector would detect one decay in the double of flight time. If the detector detects, the bomb detonates. However the bomb is too weak to destroy the walls; it can only kill the cat but this cannot be seen from outside.
Question: what will be the outcome of the experiment? Quantum Mechanics is true (we assume), and the decay is a stochastic process.
In the usual interpretation of Quantum Mechanics the wave packet reduces only when Measurement happens. According to Orthodox Quantum Mechanics Measurement happens only when a Mind is involved (e.g. we read a pointer or so.) Now, according to consensus, a cat may have some mind, but not a Mind. (He is not sophont.) Sure, if we repeat the flight a million times, the result will be a dead cat in half a million cases, an alive cat in another half a million. But what will happen during the flight?
Until the rocket does not finish the flight, a human does not open the door, and does not observe the cat, no Measurement can happen. So the cat is in superposed state. For simplicity let us say that the cat has two possible eigenstates: one alive, one dead. Then at the very beginning the weight of the wave function component of the dead cat is 0%. Then this weight is growing linearly with time, and just before opening the door it is as high as 50%.
But an alive cat does macroscopically differ from a dead cat in pieces because of the detonation. So macroscopically different realities may exist simultaneously for a while.
There remain some ambiguities there. But that is another Chapter.
4. WHAT IS REALLY A MEASUREMENT?
There is an alternative of Minds Measuring; but even now Orthodox QM (of Copenhagen School) is more accepted. The alternative is that there are par excellence macroscopic objects, and QM is not valid for macro objects. For the very first trials let us go to 1952. Then Dialectal Materialism (the philosophical branch of Stalinism) was fighting with Quantum Mechanics and Relativity, as idealistic sciences.
True, Mind as reducing the wave packet is quite strange even for me, while it would be natural for Plato. But what was suggested instead was definitely (although not trivially)wrong. You can find a review in [10]; see citations therein too. Maybe the first quantitative formalism came from Jánossy, an excellent experimental physicist. His idea was quite within familiar Physics, saying: the linearity of Schrödinger's equation is surely only a first approximation. You could expect nonlinear terms, and via them Nature herself prevents a wave function to develop macroscopically different positions. Maybe Nature interacts from time to time with the proton, measures its size and reduces it if the spread of positions is too big [11]. Note: natural laws do this, not a Mind, so this is a "materialistic QM". (Albeit it is hard to distinguish it from Berkeley's God repeatedly Observing the world and so maintaining it [12].)
There was a definite experimental proposition in 1971, the measurement was happening until 1978, but then Jánossy died, so the evaluation waited until 1990 (!). The result is that Nature does not work in this way. You can read in [10] why not; I continue.
However, maybe not the size must be big to be macroscopic. Maybe Gravity would reduce the wave packet. The Holy Spirit prefers Hungarians in this business, so they like such theories. First Károlyházy built up such an almost complete theory [13] in 1974. In this theory Space-Time itself appears in infinite number of copies. Also on the different space-times different realities are developing; then comes a reduction, then again different histories and so on. Only: tricky tricks would be needed for really different realities, because the reduction is generally too fast.
We believe that some formulae of [13] are improper [14], [15] and that this fact can be observed easily (e.g. lead walls do not radiate lethal UV & X-rays [16], [17]), but our suggestion also led to simultaneous alternative realities. Alternative realities are rather persistent in Quantum Mechanics.
But let us forget Gravity as Measuring for a moment; the majority does not accept this (I do not know, why). Then the only possibility is: Measurements (by humans? by Minds?) from time to time, and developing superpositions (mixing different realities?) in between.
5. BUT WHAT HAPPENS AT MEASUREMENT?
Quantum Mechanics was rigorously made in 1925-26 by Heisenberg and Schrödinger, but it was clear that the Schrödinger equation described the evolution only when nobody Measures the actual situation. Nobody knew what would happen during Measurement; not even how to describe it. In 1932 at least the second question was answered.
Neumann János (for non-Magyars: John von Neumann) was a mathematician and a genius. Wigner Jenô (for non-Magyars: Eugene Wigner) was a physicist and another genius, later with Nobel Prize. (Mathematicians cannot get it, because, according to rumours, Nobel's fiancée eloped with a mathematician). Still Wigner was sure that there is a sequence. A dog awake is as logical as Wigner in dreaming; Wigner awake is equivalent with Neumann dreaming; and nobody is comparable with Neumann awake.
Now, cca. in 1931 Neumann participated at a physics conference and heard about the problem of Measurement. He asked about what is the mathematical problem. (Obviously he was not interested in the physical one.) The physicists told him that they cannot even describe the process. Sure, he told, some axioms should be formulated.
Now, most physicists cannot make axioms. That is a special skill; a lot of mathematicians can make nice axioms but outside of mathematics they do not know what should be in the axioms. Remember the Axiom of Parallels of Euclid. He stated it in the way: if 2 straight lines intersect each other, then both intersect with a third one. Then the sum of the two angles on the same side of the third may be 2 right angles, or greater or smaller. And the two original lines intersect on that side where the sum is smaller than the 2 right angles. (So if it is just 2 right angles, they do not intersect at all.) First, a non-mathematician might tell lot of things about parallels, but surely would not build up geometry in this specific form. Second, Euclid was successful and without competitors for two millenia. Third, in 1832 Bolyai shew an alternative [18]: you may use this axiom and then you get the Euclidean geometry, or you may use another leading to hyperbolic geometry; you must measure a lot to see which one is the True Geometry. Fourth: then came Riemann and showed that still another geometry is possible, the spherical. And then you may read Aristotle of Stageira [19] where it is explicitly written (although loosely formulated) the possibility of spherical geometry. The end is Einstein who tells us that the local geometry depends on the distribution of masses, energy, momenta and stresses in space. So really, a physicist should first measure the properties of straight lines, then the mathematician could make immediately the good axioms [20].
So the physicists, mostly Szilárd Leó (look, this is easy even for non-Hungarians: Leo Szilard) told Neumann their guesses what should the mathematics of the Measurement process obey. After some time he told he understood; and would make the mathematical formalism for a large enough bar of chocolate. You can find the formalism in [21].
I told this story to show for non-physicists that Neumann did not prove anything about Measurement; also he did not discover anything about it. He formulated the physicists' expectation; and in fact it WORKED. Meaning that it gave for many decimals the observed wavelengths, radiation intensities and such.
Now, Neumann's recipe is as follows. We are going to measure one quantity of a quantum system, say, energy E of a hydrogen atom. Then we need an apparatus measuring energy. Say, we have it. It must be, of course, macroscopic. It interacts with the atom, and (we do not yet know how) reduces its wave function. After the measurement and reduction the wave function evolves again, from the reduced state.
We know the wave function just before Measurement (being the solution of the Schrödinger equation). We do not know how the reduction happens (and Neumann was not even interested). But can we tell at least, what will be the result of the measurement?
Yes, told Neumann. You will be happy with the following recipe. (It will give the observed spectra of atoms &c.) The reduced state will be one of the eigenstates of the operator of the quantity to be measured, now of the Hamilton operator H. (This is fully understandable for physicists as Sir Béla of Eastmarch or me.) The set of these eigenfunctions of eigenstates is complete, so any wave function can be combined from them. The combination coefficients are complex numbers. The sum of the squared absolute values (called weights) of these coefficients is 1. Then the weight of the nth eigenstate, pn, is the probability that the reduction ends in the nth eigenfunction; and during that reduction process we measure En for the energy where En is the eigenvalue of H, belonging to the nth eigenstate. It is simple enough. But you may understand now why it needed a mathematician to formulate.
6. EVERETT'S MANY WORLDS
In the above scenario different realities can develop until Measurement; after Measurement all but one vanish, that one will be Reality, and then again alternative ones may develop. It is impossible to predict which one will survive, but it is possible to predict the probabilities. And if a state has vanished in a Measurement, it has vanished forever. And then came Everett.
Hugh Everett III in 1957 gave another recipe for Measurement; so far as good as Neumann's (I mean, nobody was able up to now to plan a realistic experiment to detect the difference in measuring anything; optimists predict the possibility at 2050). I will not go into details; if you are not a physicist, you do not really need it. But in the Everett scheme the Mind measures; and splits. So Measurement happens when Mind is involved, say in Measuring energy E. Now Hugh may measure E1, E2, &c. But then Hugh's Mind splits. There will be a Hugh1 who just now has measured E1, a Hugh2 who did E2 and so. All Hughs go forward, but they will not disturb each other (anymore? until 2050 AD?). And at the next Measurement even Hugh1 will split.
Was Everett crazy? I do not think so. Later he went to business and became a multimillionaire. Some good physicists, including Hawking, Gell-Mann and Feynman, are reported to believe that his interpretation is good. As I told, today no measurement can distinguish; and then everything is simply philosophy (until 2050?).
Where are the other worlds? Just here. We do not disturb each other. And so on. You can see the important part of the Ph.D. theses in [22] and the theses themselves in [23]. This is a quite legal physical theory.
And now we can return to Poul Anderson. Namely, all of our decisions are quantum reductions of wave functions in our brains/dorsal chords. And if Everett is right, all consequences of all possible past decisions are somewhere here.
7. JASON PHILIPPOU AND BÉLA, VOIVODE OF DAKOTY
In Eutopia a Greek social science researcher, Jason Philippou, uses the parachronion, and from Eutopia (Good Place in Greek) goes to something else, without moving in space-time. So on the shore of Pentalimne, the 5 seas in the Northern New World, from the city of Lykopolis he turns over to Ernvik, capitol of the Danish chief of Norland, Ottar. He had previously another such excursion but then he got to Duluth in America. (Hence we can see that in this previous journey through realities he found a reality similar to ours, meaning that in which I am writing this study. Is ours really very probable, so that its near similes occupy many realities? If not, why did he meet one for the first trial?) But how did the reality evolve where the Western continent is Eutopia, and that where it is Westfall?
It is told in the story. The parachronion, the machine by which one can go into another reality, has been invented in Eutopia. Eutopia is a Greek continent. The history was the same as ours (?; my ancestors were still at the Ural or East of) until 323 BC. But then in our history young Alexander the Great laid on his deathbed in Babylon. Deliberate poisoning? Too much wine? Lead from the drinking cup? We do not remember; each possibility was very much discussed during the millenia. The physicians produced one or two partial recoveries, but then he would die, his subleaders would make a long succession struggle. The Greek culture would come out as winner and owner of half Eurasia; but weak. As Jason Philippou tells in his own reality about ours and of Ernvik of Westfall: "A convulsed Mediterranean world was swept us piecemeal by the Romans: cold, cruel, uncreative... A heretical Jewish prophet founded a mystery cult ... that cult knew not the name of tolerance ..." And so on.
But what if Alexander recovers and then drinks less? In OTL see [6] from p. 441. In Eutopia’s TL his teacher Aristotle can then remain head of the Lyceum. Aristotle’s followers develop High Science. 300 years after Aristotle's death some Greeks find the way to the Western continent and leave "...behind the hatreds and horrors of Europe."
But now Jason Philippou is in another reality. Those history was more or less the same as that of those ending in America and us for cca. 1000 years after the early death of Alexander. But then the Moslims won at Poitiers. "Christendom fell before the onslaught of Arab, Viking and Magyar." Then Arabs had the internecine Omayyad/Abbasid civil war. After some more 300 years Danish Vikings crossed the Ocean. (Look: in OTL Icelandic Vikings did it in the same time.)
And now Jason flees South from Ernvik. After 36 hour travel (partly walking) he crosses the Norland/Dakoty border. The first farmer he meets is a Magyar called Árpád, son of Kálmán. But the second is an autochton, called Red Horse. There are also Turks in Dakoty. And the Voivode is Béla, son of Zsolt. The capitol is Várady.
I am checking not the story (not living in the Eutopia reality) but self-consistency. That is surprisingly good.
Why are Magyars along the Mississippi? They crossed on Danish ships from Hungary; maybe with some Turks.
Why is the country called Dakoty? What else? Dakoty is the original local name (cca. Dakota=Alliance), just as Hungary was Hungary some 100 years before the Magyar conquest. (Look at the donation of Emperor Louis of Eastern Frankony in May 8, 860 where he gives lands to the famous Mattsee Abbey. The Eastern border of the lands is the "Uuangariorum Marcha" [24], the March of Wangars/Onogurs/Hungarians, when Magyars are still East of Hungary.)
What about the names? Now, Árpád & Zsolt are known as names of early Magyar chiefs in Hungary; Árpád especially was the Conqueror. But it is also important that Árpád may mean either "Abundant in barley" if we explain it through Turk, or "Defender of the Throne" through Persian. Zsolt=Zoltán, and you may know the second from the Turkish Sultan="Ruler". Béla and Kálmán are known for us as names of Hungarian Kings. And Béla is not a Christian name; it is strictly Magyar; "bél"="gut, interior". It denotes the Inside. Maybe the inside soul. And the capitol. "Vár=fortress". Várad means a place having a fortress.
What about titles? But in this reality Magyars could not adopt Kingship. In the "America" reality Kingship started in Hungary in 1000 with Stephen I, before conversion Vajk; and there is no conversion now. No Kings. We know that before the Kingdom Magyars had "voivodes". The word is Slavic; and still Constantine Porphyrogenetos, East Roman Emperor, cites this, and "vajda" is a Magyar word meaning a smaller chief. Of course, it is possible that the Byzantian Emperor simply used a Serbian mirror translation of the Magyar title "hadnagy" (c. "the head of the army", in 2003 only "lieautenant"); we do not know. Serbs were the border guards of Byzance.
I cannot catch Anderson in Eutopia. He is conform with his theory and does not make errors about Magyar history/traditions either.
8. THE WORLD OF ANGLO-SAXON PURISTS
The short story Uncleftish Beholdings is a short popularizing text about structure of matter, periodic table, atomic nucleus, proton, neutron, electron, photon & neutrino. However it is without Latin word roots, either scientific Latin or everyday Norman. In the very short Introduction Anderson tells that "The history leading up to it is conjectural, though pretty clearly the Norman Conquest of England never happened." Sorry; I am quite sure the Norman Conquest must have happened in this history.
First the general scientific level. Transurans are mentioned definitely beyond 94Pu (plutonium=helstuff; Pluto is the ruler of Hell, discovered in our reality around 1940). Chain reaction of U235 (ymirstuff-235) is mentioned, and H®He fusion too. Again, this is beyond our level in 1940.
Now consider an England without Normans. Development would have been slower, because Normans imported ways of well developed French society. In OTL England had an outstanding scientific role in the XIXth century. Either in the other TL Science now would be much behind ours (I guess it is behind us by 30 years but not more), or some other nations would have substituted England, but then the impact of the other, scientifically developed, language should be seen on Englishin such a topics. But we see a pure Germanic text. Not even OTL Icelandic is so pure. OK, Old English used quite few Latin loanwords only. But in this text "purity" goes to extremes.
Electron is bernstonebit. Proton is firstbit. Lithium is stonestuff. Rubidium is redstuff. Caesium is bluegraystuff. They are mirror translations from Greek/Latin! Silicon is flintstuff.
With proper honour to Anderson, this is not an England without Normans. This is an England refusing even international terminology. Magyar language had such a movement at the beginning of XIXth century. German philosopher Herder wrote some essay guessing that Magyar language would be extinct in some centuries and then every Hungarian would speak Slavic (surely Slovakian). Magyars wanted to prevent this, so eliminated lots of Latin roots. It was partially successful, even some chemists produced Magyar names for all elements; but that did not succeed. Now oxygen=oxigén, while the "pure Magyar" name tried to be "éleny" from "él"="live", i.e. "a stuff necessary for life".
No. Surely the document has come from a reality where Normans took England, but later England wanted to emphasize her distinctness. After the French wars when Normandy was lost? In Reformation? In a half-lost Napoleonic War? I do not have enough data to decide now. But the inner consistency is OK.
9. VICTORIOUS SENNACHERIB
The House of Sorrows tells a contemporary story of revolt, international politics and scholarship at the Southern shore of the Mediterranean, a provincial capitol called Mirzabad (The City of the Lord)of the big and weak Persian Empire. Calendar data are not given; but we are at 1500 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, as in 1976 in OTL. But still the Visigothic Kingdom is in existence, at the North of them there are Franks. Danes on the North of them, and also in the Western continent. But again (remember Eutopia) Magyars and Turks are as well. To the East of Francony, German tribal states (but strong), such as Saxony, and cities of familiar name as Hamburg. On the East the Knyaz of Russia, who is, however, co-religionist with Turks, so Buddhist. Visigoths and Danes are Mithraists, but Saxons are pagan. The general technical level is not higher than in our mid-XVIIIth century. Already oceanic shipping is global.
OK; this is a reality where King Sennacherib of Assyria took Jerusalem in 52 Ab Urbe Condita (I cannot say 701 BC in this reality). So no Israel and no Juda. So no Jesus. The closest analogue of Christianity, Mithraism wins in the Roman Empire. Then "again" the Migration destroys the Western Roman Empire and not the Eastern one, just as in our reality. The last of the migration is again the Magyars. Without Christianity there is again no Medieval Empire; Vikings & Magyars again win the "adventures" (a mirror translation of the official Hungarian expression in OTL), and I think Magyars again took Danish ships to the Western continent.
It is interesting that even we in OTL do not know the reason for Sennacherib's withdrawal. Maybe a revolt at home, but even the Bible is rather obscure about. Of course, the hand of God. But how?
I think in lots of Everett's realities Sennacherib was victorious. In such a reality the Visigothic Kingdom may survive until 2000, in the lack of an Islamic Conquest, but abstract science develops slower. Monotheism helped a lot in recognising strict natural rules.
10. IRON AND MAGIC
Here I start to discuss the remaining books in one Chapter and shall finish with 5. The common feature is the presence of Magic. Three Hearts and Three Lions is full with magic, in Merman's Children half-humans are central, but in that story the history (except for the half-humans) is so Orthodox that I do not know if it belongs at all to Alternative Realities. (Croatian & Hungarian histories are exactly as in OTL.) In Midsummer Tempest half-humans and magic help King Charles I and the Merry Old England against Cromwell's Puritans, while industry is definitely higher in 1648 than in OTL (there are even a few railways). Midsummer Tempest also has an extensive Old Phoenix inset, which connects it both with Three Hearts and Three Lions and with the Operations universe (via Holger Carlson on one hand and Valeria Matuchek on the other), but with this aspect we can wait. The Valor of Cappen Varra, The Lady of the Winds and Fairy Gold universe is much farther from OTL; farther even than The House of Sorrows. While in these 3 Europe is still recognizable (after a fashion; e.g. Northmen are present), even Classical Antiquity did not happen. Still Fairy Gold ends with a migration across the Ocean in a manner half Viking half English. And
However the most important feature is Magic vs. Iron. Here I am in a very strange situation, but try to understand it valiantly.
Not the Magic is the strangest for me, but the Indo-European tradition about Iron. The coherent and all-pervasive idea in these books is that Iron (or Steel) kills magic and leads to "materialism". We must go over these books, because the idea will be central for the physics of Operation Chaos and Operation Luna. And I know similar ideas from lots of Western European books.
It is strange for me. In Magyar/Hungarian mythology (I mean, pre-Christian one) blacksmiths do have superhuman mental/religious strength. Among Turkish the title of Tarkhans (in Mongolian Darhan) mean simultaneously Smith, Duke and Military Leader. The great revolt of Turks in the Altai Mountain against the Avars was lead by a Grey Wolf (Boz Kurt) and by a Smith. For a Magyar Iron would seem more magical than mere Copper or Flint. But Poul Anderson works according to his traditions.
So the idea is: Magic in itself would exist and work. Except that in the massive presence of Iron something disturbs Magic. Fairies exist but are very much disturbed by Iron both in Fairy Gold and in Three Hearts and Three Lions ; Operations will give the theoretical explanation that geomagnetism disturbs and ferromagnetism shields the necessary rheatic forces; see later.) OK; for a physicist this is not impossible. It is, of course, quite improbable for scientists of OTL, but for a particle physical analogy see App. A.) A good check would be to make magic on Moon, far from iron, cobalt and nickel. (Be careful; merpeople in Merman's Children and dwarves in Operation Luna are insensitive of Iron; they are quite "material"). Look also the problems of Iron for Beings of "Half-World" in Fairy Gold.
Now before 1000 BC iron objects were exceptional and nothing disturbed Magic but geomagnetism. In Classical Antiquity Iron was an everyday article but still not abundant, except at battlefields and agricultural sites. Iron became all-pervasive in Middle Ages, so when Science was ready to increase tremendously (see e.g. the foundation of Royal Society in OTL, Operations and, I guess, in Midsummer Tempest's one), Iron made already impossible to recognize magical laws of Nature. So we believed them not to exist.
My opinion is that this is an Indo-Gemanic superstition and pseudoscience. But in Anderson's theory it is fair to check only self-consistency.
11. EINSTEIN & PLANCK
And now we have reached the most critical reality: that of Operation Chaos and Operation Luna. Even at the beginning of the Chapter I declare that I simply does not believe in the declared History of Physics of XXth century in that reality. You will see, why.
In these 2 books the heroes somewhat travel between Universes. In Operation Chaos there is a travel to the Low Continuum, which is peculiar thermodynamically and corresponds to Hell; to bring back baby Valeria Matuchek. In Operation Luna Virginia Matuchek, her mother, witch and advisor, must enter the Universe of Norse mythology to solve income tax problems. However these travels, be as colourful as they are, are only excursions. Poul Anderson treats a fundamental problem of interreality travels, the balance equations for energy, momentum, entropy &c. as seriously as it is expected from a physicist. Also I do not want to comment some notes about the Bolyai vs. Lobachevskiy competition.
In Operation Chaos Magic works. XIXth century natural sciences seem to lose some importance compared to OTL. But we are explained. At the beginning of the century somebody discovered "how to degauss iron". So from that time Magic could work also in a world of modern technology. Now Magic also has its strict laws and cannot overwrite Physics or Chemistry. I mention here only one example. US Army applies basiliscs for petrifying the enemy. Captain Matuchek tells that they are ineffective weapons, e.g. because the handler is in radiation danger. Why? Because the basilisc is petrifying by converting C into Si. (Stone is mainly SiO2 and MgO.) The basilisc can do this, but then the enemy will emit a lot of radiation. Now this is told in a rather cavalier way, as one would expect from an Army Captain enlisted from movies, but the problem is real. I write it down here. The basilisc probably induces cold fusion; as we in OTL know quite well, without Magic cold fusion does not go. But what fuses? Living matter is C, N, O and H for 99%. Now, interestingly enough, cold fusion of 2 C-12 nuclei gives an Mg-24, which is stable (This is unexpected indeed. In nuclear physics it is well known that the N/Z ratio of stable isotopes increases with Z; the reason is the short range of nuclear forces. You would need free neutrons; but whence? But in this particular case we are fortunate.) Also C-12 and O-16 gives Si-28, again stable. But what can the basilisc do with N and H? C-12 + N-14 gives Al-26, radioactive. And H does not contain neutrons, so by adding the proton to any of the 3 other nuclei, the result is a quite radioactive isotope. Physics cannot be invalidated.
So Nature vs. Paranature is not the matter of rational vs. miraculous, but simply evolution of Science took another direction in the TL of Operations, called henceforth ATL (A as Alternative.)
The disturbing statements are in Operation Luna. That book gives extensive discussions of new science, distinguishing 2 disjoint branches of New Science: goetics and rheatics.
For my opinion the two most important texts are as follows. First, in Chapter 5, a dialogue of Will Graylock, astronomer and Steve Matuchek, werewolf and engineer, about Realities and especially about History of Physics in XIXth and XXth centuries. Matuchek's words will be in italics. Omissions are shown by [...]. Citation starts.
I've often speculated. What if James Watt, say, had never lived? And there are countless Earths where he didn't.
[...]
By then the Industrial Revolution was inevitable -under way in fact, with primitive steam engines pumping water out of mines [...] Carnot's work on thermodynamics and Maxwell's analysis of how a governor operates made the really big difference. Though you also have to count in Faraday and Kelvin and Hertz and...a long list.
[...]
What I'm thinking of are worlds that are almost like this. [...] Oh, suppose -and there must be worlds where it went this way- suppose Einstein and Planck did not get together in 1901. They could have tried to explain the paradoxical findings of the late nineteenth-century physics separately. Instead of rheatics, we might have gotten distinct theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, hard to reconcile. Or suppose Moseley, a few years later, had not applied the new equations in his laboratory, had not discovered he could degauss the effects of cold iron and release the goetic forces- [...]
End of citation.
The second key text is in Chapter 13, some comments to a National Geographic farseer (or, if mirror-translated, television) program about elves, unicorns and such in Stone Ages. It gives a history of decline of proto-goetics since Bronze Age (first god-kings suppress magicians), and then comes Iron. The text definitely tells that Magic was proto-goetics, which is obviously true, and then comes an important statement:
"-the Iron Age, ferrous materials spreading across the planet, ferromagnetism canceling rheatic forces that natural magnetism had always kept unstable at best..."
And then, with fundamental information collected, we may start with the History of Physics in the Universe of Operation Chaos and Operation Luna. It will be nontrivial.
12. GOETICS AND RHEATICS
We are confronted with 2 scientific disciplines, goetics and rheatics. But goetics is simply a specific scientific form of old, intuitive, magic. Goetics exists in OTL too, but does not work. (Or, supporters would tell that only for exceptional people and even for them not always.) There is a story that during Cromwell, illegal proto-Royal Society, including I. Newton tried to call demons according to rules, but the experiment gave an utterly negative result. So we know what goetics is. Also, from the citations above, we know that rheatic forces are behind goetics, geomagnetism disturbed these forces and ferromagnetism suppressed them, until Moseley degaussed the effects of cold iron. He was able to do it by using the equations of the new discipline, rheatics.
So, clearly, Goetics is an applied science, similar to engineering. The fundamental physics behind is rheatics. And it is also clear that Rheatics is a unified theory. Two of its different aspects seem to us in OTL as relativity theory (surely, the Special Theory, arguments in due course) and Quantum Mechanics.
Obviously the average scientific level of Operation Luna's society is comparable to ours. First manned/womanned Lunar landing is 1969 in OTL, 1965 in ATL. We gained something following our history, while lost goetics (we can guess what because lots of unreliable rumours exist about goetics) and other rheatical consequences. Can we at least guess what we lost because rheatics is not yet known in our OTL?
The task is hard. First, because we do not know the theory; second, because there is no guaranty that rheatics exists at all (being the only source a novel). Still, I think we have lots of information to give at least a partial answer.
13. ON UNIFIED THEORIES
From the cited speech of Will Graylock we see that in ATL rheatics was the result of the common work of Max Planck and Albert Einstein in a few years starting with 1901. If they could not work together, they must have explained the existing anomalies separately, leading to separate Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics, while together they got Rheatics. Rheatics predicts effects unknown either in Relativity or in Quantum Mechanics; goetics uses rheatic effects, and Moseley in 1908 (or 1910?) degaussed cold iron by applying rheatics.
Now, what is my opinion about this History of Science in the Alternative Reality? I have serious doubts. True, Unified Theories always explain or predict such effects which are unknown in the separate theories. Also, mutual work in Relativity and Quantum Theory would have been highly beneficial. But now in OTL we have a unification of Relativity and Quantum Physics and still goetics does not work! But it is better to go step by step. Of course in our Reality; and especially see App. F for OTL Moseley
Let us go back to Eddington, at the beginning of 30’s [25]. He formulated a program called "elimination of Henry I". Namely, the yard was defined via the armlength of Henry I, but fundamental formulae of physics must not contain bodily sizes of Henry I. At the final understanding, says Eddington and I agree, the Laws must be in dimensionless forms, because only these forms are invariant.
He collected 7 constants, which he believed to be important and fundamental: velocity of light c, Planck constant of Quantum Physics h, constant of Gravity G, proton mass M, electron mass m, elementary charge e and cosmological constant L. Let us ignore the last because even now we do not know its exact value. In recent years Rees, father of Anthropic Principle, believes that our World is determined by cca. 6 constants [26].
Eddington then observed that two ratios give not too big numbers, which he believed to have explained. These are:
where ? stands for decimals not known in that time. Now we know that his explanations were false, but I read 5 dimensional explanation for (2) which gives all the known decimals.
Now, according to Eddington, it is meaningless to ask, why 3 constants have just the value they have; they simply set the scales. However, the first 3 defines the mass scale as
Unfortunately M/m ~ 10-39/2, and it is hard to imagine a fundamental formula giving a number in the order of 10-39/2. Or is it? He observed that the proton number in the visible Universe is cca. 1078, that is (m/M)~N-1/4! Maybe these facts come from each other.
And for the last step he observed that 2256 is between 1077 and 1078. But 256=28, and 8 = 23. So, he told, he already almost understood the Laws of Nature.
Now, either there is something behind this, or this is Number Magic. We do not know. But then look; let us continue Eddington’s line of thinking in 2003 as follows.
At the previous turn of century some anomalies existed in Physics (told Lord Kelvin in OTL in 1900 [27], and told in ATL Dr. Graylock about 1964), they became solved somehow, and in cca. 1905 in OTL we had 3 and exactly 3 universal theories (which govern all particles and all processes): Gravity, discovered as a theory by Newton in, say, 1687, Relativity discovered by Einstein in 1905, and Quantization (Planck 1900 and Einstein 1905; Quantum Mechanics needed some more 20 years to be complete and nice). But any 2 of these theories mutually were incompatible!
Let us see a single example. In Relativity light velocity c is a limiting velocity, you cannot accelerate beyond. On the other hand there is an uncertainty principle in Quantum Mechanics; you cannot have "sharp" states simultaneously for 2 quantities with non-null commutators. E.g. place x and momentum p are such. But in QM p=mv. So in a small enough box a particle would have some probability for states v>c too. If the box is smaller than 10-13 cm, this would happens. So it is not enough to know 3 nice theories independently for Gravity, Relativity and Quantization. Since all of them are regarded as universal, influencing all particles, situations &c., at least 3 mutually consistent theories could be needed, inconsistent ones cannot be simultaneously valid. But there is no guaranty to be possible to find three independent and yet consistent theories. However, unifications may succeed. In a logically correct dual unification the two original simpler theories become a more complicated but self-consistent one; and if in addition the new theory is confirmed by observations, we have made a step forward. In this moment some physicists have the goal of Trial Unification (do not confuse with Grand Unification), so far without success.
But what is the position of Ferromagnetism in this scheme? I can give an approximate answer; however I emphasize that this is the OTL answer. Although the physical Laws are the same in OTL and ATL, it is not sure that we know the true Law. However we do have an OTL answer. I give it here in a few sentences, and then you may consult with App. G too.
Ferromagnetism is a phenomenon connected with parallel ordering of atomic magnetic momenta. These magnetic momenta can be connected with both orbital angular momenta and spins as well; but spins are better for ferromagnetism. Spins on a non-closed atomic shell tend to be rather parallel; and by words this is so, because parallel electrons must take different spatial configurations (the Pauli principle of exclusion), and between two different spatial configurations electrostatic repulsion is smaller than between 2 identical ones. So the atomic magnetism is completely explained in Quantum Mechanics (a pure h theory); for metallic state (ferromagnetism of iron appears there) still some Solid State Physics is needed too. So Ferromagnetism is not a phenomenon explained from a Unified Theory (say, h+c).
Except that the magnetic moment coming from the electron spin is the Bohr-magneton eh/2mc. Why is here c? But I can eliminate c. Write: e2/hc=a, where we do know the value of a: it is 1/137.036. Then the Bohr-magneton is ah2/2me. Is c in the magnetic moment connected with the electron spin, or is not?
Briefly: we do not need Relativity to explain atomic magnetic moments if the connection of electron spin and its magnetic moment is simply accepted. But in OTL Physics this latter was explained in "Relativistic Quantum Mechanics" of Dirac; this theory was not closed, and so the connection got its final form in (h+c) Quantum Field Theory. And even there e and m are rather unexplained. Now which is the proper level of the explanation of Ferromagnetism?
The next Chapter will be a brief History of Physics from cca. 1875; in OTL.
14. THE PHYSICS OF OUR XXTH CENTURY
Gravity was known to be universal from Newton’s time. Everything is source of Gravity and Gravity acts on everything. In addition, Bessel shew in 1841 that everything falls with the same acceleration, at least for 4 digits. In 1890 Eötvös was at 6 digits, in 1908 at 8. So Gravity is fundamental and universal; in principle we must take it into consideration in any situation. (In practice often its effect is small.) Electric attraction/repulsion is not universal: neutral test particles do not feel it, particles with small e/m ratio accelerate only weakly, and so. G = 6.67*10-8 cm3/gs2 is really a universal constant.
Since Römer (1675) the velocity of the light c (3.00*1010 cm/s) was known but was not regarded as universal. But in the middle of XIXth century, by the studies of Maxwell and Hertz, it turned out to be very important in electrodynamics. Light, heat radiation, radio waves &c. are all electromagnetic waves propagating with c in vacuo.
Then physicists became confronted with the problem of blackbody radiation. You heat up a closed piece of vacuum (technical problems are trivial), and it emits a unique radiation, whose characteristics, however, depend on temperature T of the vacuum, so of the Nothing. The spectrum was fairly well measured in 1896, and very well in 1900. At small frequencies n it is a power function, at high frequencies roughly a decreasing exponential. But what is the theory behind?
It was easy enough to explain the power function. For simplicity put the vacuum into a metal cube. Metal is a good conductor, so its surface must be equipotential for electromagnetism. This restricts the oscillations to such which do not oscillate at the surface of the metal. Then only special oscillations can happen. For higher frequencies wavelengths are smaller (l=c/n), and more oscillations fit into the cube. Hence you get exactly the observed power function. However you get nothing for the high-frequency end.
Then came Wien in 1896 [28]. He saw an exponential, so multiplied the power with an exponential, determined the coefficient from the experiments and could calculate peak frequency, total intensity and all. Only, the shape of the curve was not good. It was not very bad; but differed from observations.
There was another problem, not recognized just then. When determining the low-frequency limit, the theory gave a result which contained size L, temperature T and light velocity c, besides n. This is OK, L and T are the data of the specific circumstances, and in an electromagnetic radiation you may expect c, constant of electromagnetism. But at the opposite end appeared another constant. That is certainly not a constant characteristic to electromagnetism. But then of what? There is nothing else here than electromagnetic radiation in vacuo so in Nothing! Whose constant appeared there?
So in an article for the turn of New Century in 1900 Lord Kelvin wrote: almost everything is OK in physics, only two small clouds remained on the clear sky. The task is to dissolve the last 2 cloudlets [27]. One of the cloudlets was the problem of the blackbody radiation. While this journal was printed, Planck made something with this cloudlet [29]; but it became bigger.
What would have been a good story anyway is now a demonstration of big historical accidents. Let us make a brief recapitulation; however step by step.
In 1900 Max Planck may have been world’s best expert of thermodynamics. In addition he was the secretary of a Berlin scientific body, which is referred in various names in History of Science as German Academy, Berlin Academy, Berlin Physical Society & such.
Sometimes in late summer of 1900 two experimental physicists Kurlbaum & Rubens expressed their wish to Secretary Planck to make a lecture about their very detailed measurements about the shape of blackbody spectrum. Planck studied his papers and concluded that the Oct. 19 occasion is free, so he suggested that. Kurlbaum & Rubens accepted.
However Planck was just working on the thermodynamics of blackbody radiation. So he told: gentlemen, after your nice experimental lecture I shall elucidate some theoretical points of the problem. Kurlbaum & Rubens were happy, so the announcement appeared as two lectures about blackbody radiation on Oct. 19: Kurlbaum & Rubens (detailed measurements) and Planck (theory). The next paragraph is my own reconstruction, but I read Planck’s text, so the situation is clear enough.
Of course there was no big problem with the Kurlbaum & Rubens lecture. There were measurements; diafilms were made about the apparatus, measured diagrams and such. However at some time before Oct. 19 Planck recognized that he could not yet derive a formula for the spectral intensity distribution. (No surprise: the problem about the high-frequency tail, which I mentioned above.) But his theoretical lecture was announced to Oct. 19. So he made some analyses for the two limits, n®0 and n®¥, and calculated the specific heats of the radiation in both limits. Then he took their harmonic average and integrated back twice to get the radiation’s thermodynamic potential. Hence the intensity distribution could be calculated, giving the formula
and this formula gave a curve which coincided within measurement errors with the Kurlbaum & Rubens measurements! Here k, the Boltzmann constant, is not a new fundamental constant, but simply a conversion factor to make energy from centigrades as meters from feet.
Now obviously a simple averaging of two different approximations is not a theoretical derivation at all. On the other hand the success showed that Planck was near to the solution, but he did not have more time, and, anyway, he did not promise more in the announcement than theoretical comments. The lectures happened on Oct. 19, 1900, without starting a New Age of Physics.
But now Planck had unlimited time, started a new analysis, and was successful in less than 2 more months. But first two very important comments.
1) Wien showed in 1896 [28] via detailed thermodynamic & electrodynamic analyses (which I rather would not give here) that I(n) must have the form
Only it was impossible to determine the function f(x) from thermodynamics & electrodynamics. After 107 more years I still state that Wien was right.
2) Now, Planck’s Oct. 19 formula had the Wien form. However, the quantity n/kT is not a dimensionless quantity! In the European scientific cgs system it has the dimension 1/ergsec.
And this is a problem. You cannot form complicated functions of a variable with dimension. Let us take a simple example. Let us assume that the variable x has the value 5 cm. Its square exists. But sin(5 cm) does not exist! To see this, make a simple Taylor expansion; and I write only the first two terms. So sin(x) » x – x3/6 + … But you cannot add up 5 cm and 125/6 cm3!
Power functions were improper for f(n/kT). So Wien’s analysis really meant a function f(hn/kT), where h is a new constant of the blackbody problem, with dimension ergsec, and for order of magnitude h~10-27 erg*s.
But how could a brand new constant appear here? Electrodynamics does not contain h. Why Thermodynamics would contain it? And otherwise, we are in vacuum. Does you think that h is a constant characteristic for the Nothing?
OK, but since Oct. 19, 1900 Planck knew that formula (4) was good. And then he was looking for any Cause. Sometimes between Oct. 19 and Dec. 14 he got the result that eq. (4) is got if one assumes that, for any mysterious reason behind, oscillating physical systems can change their energies only by integer multiples of energy units
So he postulated this, and made the second lecture. Now started Quantum Physics, the physics where the quantities can change only by given quanta. For the people unfamiliar with Physics I manufacture a brief App. B. Our h in the previous argumentations is simply h/2p.
So Quantization appeared as a new physical principle. True, on Dec. 14, 1900 it was not yet a fundamental Law. But one cloudlet of Lord Kelvin was eliminated 17 days before the end of the century, so before Lord Kelvin published his New Century article!
And now comes Einstein. He is just finishing the Technische Hochschule in Zürich, together with his sweetheart Mileva Marity (born at Titel, Hungary) and one of his best friends Marcel Grossmann (born in Budapest, Hungary). The diplome theses of Einstein & Marity were of thermodynamic nature (conduction coefficients & such), but Einstein was very much interested also in the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. (From the extant Einstein-Marity Love Letters it seems that Mileva was not at all; we shall see soon.) Grossmann’s Theses were about Non-Euclidean Geometries. Einstein immediately read Planck’s paper and notified Mileva (in April, 1901). But surely, in OTL Einstein could not go to Planck to work together on the "paradox". This was caused by an "accident"; but also by the normal way of affairs. Einstein’s diplome was quite fresh. Surely Planck would not take him as assistant, until he does not show something nice. Indeed Einstein & Marity started to work in Thermodynamics. (Notes on Eötvös’s Capillarity Law, not on his Equivalence Problem.) But then in middle 1901 it turned out that Mileva Marity was pregnant; and marriage was out of possibility if Einstein did not have a job. So Einstein tried to get any job as teacher in middle schools & such, and did not have the possibility to work unpaid in good professional circles. At autumn it turned out that even teacher’s jobs were unavailable. Mileva went home to Southern Hungary, then produced baby Erzsike (Lizi, Lieserl), who later vanished. End of Act One of New Physics.
Einstein of course did know the second cloudlet of Lord Kelvin, which he wanted to solve via Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. But he did not yet have contacts with established physicists and even his sweetheart was not interested in that anomaly (+ she was in advanced pregnancy).
The second cloudlet on clear sky was the negative result of the Michelson interferometry. A twenty year old problem.
In the Universe everything is moving. New York is rotating around the center of Earth with cca. v=0.35 km/s. But the center of Earth is revolving around Sun with 30 km/s. In the same time Sun goes on his orbit in Milky Way Galaxy with cca. 200 km/s. And the Milky Way Galaxy? Is it orbiting an even greater center, or the galaxies are already independent?
We cannot detect the motions (except for rotations) in mechanical experiments. But optical ones may help. Light is the transversal oscillation of the mysterious Ether. It is mysterious, because it is hard enough for a 300,000 km/s wave velocity, but it does not disturb the motion of planets in it. And: is it sure that light is a wave? Sure, Huyghens measured its wavelength. But Newton was not a noncompos either; and Bradley saw the consequences of Earth's velocity in the apparent position of stars!
So Michelson manufactured a very sensitive interferometer, whose details here will be omitted, otherwise nobody would go forward in the text. Ether is at rest with respect of something (center of Milky Way Galaxy? mass center of far masses of Mach? throne of God Almighty?), and Michelson's interferometry would show the size and direction of the total velocity with respect of Ether if not less than 3 km/s. Considering that she orbits Sun with 30 km/s, such an exact cancellation would be rather improbable.
And still: the interferometers did not show anything. Is Earth at rest in Ether?
That would be rather strange. During 3 centuries we became familiar with the sad situation that Earth is not the center of the Universe. Almost any other explanation would be nicer. Some people preferred the idea that Earth brings with her the nearby Ether. But then turbulences, frictions &c. would appear in Ether, producing viscosity: and nothing disturbs Earth's revolution. Then Lorentz comes with an elegant idea. Assume that moving bodies shrink in the direction of motion to
If this happened, Michelson's interferometer would not measure anything (the effect would just cancel). So, let us accept that this happens; and then we must only explain why.
The task is not hopeless. With purely electromagnetic forces inside solid bodies the shrinking would happen. Of course, the internal forces cannot be purely electromagnetic; but for example in an NaCl crystall at least the attractive force is electrostatic. So maybe we shall understand the Michelson anomaly when we fully understand the structure of solid bodies.
Fortunately Einstein is agnostic enough not to wait quietly for Complete Wisdom. And if Lorentz is right, we cannot measure any true lengths! So he is looking for other explanations and wants to understand the Nature of Luminiferous Ether and the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.
But it is not an easy task for him. He is not exactly alone; but alone enough. The TH Zürich is not a University but an Institute of Technology. And he is not a Swiss; his friends are not there. And to eliminate a major anomaly is not a task for a solitary student. Grossmann is more or less a friend; but a geometer. He is simply uninterested in Luminiferous Ether.
And then Einstein gets a discussion partner. Mileva Marity with a dislocated hip is interested in almost anything. Unfortunately in Luminiferous Ether even she is definitely not interested.
The Einstein-Marity Love Letters [30] are the best available sources about Einstein's ideas between 1898 and 1902. A physicist will not lie to another physicist about Physics if they work together. True, lots of letters have been lost. Still, the letters are snapshots of a permanent collaboration. If none of the pair preserved any hint about something then that probably was not discussed at all.
Look at Letter {8}. Einstein writes to Marity: "I'm convinced more and more that the electrodynamics of moving bodies as it is presented today doesn't correspond to reality"; perhaps Ether should not be used in the description at all. For us, a century later, this seems as a key sentence. What is the reply of Miss Marity?
We do have the reply; that is Letter {9}. A personally warm letter, with a little Thermodynamics. ("Your every letter gives me warm memories of home. Our series of shared experiences..."" And "Can I also ask you to leave your notebook on heat theory with Frau Markwalder ... I want to look up a few things.") Ether is not answered at all. Einstein answers this letter in {10} and mentions an assumption of his about Luminiferous Ether. The next two extant letters were written by Einstein, and they mention Luminiferous Ether. Then the extant Marity letter: no mention of Luminiferous Ether. (It starts with: "Because I like you so much..." and ends as "A thousand kissies from your Dollie." The whole text is in this style.)
It seems that Mileva Marity simply was not interested in Luminiferous Ether at all; she in the same time did like Thermodynamics. DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM. So Einstein is alone in dissolving Lord Kelvin’s second cloudlet.
In January 1903 Einstein marries Marity. In the meantime he works in the Buro of Patents, so he is still alone both at work and at home (at least for Luminiferous Ether); some correspondence with colleagues help but not much. And then comes the annus mirabilis, 1905. Einstein heroically eliminates the whole anomaly of interferometers, motion of Ether and such.
The interferometry experiments prove that it is impossible to measure the absolute velocities. If a quantity cannot be measured in any way then it is not a physical quantity. Physical quantities transform according to Lorentz transformation. And so and so. Read [31].
If you cannot measure absolute velocites, then Lorentz transform is valid for everything, and then the Theory of Relativity is also universal, as Gravity. The constant c also appears everywhere. OK, the available theories of Gravity and Relativity still contradict each other. (Consider, e.g., light falling toward Sun. What happens? Light velocity is just the universal & fundamental constant c. Will the velocity increase? Or cannot light fall? Or what?) So the two universal theories should be unified.
But somewhat earlier Einstein (maybe Einstein & Einstein; it has lots of Thermodynamics) wrote an article about photons. Planck shew in 1900 that oscillating systems can only take or give the energy in hn portions. Planck was the best expert in Thermodynamics. But since 1903 in the Einstein flat two termodynamic experts lived, with continuous discussion. (Even before Mileva always answered letters about Thermodynamics.) And [32] gives strong arguments that these hn energy portions do exist even when they traverse empty space between systems. This was a key article, because, as Planck himself told in Stockholm, taking the Nobel Prize on June 2, 1920, "of course, the introduction of action quantum [into Physics] was not yet a true Quantum Theory". Since this article people explained more and more details of the structure of Matter. (Atomic spectra, specific heat of solid bodies, chemical forces & such, everywhere with the same value of the "elementary action quantum" h.) So in the first 2 decades of the XXth century it is more and more accepted that Quantization is a third universal principle, and h is its fundamental constant.
With this, the trial structure of the Physics of XXth century is ready. 3 fundamental and universal theories, each with its single fundamental constant; each theory seems utterly true, but still they cannot be because they contradict each other. In Middle Ages Averrhoes might work out the idea of Duplex Veritas, but it is now Triplex, and Averrhoes' "solution" might have been proper for Philosophy, it might or might not have been proper for Theology, but it would not have been an admissible answer in Physics at all.
Now, 3 dual unifications would be possible. Although these were also incorrect, again contradicting pairwise, they would be more correct than the original ones, and the trial unification would be much more difficult. So the possibilities:
(h+c): Relativistic Quantum Theory. The very first step was [32], since a photon is par excellence relativistic, moving with c, while it is just one quantum of energy, 2phn.
(G+c): Relativistic Gravitation? Anyway, it would be necessary to treat light propagation near Sun.
(G+h): Quantum Gravity? The theory is logically possible, but what is it; and how to observe anything about it? What gravity can arise from a single quantum?
Relativistic Quantum Theory would indeed have been a proper task for Plack & Einstein; but in OTL they did not collaborate. Interestingly enough, while Planck very much recognised Einstein's works, he remained at the thermodynamic approaches even later. But not even Einstein was too much interested in Relativistic Quantum theory. The unification remains to the next generation. In 1925-26 Schrödinger and Heisenberg have elaborated two alternative forms of the complete formalism of Quantum Mechanics; then Dirac has shown that they are equivalent. These theories were mere, ununited, h Quantum theories. Then Dirac, in 1928, has manufactured the relativistig generalisation of the Schrödinger equation. This was the first detailed (h+c) formalism. Unfortunately Dirac knew that it cannot be correct.
Assume that we start with an electron, moving in the electromagnetic field of a proton, which, for simplicity, is taken to be infinitely heavy and so fixed. If its energy is low, the simple h theory is practically enough. If the energy is higher, relativistic (c) effects are more and more important; that is described by the Dirac equation. However at 2mc2 energy another electron and a positron can appear in the system, so the particle degrees of freedom are not fixed anymore. If I cannot say what is in the system, simple Mechanics cannot be enough.
The new theory/ies is/are called Quantum Field Theory/ies. The first version was published by Dirac in 1927 [33], but sometimes the honour is given to Tomonaga (1946). The theory is developing even now, but with due caution lots of predictions and explanations have been obtained from it, and they definitely seem to be correct. So Relativity and Quantum theory is more or less united, but this Relativity is of course Special Relativity, no Gravity.
Now let us see the unification of Relativity and Gravity. Just after 1905 Einstein started to make it; but not only he. I do not want to write a complete History of Science monograph here, so I mention only 3 names: Einstein, Nordström & Grossmann. First Einstein wanted to see if Gravitation (G) influences the motion of Light (c) and how [34]. Four years later he will not be happy about this article, but will leave unchanged its most definite experimental prediction: a light beam passing Sun just at its surface will be deflected with an angle 2GM/Rc2, i.e. 0.83" [35].
Here he stumbles into a problem which he genially (although not elegantly) jumps over. Imagine a H atom at the surface of Sun. It emits a photon with energy E=hn. The photon goes upward and escapes. But a particle with energy hn has a mass hn/c2, so will lose some energy by gravity, so its frequency at infinity will be
But this is true only if the photon is a particle. OK, for an oscillation he argues with different flows of time up and down. But for the deflection? A particle is falling in gravity, a wave does not. So again, the question could be answered only in the final (G+c+h) theory.
Then Nordström manufactures a (G+c) theory. But it gives wrong value for the perihelium advance of Mercury, so it is refused by the physics community.
And finally Einstein & Einstein return from Prague, Einstein again meets Grossmann after years and tells him that to solve the problem he would need an "absolute calculus" which would not distinguish "inertial" and "accelerating" motions, because Acceleration and Gravity are rather indistinguishable. For his surprise Grossmann tells that the theory of the needed properties does exist and is called Non-Euclidean Geometry. Then Einstein tells: let us learn it; and is rather surprised when his friend tells that he knows the theory.
I am surprised on Einstein's surprise, because in Letter {48} of [30] he himself informed Mileva (waiting for her first baby at home) that Grossmann's Theses will be about Non-Euclidean Geometry. Surely he forgot it in 12 years.
Then they write two articles in 1913 about "verallgemeinerte Relativitätstheorie", which is none other than General (generalised) Relativity. But Grossmann is not interested in physics, so Einstein must finish the work alone, by finding the correct source equations of Gravity. This final work is [36]. The only change of the theory from 1916 to now was the introduction of the cosmologic constant L into the equations in 1920, made by Einstein himself.
No observation is known against General Relativity, so the common opinion is that the (G+c) theory is ready. Only we do know that it cannot be correct, because it does not contain Quantum Physics.
As for (G+h), Quantum Gravity, for a while nothing happened. Then lots of physicists tried to unify (G+c) (General Relativity) with (c+h) (Quantum Field Theory). But, being both unified theories quite complicated, this unification has not succeeded until now.
Now you could try with a theory purely (G+h), we tried between 1987 and 1994, and we were partially successful [14], [15], [16], [17]. The important new feature is that, being the source of Gravity a quantum object, "a second kind of stochastic nature" appears. The first stochastic nature of Quantum Physics comes from Measurement. The Schrödinger equation of Quantum Mechanics is absolutely deterministic; but Measurement is not, so after it the evolution restarts from a stochastically chosen point. But now the Schrödinger equation itself also contains a stochastic term as if World itself would be "fluctuating". Not the fields in World but also "the texture". This "fluctuation" contains, of course, only G and h.
This fluctuation, of course, influences the wave function, and so may cause the collapse, reduction & such of the wave packet as well, either in the way as Jánossy guessed [11], or as Károlyházy did [13], or as Penrose [37]. Surely, the (G+h) theory, when indeed complete, will predict new phenomena and explain old ones. Because the theory is not yet ready, we cannot tell what ones. Still, I tell you one which we could read off the partial formalism.
Take a "grain", so a piece of matter with irrelevant and simple internal structure and no specific shape (dust, colloid grain, pellet &c.). For physical behaviour this grain is characterized by its mass M and size R.
Now the fundamental fluctuation influences the grain through its Schrödinger equation, and the grain can show 3 different types of behaviour according to M and R. Namely:
1) If M3R>>h2/G, then the behaviour is dominantly classical. This is in first approximation a grain whose center of mass moves as Newton said. Quantum behaviour is secondary, the wave function is slowly expanding & such, which we can calculate from the Schrödinger equation until Measurement. The "fundamental fluctuation in the texture of World" is much negligible.
2) If M3R<<h2/G, then we have a genuine quantum particle. We have to use directly the Schrödinger equation for the grain, classical Gravity must be taken into account in the potential term. But again, until Measurement the evolution of state is deterministic.
3) If, however M3R~h2/G, then neither Newtonian, nor Schrödinger treatment is sufficient. While the necessary equations are beyond our ken for a time yet, we do know that stochastic behaviour can be expected even without Measurement [15]. You may try to observe e.g. anomalous Brownian motion or such [10], [38].
Under terrestrial densities Case 3) means cca. M~10-13 g and R~10-5 cm. Now, this range includes colloidal grains, photoemulsion grains, smallest individual living organisms just under bacterial organisation (Rickettsia, mycoplasma & such) and the central part of a neuron. Then you may or may not believe that the lack of complete understanding of Life is connected with the sad fact that the complete Quantum Gravity (G+h) formalism is still unavailable [39]. Also, the old philosophical and physical problems of Free Will are much more difficult and also more hopeful if we recognize that our neurons generating Free Will (or not) are (must be) showing genuine (G+h) effects which we cannot yet describe.
I close this Chapter by recapitulating a result of [10]. There is a phenomenon called spurious scattering observed some 70 years ago by physicists interested in cosmic radiation. Since I cannot expect that the phenomenon would interest anybody, I relegate some sentences to App. C, and here only mention that it appears as a statistically peculiar winding of the particle track in photoemulsion. The reasons were utterly unknown. Now we asked: may it be a (G+h) effect?
The answer has been Yes. Namely, take one characteristic datum of the photoemulsion, e.g. the size of a coherent grain, plus G and h. Hence we can calculate the characteristic length parameter of winding, which is correct, and the characteristic time of the evolution of winding, which may be correct (it is not longer than the duration of the development of the emulsion). Using G+c, or h+c both data would be utterly impossible. Instead of much more arguments note that a stochastic behaviour must always result in winding.
Of course there may also be some strange chemical behaviour of photoemulsions behind. But Quantum Gravity at least predicts the observed order of magnitude, while it surely cannot be General Relativity or Quantum Field Theory effect.
Physics is quite effective even without her proper equations. This is one of the reasons I dare analyse the History of Science in the Reality of Operation Luna.
15. BUT THEN: WHAT IS RHEATICS AND WHO DISCOVERED HER IN ATL?
Operation Luna is definite. After the semantics of the last Chapter it indicates that rheatics is a unified theory made by Planck and Einstein from 1901 in some years; and at its place in timelines where Planck and Einstein could not collaborate would be (Special) Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Now we can answer some questions about the Science of History presented by Will Graylock in Operation Luna about rheatics:
First: About Probability. Realities where Einstein could start to work with Planck may be scarce enough. Assume that Mileva Marity had not been pregnant up to the end of 1901. Improbable (my guess is that she used it to catch Einstein), but of course possible. Still, in 1901 Einstein had one accepted manuscript at Annalen der Physics in a topics in no connection with blackbody radiation (although as Thermodynamics, it might marginally interest Planck), and his own sound but imperfect ideas about Luminiferous Ether and Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies which in OTL did not interest too much Planck even as successful Relativity Theory. (And in 1901 Einstein did not like Planck's approach, see Letter {27} of [30], written on April 10.) Of course a Planck-Marity-Einstein collaboration would have not been impossible; only, I believe, improbable.
Second: if Rheatics of ATL is the unified (c+h) theory, is it the (c+h) theory of OTL? The answer with very high probability is No. For 70 years we measure and measure the predictions of Quantum Field Theories and no rheatic or goetic effects are seen.
Third: Can two unfied theories of Relativity and Quantum Physics be found in ATL? Again, very probably, Not. In OTL we do not know a case for having two different good theories with the same characteristic constants.
Fourth: What if Dr. Graylock lied or was not at his proper mind? This is quite possible. We are told that he was during the events in the constant influence and sometimes control of the goryo of late Princess Tamako. She might try to confuse the Matucheks or was simply unfamiliar with Physics, while Steve Matuchek was an engineer.
Fifth: And then what is Rheatics in ATL, if any? Of course (Classical, Newtonian) Quantum Gravity. In it even dead matter is not necessarily deterministic. Read the classical literature, e.g. [8], [10], [14] and [15]. (Of course, without the complete theory I cannot yet tell how magnetism disturbs some goetic consequences of Rheatics.)
Sixth: And who were the inventors?
I would prefer the collaboration of two for a unification, and in the
previous paragraph I told an argument for (h+G). Then
Planck is excellent for one of the authors; but for the other a more or less
conservative colleague is preferred, with field theoretical and gravity
background. Maybe Mach would be ideal, except that he was not overly
interested in Gravity. Now, my guess is G. Jaumann from Brünn: in OTL
competitor of Einstein both for being Head of Department in Prague and in
Gravitation Theory. (See App. D for details.) You, of course, may tell that you give more chance to E. Mach to collaborate
with M. Planck for Newtonian Quantum Gravity than to G. Jaumann. However I do
have an argument which is somewhat eerie, because its force can be seen only
a united stereoscopical from OTL+ATL viewpoint. Namely the Unified
Theory is called Rheatics in ATL, while Jaumann was one of the founders
of OTL Rheology [40], although the discipline was baptized so only in 1929.
But even then, Rheatics must have a formalism quite different from that of [14] and [15]. Namely, at least the first approach to rheatics must have been ready in ATL at cca. 1908, according to internal chronologies of Operation Chaos and Operation Luna. Now in OTL uncertainty principle was not formulated in 1908, and Quantum Mechanics was not ready until 1925, and this was not an accident. So indeed an involved and inverse logics was needed for the unnamed genius substituting Einstein in the collaboration with Planck.
16. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ATL XXth CENTURY ACCORDING TO AVAILABLE OTL SOURCES
This Chapter is a rather hopeless effort to write ATL history in OTL. Namely, I am not a cross-reality traveller, nor prophet or writer, and I write this well before 2050 AD when we perhaps may measure other Realities. Still we have some scant information about the specific ATL from Anderson's books, mainly from Operation Chaos, Operation Luna & Midsummer Tempest. Also, the history is common up to PoD (cca. 1901? see the Old Phoenix insert of Midsummer Tempest and some remarks of Operation Luna), so OTL 1901 gives initial conditions for later ATL. Finally the Laws of Nature are the same in OTL and ATL (although the recognised Laws may differ).
I do not claim originality in this attempt. Maybe the first person trying with such a parallel history was Dick: in the Man of the High Castle, which is R', somebody writes an alternative history (the book The Grasshopper Lies Heavy), which is similar to our R (albeit, I think, not identical).
In most cases the available ATL sources (Operations & Midsummer Tempest) do not give exact calendrical data. So my year data may be incorrect, but generally I do not believe that with more than cca. 2 years.
Again, do not forget that in this time the only way of check is that of self-consistency. When I use ATL source, I refer it in the following way. Operation Chaos is referred as OC + Chapter N° by Roman. Operation Luna is OL + Chapters numbered by Arabic. Midsummer Tempest has 2 Old Phoenix inserts, but MT2 is so general that I cannot use it. Direct dating is given in boldface; the normal fonts are derivations/explanations. Direct ATL quotations are without quotation marks but in italics; otherwise no italics are used in this Chapter.
First the general layout. ATL XXth century, at least up to 1974, had 2 global Wars, as OTL had too. The first is called Kaiser's War. OL mentions few times this War, and it is clear that USA + Great Britain was on the side of the winners, while Germany was a loser. (After this war Germany became a Republic.) Now, the picture is not at all clear for other participants. It seems as if Austria (or the Dual Monarchy) was a loser (OL 15). It seems also that in ATL USA was a principal participant (OL 36), not as in OTL. I guess that France participated to get back Elsass-Lothringen, and, as a Hungarian, I would have been very surprised if Serbia and Montenegro had not participated. (Unfortunately Operations do not give any information about the fate of my Hungary in ATL.) However Russia's role is unclear; no traces of a communist October revolution can be detected in Operations, for any case; she is a devout Greek Orthodox country. I cannot collect any direct or indirect data for the roles of Italy, Turkey or Japan, either. Still, this War will be called WW I, as in the introduction of OC .
The causes of WW I are rather obscure. OL 5 has a remark By 1900 a general European war was inevitable, however this remark seems no better than the usual OTL commonplaces about WW I. Observe that in OTL Balkan Wars did not start until 1912, WW I started in 1914, and the years between 1900 & 1914 were the best ones in Europe up to 1990. Observe also that extremely peaceful, antimilitary Einstein went to Berlin from Zürich in the spring of 1914! But also, although Valeria Matuchek herself seems to suggest in MT an earlier WWI in ATL than in OTL, this is only marginally possible. For this let us see a key quotation from OL 13 telling about the prologue of Goetic Age: After touching on Planck, Einstein, Moseley, Maskelyne, and the discoveries following these pioneers...
I argued already that Will Greylock's picture in OL 5 cannot be correct. Still, there is no doubt that these 4 players were very important in the Divergene; as well as they were important in OTL. So let us see the initial conditions for ATL; I choose 1901 as PoD, and I do not know any counterevidence.
1865: John Nevil Maskelyne (26 old), magician and inventor, teams up with G. A. Cooke and starts to fight against spiritism.
1873: Maskelyne & Cooke establish their own theatre.
1875: Mileva Marity is born in Titel, Hungary.
1878: Marcel Grossmann is born in Budapest, Hungary.
1879: Albert Einstein is born in Ulm, Germany.
1889: J. N. Maskelyne designs the first British typewriter with differential spacing, gets the patent and the Maskelyne British Typewriter & Manufacturing Co Ltd produces it.
1896: Marity, Grossmann & Einstein start at Technische Hochschule, Zürich.
Dec. 14, 1900: Planck has his second lecture on the Thermodynamics of Blackbody Radiation in Berlin. The Quantum unit h is introduced albeit only for energy transfer. Beginning of New Physics.
-------!PoD!-----
1901: Einstein is being to finish TH Zürich, together with his sweetheart Mileva Marity who is not yet pregnant; they are writing a Thermodynamic article about Eötvös' Law. Moseley is 13 year old. As for Maskelyne, we know 3 possible Maskelynes, father, son & grandson. John Nevil Maskelyne is 61 old, a Magician (Illusionist & Anti-Spiritualist). With G. Cooke he owns Egyptian Hall, making magic performances.
Now, the next 10 years are rather unclear. Obviously fortunate collaborations give a better start to New Physics as in OTL. In the first decade Rheatics is recognised (at least in its early form), and somebody finds out that Goetics can work in the absence of strong magnetic fields (in a Faraday web?).
The exact sequence of discoveries is unknown for us (as some discoveries themselves are unknown as well). However we have the following information:
About 1900 somebody learnt how to avoid harm from swords (obviously via Magic/Goetics) (MT).
In some years goetic transport (mainly broomsticks and carpets) took precedence (OL 5).
In "Belgian Congo" (I think, rather in the Free State of Congo of King Leopold; see below, but the two regimes are often not distinguished) dirty things happen (OL 29).
In some years Moseley applies the equations of Rheatics and degausses cold iron (OL 5).
Now let us try to make an approximate chronology for these events. It is told in OL 5 that natives with Magic/proto-Goetics had a head start when Magic started to work, so they had a better stand against Westerners. In OTL Belgian King Leopold died in 1908 and then Belgium took over in Congo. The atrocities happened mainly before then.
In 1908 H. Moseley is 21 year old. This is absolutely the earliest date to go into research, but 1909 or 1910 would be more convenient.
The goetic ways against swords might have been discovered in laboratory some time before Moseley, and they possibly remained military secret for a time. Note that the German Empire and the Dual Monarchy (together with Italy) had a lot of agreements, mainly military, and New Physics started in Central Europe.
In the first years most individuals do not yet feel the Divergence, so most birth and death data are probably the same as in OTL. I use this for guesses. Also some scientific results may remain the same. These identical sequences are denoted by (*).
Since Moseley cannot be brought back before 1908, Old Technology had the time to start with automobiles (Ford), indeed, some names of types for transport vehicles are common in OTL & ATL. However observe that Bleriot's trans-Channel flight happened in OTL in 1908, and without wholesale degaussing we would expect the same in ATL. While carpets may have taken over after a year or two of early flight trials, this is the reason I try to put Moseley as early as possible. Then, maybe:
1901: Grossmann writes his Theses about Non-Euclidean Spaces. Einstein tries to get a job. Marity is at home, expecting the baby. (*) Planck & X (Jaumann?) start to collaborate. Work starts in United Material Theory
1902: Einstein joins the Swiss Patent Buro. Jasper Maskelyne, grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne, is born. (*)
Jan. 1903: Einstein & Marity marry and form a team in Thermodynamics. (*)
1903: The Karagiorgevich family massacres the ruling Obrenovich family in Belgrade, Serbia. Afterwards increasing stresses on the Balkan. Increasing influence of the "secret" Black Hand organisation (led by the War Ministry) in Serbia. First flight of the Wright brothers. The technology is still awkward. Mass production of cars also starts. (*)
1904: Cooke dies; J. N. Maskelyne teams up with D. Devant. (*)
1905: Annus mirabilis for Einstein. (*) German-Dual Monarchy secret research for military uses of some new discoveries about instant healing of cuts & such; maybe of psychology too (Freud of Vienna)?
1908: The Free State of Congo becomes Belgian Congo and the crudest abuses stop. Bleriot flights over the Channel. (*) Moseley starts to degauss the ferromagnetic effects. For massive non-ferromagnetic steel technology a few years are needed.
1910: Goetic transport technology starts.
Now we arrive at a critical point: the time and start of WW I in ATL. Let us very briefly recapitulate it in OTL. There it was triggered by the terrorist assassination of the Heir Apparent of the Dual Monarchy Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia (organized by Black Hand); however also Germany seems to have been interested in an early war. In OTL after the Entente victory responsibility was put mainly on Germany, but material consequences mainly on the Dual Monarchy, and of course none on the assassins. But even the relatively minor measures on Germany led to the ascent of Hitler some 15 years later. USA was not interested for 3 years. Also a long WW I resulted in the collapse of Russia and the Communist takeover on the East and hatred on West, and Operations do not mention such.
Clearly in ATL things went on a different way. USA takes "Kaiser's War" as her own (OL 36), Germany could be interested in an early war until the Entente does not learn the secret of Healing, but would not be interested in after Awakening, because her multitudinous dwarves (see e.g. OL 27) would make her very strong in some years. Also we do not hear anything about memories of military fliers (either planes of carpets), and also not of Balkan Wars. So I would suggest a WW I about 1912. That is too early for either military planes or carpets. The Entente won, but measures against Germany must have been even milder than in OTL (observe the negative formula in OL 29 about what could have happened in a strong modern state losing a major war). On the same time Austria did break up (see Steve Matuchek's comments about Tomás Masarik having broken their people free in OL 15; he tells that Masarik broke free Bohemia from Austria-Hungary, but Bohemia never belonged to Hungary, however what historical conscience can you expect from somebody calling himself "Bohunk"?). The obvious solution is a short enough war, with the collapse of the German Empire and a transition into a Republic still before too much animosity could develop. So, tentatively:
1911: Birth of Will Graylock. D. Devant starts to use Jasper Maskelyne as "boy from the audience". Nevil Storey-Maskelyne, retired mineralogy professor, dies. He was a direct descendant of Nevil Maskelyne, the fifth Astronomer Royal of England, Fellow of Royal Society (1732-1811). Also, he was the person, for whose honour Tschermak named the mineral found in the basaltic meteorite Shergotty. (*) (Be careful. There are Maskelynes and Storey-Maskelynes, and the daughter of Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal married a Storey-Maskelyne. Also, Maskelynes rather prefer the surname Nevil. Magician John Nevil Maskelyne originates from the brother of the Astronomer Royal.) I guess that sometimes in the past few years acting magicians and professional watchmakers, as John Nevil Maskelyne may have detected "something". (Or may have heard rumours from Moseley's lab.)
1912-13: World War I, with Anglo-Saxon victory. Peace conditions are obscure for us but cannot be too severe. Russia withdraws; more or less synchronously the Manchu dynasty is deposed in China and substituted after a long chaos by a weak native Soong Dynasty, with Taoists behind (OL 25).
1912: At the outbreak of the War the Einsteins return to neutral Switzerland from Bohemia. (In OTL the marriage started to deteriorate in 1913, and then Mileva did not follow Albert to Berlin. Now this does not happen, so the Einsteins can remain strong in Thermodynamics.) The Einstein-Grossmann collaboration for General Relativity starts in Zürich just as in OTL, but the theory has smaller impact because of Rheatics, which is demonstrated by the fact that in OC the Matucheks must use the ghost of János Bolyai as expert in Riemannian Geometry.
With a short WW I maybe Moseley will not be killed, and can continue his beneficial work.
1914: Devant retires; the partner of John Nevil Maskelyne is his son, Nevil Maskelyne, 51 old. (Taken from OTL; maybe changes are not too big yet.)
1914-40: Awakening, spread of Goetic Revolution, decline of Old Technology eating up coal/oil. Cars and planes become obsolete (first half of the period). Troubles in Russia, then restoration (OL 6). Some fairies emigrate to Moon before 1926. Amerinds are in reservations, but under tolerable conditions.
1917: Death of John Nevil Maskelyne (?; taken from OTL), but his son Nevil continues his work, and later the grandson Jasper, as in OTL. But of course it is not a theatre demonstration anymore.
The Maskelyne, mentioned by the farseer show in OL 13, who seems to make the final breakthrough of Goetics, may be either John Nevil or Nevil. And observe the interpenetration of natural and paranatural interests in the (Storey- or not)Maskelyne family.
1923: Birth of Virginia Graylock, later Matuchek.
1926: Young Will Graylock contacts fairies then on Moon.
1940-43: Rising troubles on Near East; USA, Great Britain, France and Germany are competing. A heretic Moslem power refounds the Moslem Caliphate.
Now comes WW II, which is bloody but shorter than in OTL as told in OC. The end, according to the Matuchek internal chronology, must be cca. 1945. So:
1944-45: WW II, called Caliph's War: USA, Great Britain, Russia + underground in various occupied states in Europe + some Near Eastern states vs. Caliphate & Germany. Jasper Maskelyne is head of the Royal Engineer Corps, with famous deeds in Egypt & Syria. (This is again almost the same as in OTL and I took thence. While in OTL he became only Head of Experimental Camouflage Section of the Royal Engineer Corps, he was very successful even amongst cold iron.)
1946: Haris ed-Din al-Bunni, celestonautical expert and PoW takes American employment.
Sept. 23, 1950: Birth of Valeria Matuchek (OC XVIII, year from MT).
1953: Valeria Matuchek is kidnapped and taken to Low Continuum (Hell). She is rescued by Steve Matuchek, Virginia Matuchek-Graylock and János Bolyai. Consequence: decline of Orthodox Johannine Church (OC end).
1965: Culmination of Project Selene under al-Bunni of NASA. Flight of celestonaut Curtice Newton is aborted by Chinese shens & Trickster Coyote (OL 2). Matuchek's Operation Luna tries to substitute Project Selene.
Oct. of 1965: Test flies of Owl of Operation Luna. During the second flight Valeria Matuchek is on board, and the craft is misdirected. Evil spirits on Moon are defeated (OL end).
1973-74: PhD research of Valeria Matuchek about planned and methodical interreality travels. A lot of her friends are only half-human (MT).
It is rather modest to stop here with the chronology. Physical sciences, while not so important as in OTL, are not clearly behind. Nuclear Physics is quite known, the physical possibility for nuclear weapons is clear in 1945, only Tibetan monks use prayer wheels against them being operative (OL 5). On the same time in 1953 still the ceiling of the Berkeley Philosophical Laboratory is decorated with a Bohr atom (OC XXIX).
17. EPILOGUE: ON THE CAREER OF VALERIA MATUCHEK
Valeria Matuchek is an important actress in the Operations: elder daughter of Steve Matuchek, werewolf and engineer, and Virginia Matuchek née Graylock, advisor witch. She is an important figure in the Old Phoenix inset of Midsummer Tempest; in that time she is 24 (in 1974), writing her Theses about mathematics of interreality travels. She is not an actress in Losers' Night, but is referred by the observer (Anderson?) in a rather curious way, which I cite here: "The lives of women may generally be quieter than those of men, but not the less interesting or important; and when they do get spectacular -Hatshepsut, Jingo Kogo, Gunnhild, Britomart, Sacajawea, Moll Flanders, Sojourner Truth, Valeria Matuchek, on and on and on- they make my sex tame." Now, can we learn anything about V.M.'s carreer hence?
First, in OTL Britomart is a mythologic person and V.M. does not exist. (Surely, the parents of V.M. met under circumstances not having existed in OTL, Virginia Graylock being a cavalrywoman on broomstick in WW II.) In ATL still Britomart is "not real". But who knows what timelines the narrator means.
Second, being Losers' Night completely an Old Phoenix novellette, physical dating does not work in it. Still, indirect arguments could be made that the narrator is cca. 70, and Poul Anderson was 70 in 1996. In that year in ATL V.M. was 46. So she was interesting, important and untamed in some spectacular way. When she was 24, she studied the theory of interreality travels at a university. Maybe her later deeds are available in OTL literature, but I did not yet read anything between her years 24 and 46. But first let us see her colleague heroines very briefly, in the hope that we can see anything common in all.
Hatshepsut. XVth c. BC, regent, aunt, stepmother & such of Pharaoh Thutmosis (Thotmose) III. Exact kinship cannot be named with modern terms because Egyptian Dynasty XVIII was inherently incestuous. Widow of the father of Thutmosis III, the latter was a child then, crowned but Hatshepsut reigned for him. A quite usual situation, except for 2 things. 1) Hatshepsut retained power well into the adult years of Thutmosis III. 2) After some years of regency she started to count her own years, declared herself as Pharaoh too, even used the artificial Osiris beard at official occasions. Her reign was spectacular in expeditions and discoveries, was very peaceful, and from this reason dangerous for the possessions of Egypt in Retenu (Northern Syria). Then under unknown circumstances she lost power. Some of her statues were excavated from under ancient rubbish. But she may have died natural death; only I guess that in old age Thutmosis III could overthrown her with some generals tired of long peace.
Jingo Kogo, or Jingoo or Jingu. Japanese Dowager Princess in Vth (or, by more traditional chronology, IIIrd) century AD. Mother of great conqueror Emperor Oojin, wife of Emperor Chuai, 5th grade scion of a Shiragan (Silla) immigrant. She suggested Emperor Chuai a military expedition into Kudara (Paekche), the Emperor doubted the existence of such a country across the seas, but soon died. Jingo led the army, but her pregnancy was too advanced. She retained the child with magic ways for a long time not to be born abroad. W. Hong’s work deals with the story from Kudaran point of view [41] in details, still I will not repeat his text here, because for some naïve readers it might seem as if Hong doubted the legality of Emperor Oojin. Japanese sources from Kojiki upwards are unequivocal that Jingoo was a noble and positive actress of History (and for modernists who doubt the authenticity of her stories but still regard her a great mythical heroine, see e.g. [42]). Anyway, Jingo was too temperamental for a Japanese lady, but as she was a 5th grade scion of a Shiragan, and Tempest God Sosa no O had been in Shiragi for ages, we cannot be surprised. (Look, still in Heaven, once Sosa no O defecated in the hall of Amaterasu, Sun Goddess, grandmother of King Ninigi.) In the same time she led the campaign as it was proper for a Regent of Nippon.
Gunnhild. Norse princess, then Queen of King Eirik Blood-Ax, in Xth century. Mother of several Scandinavian kings, some good, some bad. While not exactly as aggressive as her husband, Blood-Ax, she learnt witchcraft from either Lapps or Finns in the interior (Saami and Suomi is rather similar and may have been confused eleven hudred years ago) and is reported to have used it amply. No doubt an active and proper Queen according to Viking standards.
Britomart. Either a female knight from the Arthurian Cycle in Faerie Queene, or a Cretan minor goddess called also Dictynna, or another name of Artemis herself, or a Thracian counterpart of Artemis. These mythologic Britomartises all keep their maidenhoods, and are huntresses.
Sacajawea. *c. 1790 in Shoshone, Idaho, +Dec. 20, 1812 in South Dakota or Apr. 9, 1884, Wind River Reservation. Stolen by Hidatsas, then bought by Jean Baptiste Charbonneau for wife in 1804. Unpaid member of the Lewis & Clark expedition to the Pacific shore. On May 14, 1805 she rescues important books & instruments of the expedition. On Aug. 15, 1805 she influences her brother, Cameahwait, a Shoshone chief, to sell horses to Lewis & Clark. In March 1811 Charbonneau and she leave for the Dakotas. According to Shoshone tradition she was influential in the tribe for decades before 1884.
Moll Flanders. Famous prostitute and adventureress of the XVIIth century, master thief &c., heroine of Defoe (not her true name, to be sure), wife of many husbands, both in London, and in Virginia.
Sojourner Truth. Originally Isabella, slave. *c. 1797 in New York State +1883 Battle Creek, Michigan. Freed on July 4, 1827. Then housekeeper in New York City. Sees a vision and becomes involved in religion. From 1843 travelling preacher. She influenced some social thinkers both as abolitionist and as a feminist. In 1850 she dictated the book "The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave" and at a feminist convention in 1851 at Akron, Ohio she had a lecture "Ain't I A Woman?" (Am I Not A Woman?). She made various speeches at many occasions.
And now Valeria Matuchek, (*Sept. 23, 1950, Midwest, Minneapolis?). We know from Operation Chaos that she was abducted to Hell in the age 3, but immediately rescued by her parents and János Bolyai; Operation Luna describes her at age 14 as serious, brave and good in goetics for her age; she made the first Lunar landing, albeit accidentally, and at this occasion she became friend of half-humans. This flight should have helped by a lunar meteorite, which topics deserves an Appendix E. Her plan was to retain her virginity until cca. PhD as her mother did, because of usual witch ambitions. In Midsummer Tempest at 24 she wears an Athene pin as her mother did, denoting special witchcraft; we also know that she is interested in mathematics and in social sciences. Also, that she is rather independent of men. The fragmentary data suggest a witch career in the next twenty years, with frequent and well-directed interreality travels (and maybe the liberation of some half-human groups?). I should find the common properties of these women which then may characterize her career. The problem is that I cannot fit Moll Flanders into this pattern; and Jingo and Gunnhild are most famous about their ruling sons. Now, Valeria Matuchek was unattached at 24, so she cannot have a very famous son at 46.
CLOSING REMARKS
Of course I do not believe that Anderson had contact with the Operations Universe; most probably that is literature. Of course, if Everett is right (which we cannot know until c. 2050), then any possible Reality exists, with smaller or larger weight. But impossible ones cannot exist even then.
I do not believe in a Universe where Planck and Einstein discovered Rheatics in 1901; I told, why not. However a Reality is not logically impossible where Planck and somebody else discovered a unification of Quantisation and Gravity cca. in the first 3 decades of the last century.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Discussions with L. Diósi up to 1995 are acknowledged.
APPENDIX A: FIFTH FORCE AND CP VIOLATION
The standard particle physical theory is SU(3)*SU(2)*U(1), see e.g. [43]. Here SU(3) is the QCD part, while SU(2) and U(1) is a mix of Electromagnetism and Weak Interaction. The spin-1 bosons of these interactions are the photon, W+, W- and Z0.
Now, measurements suggest that QCD and Electromagnetism keeps parity while SU(2) has a non-spontaneous symmetry breaking; weak interaction distinguishes matter to antimatter albeit this can be directly measured only on K0.
This seems to be an experimental fact, but it is inelegant. An alternative is Fischbach's Scheme [44].
Fischbach & al. claim [45] that they observed a hypercharge-dependence in Eötvös & al.'s classic measurement [46]. Now, hypercharge is B+S. Assume then that Physics is ultimately CP-invariant, but a Fifth Force couples to hypercharge Y.
For standard low-energy physics S=0, so Y-dependence means B-dependence as claimed to have seen in [45]. However for K0 B=0, S=-1, so Y=-1, while for anti-K0 Y is opposite. On the other hand, all K0 experiments so far happened on Earth's surface, surrounded by Y~1057 from terrestrial baryons. Then this background potential may cause false measurements of fundamental physical laws.
Fischbach's Scheme is not fully accepted. However it is an example how environment can prevent the correct recognition of a physical law.
APPENDIX B: h AND THERMODYNAMICS
Thermodynamics tells us that energy & such will sooner or later distribute themselves along the whole system homogeneously, if no Law forbids it. (Equipartition.) But now something forbidsd it. On any oscillating mode you must have at least 1*hn energy, or exactly 0. So at big frequencies/energies most modes will not oscillate. Hence one gets really (4) with a detailed thermodynamic analysis. Or, on another language: if Quantization is a Fundamental Law, then maximal spread of energy is that of calculated by Planck.
APPENDIX C: ON SPURIOUS SCATTERING
Divide the average straight line of the particle track into equidistant parts of length s as xk=x0+k*s. Then produce the quantities
zk = -yk-1 + 2*yk - yk+1
and form the sum
D(s) = åk zk2
Then theory predicts D to be s-dependent as
D(s) = a + c(E)s3/2
where a comes from errors of measuring y, and the s3/2 term comes from repeated Coulomb scattering. So you get c(E), so finally from a calibration E. Now measurements do not give this trend but rather
D(s) = a + bs1/2 + c(E)s3/2
(the difference is significantly nonzero). Here the source of the second term is unknown but b can be measured and is generally a significantly positive term, so we see a scattering of spurious origin. See e.g. [47], written by the best expert of spurious scattering, and of course citations therein. [10] also gives ample references to the problem.
APPENDIX D: JAUMANN IN OTL
G. Jaumann, earlier a student and coauthor of Mach, was at the TH Brünn in 1911, when a job of Head of Department became empty at the German University in Prague. Jaumann applied for the position, but Einstein won the competition. Jaumann, of course, was angry, and commented the result in such a manner that serious work is not always rewarded according to its proper merit, compared to popularity. Therefore Modern OTL readers (if they know even his name) generally regard G. Jaumann as somebody belonging to XIXth century and forget him. But experts of Rheology know and honour his name.
His result most remembered in 2005 (OTL) is the "Jaumann derivatives", used in the formalism of nonlinear viscoelasticity in Rheology. Very probably most readers of mine are not interested too much in nonlinear viscoelasticity, so I only mention the problem. Take a nonideal continuum. In one limit (the elastic one) the stress tensor depends solely on the deformation tensor (and in the Hookean ideal case the dependence is linear), while in the other (the viscous one) the stress depends solely on the deformation velocity (and is linear in the Newtonian idealisation). However in the generic case there is a functional dependence amongst stress, deformation, and the velocities.
This is not a big thing for first sight. However the "natural" coordinate system is inertial in the pure viscous case while the comoving one (with the continuum) in the pure elastic case. So for viscoelastic systems you must separate carefully changes coming from deformation of matter and deformation with respect to matter. A task very similar to Einstein's latter works, but when Jaumann solved the problem in 1905 [40], Einstein still was stuck purely to inertial coordinate systems.
Since 1908 Jaumann worked with thermodynamic problems, as e.g. field theoretical treatments or the energy current. The second will be very important in General Relativity, from 1916. The first will lead to a Generalised Relativity Theory at the beginning of 1911. The theory [49] is definitely and deliberately nonrelativistic; and local. There Gravity is not an action-at-distance, therefore it propagates with finite velocity; he can explain the perihelion precession of Mercury. As for date of submission, he had three and half months priority to Einstein's second gravity theory [35]. In addition, he had 8 months priority to Abraham's Gravity Theory, and some 1 year to Nordström's one.
Let us note that now we regard all the four theories as wrong. Even Einstein's 1911 approach to Gravity was a cul-de-sack. General Relativity will not start until Grossmann's seminal influence in 1912.
OTL name Rheology starts from a session of a working committee organised by a Plasticity Symposium in 1929; the respective session was held in Columbus, Ohio on 29th April 1929, and the foundation of The Society of Rheology was determined.
APPENDIX E: METEORITES AS LODESTONES
Operation Luna tells us that celestonautics (in OTL astronautics in American English, cosmonautics in Russian English) uses a piece of the goal to govern the celestocraft. In OTL we do not use this trick, because in OTL Magic is unreliable.
Craft Owl should have had a lunar meteorite to help it to Moon; instead some chondritic one was applied and the craft started outside. We are not interested in goetic explanations behind; rather in how a lunar meteorite can be identified before lunar landings. Now we, in OTL, can identify lunar meteorites; but this has been helped by the lunar rocks brought back from Moon.
However in OTL nobody has been on Mars, and still one dozen and half meteorites have been identified as Martians; some one per mille of all evaluated meteorites. How?
The majority of suspect Martians are shergottites, i.e. basalts with maskelynite [49]. (Named by Tschermak for the honour of Storey-Maskelyne.) Now, the basaltic component suggests Earth-like parent body, while glass-like maskelynite with feldsparic composition is the evidence of a serious shock. A substantial shock needed to throw away a rock from Mercury, Venus or Mars can convert feldspar into maskelynite; such a shock is not needed at asteroids (most definitely Vesta is believed to be the parent body of HED meteorites).
So far so good. But we have a single meteorite, Padvarninkai, which is not lunar, very probably not a Martian, and almost certainly not a HED (so Vestan) meteorite. It came down in Feb. 9, 1929 in Lithuania, some 3 kg, disintegrated at least into 11 pieces [50]. After 15 years Lithuania became part of USSR, became almost nonexistent for the other parts of world (no admission of foreign scientists, no collaboration). The world almost completely forgot Padvarninkai. In the 60's the meteorite was reclassified to howardite, which is impossible; then to polymict eucrite (so HED), which is a partial truth: one component of Padvarninkai may be eucrite. And the other 2? And where were the components built together?.
We do not yet know what is Padvarninkai; it does not seem neither lunar, nor Martian, nor Vestan (HED). Some years ago we tried to determine its origin from its chemical composition [50], [51], and the next two Figures come from an article of that effort [52]. The Figures, mutatis mutandis, demonstrate the method at 1965 ATL to select lunar meteorites.
Fig. 1 is some hundred non-chondritic stony meteorites for Ca vs. Al content (normalised to Si in weight). We can see that Ca is proportional to Al except for shergottites, lunarians and Padvarninkai; and both Ca and Al are much enhanced in eucrites and lunarians. The second point is explained: late volcanism prefers light silicates with low melting pont, and these are Al- and Ca-silicates. The first point is still without good explanation; but bodies of substantial mass, as Mars & Luna, can follow complicated evolution (the proportionality does not hold for terrestrial basalts either).
However see Fig. 2. Padvarninkai has a lot of potassium. Lunar meteorites have much less and even Martian basalt are poorer in K. Being Padvarninkai triamict, probably one component came from Venus or Mercury, but Venus of the last 600 Mys is impossible for origin, because of the tremendous atmosphere.
However the Figures illustrate the general method. Lunar basalts are depleted in Fe and Mg, being the endproducts of dying volcanism, are not enhanced in K and so on.
Fig. 1: Ca vs. Al. Padvarninkai is not HED, but might be Martian or lunar.
Fig. 2. K vs. Mg. Complicated planetochemistry (absent on small, waterless &c. Vesta and Luna) may enhance potassium compared to cosmic abundance. This happened on Mars, parent body of shergottites, and happened even more in the genesis of Padvarninkai. But where?
Now in ATL an experimental method can be followed: put a small fragment on a celestocraft as lodestone, and it will look for the parent body. (OK, for one of the 3.) Note that Padvarninkai must exist in ATL too, meteoritic impacts are independent of political and technological history except a minute change in position, because Earth's rotation is weakly dependent on skyscraper building processes. My guess is that the impact was in Lithuania in ATL as well.
APPENDIX F: MOSELEY'S LAW (OTL)
The result was achieved in 1913, Moseley was 26. Bohr's Atomic Model just had started. His result was published in two parts [53]. He bombed materials with energetic cathode rays to get characteristic X-rays and determined the frequencies via Bragg reflection. He was able to distinguish K and L series. (In Bohr's model you get a K series if you kick out an electron from the innermost shell and then another drops down from an outer one. L series is got if you have kicked out an electron from the second shell.) He got a very good proportionality between the square root of the frequency and the ordering number of the element in the Mendeleev table, Z.
Now, do not forget that Mendeleev positioned the elements via chemical properties ("octaves" and such), and Z was rather mysterious from physical point of view. But from 1897 it was possible to believe that Z is the positive charge of the atoms exactly neutralized by Z electrons. Then came Rutherford with the small compact nucleus (1911) and Bohr with Z electrons orbiting this nucleus (1913).
In 1913 Bohr was able to predict the spectral lines of the H atom (Z=1). Surely if you could apply Bohr's Quantum Constraints for an atom with Z>1 (which was not ready in 1913, to be sure), the energy should appear to be quadratic in Z, even if the exact form is not yet known. Now, according to Einstein (1905) n=E/h, so n~Z2.
Instead the experiment shew
n1/2 ~ Z-Z0.
But Z0 is clearly some screening. If the electron jumps down to Shell 1 (K-shell), the other K electrons (in fact, we now know, only 1) partially screen the nuclear charge. If the electron drops down to the second shell, the ones on K almost completely screen as many positive charges as their number, plus other L electrons partially screen.
Moseley got from the curves that Z0 (the screened charge) is approximately 1 for K series and cca. 7.4 for L ones.
So far this is a nice experiment; but Moseley can work with partial new theories (Bohr is still working!). He tells that the integer "atomic number" on his Figure must be the number of elemental positive charges of Rutherford's nucleus, and then the place of a new element can be uniquely determined from its characteristic X-rays, using his diagram as calibration. So for example there can be exactly 3 unknown elements between Al and Au, at places 43, 61 and 75.
And it is exactly so. For us, posterity, Z=43 is Tc, with no stable isotope at all, found by Perrier & Segré in 1937; by irradiating Mo with deuterons, Z=61 is Pm, again with no stable isotope, found in 1945 as a byproduct of U fission, and Z=75 is Re, found by Noddack & Tacke in 1925. (Mendeleev was completely unable even to detect the lack of Pm and Re.)
This was Moseley in OTL: able to devise and correctly interpret an experiment without existing theory! Then Heir Apparent of Double Monarchy Francis Ferdinand was shot so Entente must have defended the assassins. Therefore the young genius had enlisted and was sent to the Dardanelles for fighting for Civilisation (which at that location meant to take away Constantinople from Turks in order that Russian Tsar Nicholas II the tyrant be able to march in, to rename it Tsargrad and to add it to his Empire). But Turks defended the Bosporus (the same one which they defended together with Anglo-Americans 3 decades later against the same Russia in Cold War), and in the struggle Moseley was shot on Aug. 10, 1915.
APPENDIX G: ON FERROMAGNETISM
We believe that now we understand ferromagnetism, but we did not well understand it until the 40's, and my guess is that even now if you teach Quantum Mechanics to a mathematician, he will not be able to predict ferromagnetism from the equations. Ferromagnetism is a collective phenomenon.
According to our present knowledge only 6 elements are ferromagnetic in solid state at temperatures higher than a few K, all metals. Instead of the formalism, I recapitulate my solid state exam at 22 old.
Ferromagnetism means that 1) magnetic force lines are multiplied by some factors 1000 or more; and 2) the matter is able even to keep some magnetism if we switch off the original field (although some materials forget the original magnetisation quite fast).
For this obviously you need some uncompensated angular moments of electrons: better spins than orbital ones. But a lot of metals exist with uncompensated electron spins and still they are only paramagnetic.
Good. In atomic state e.g. the outmost shell contains automatically uncompensated spins (except for closed outermost shells as in noble gases), but in a solid metallic lattice these electrons go into the common electron gas, wandering to and fro. OK, but we can look for atoms where, for obscure many-body reasons, some internal shell is not yet closed. And look: this just happens from Sc to Ni, and Fe, Co and Ni are indeed ferromagnetic. Maybe for Sc, Ti, V, Cr and Mn some parameters are not high enough; but Mn has alloys which are ferromagnetic.
Then the examiner told me: good, I believe that you could write me equations. But instead tell me: if not only the (Fe,Co,Ni) triad had been ferromagnetic then what else would have been?
Rare earths, replied I. In the Fe triad the outermost shell is 4s, while 3d is filling up. In rare earths the outermost shell is 5d, while the uncompensated spins are on 4f.
Perfect, told he. But, alas, they are not ferromagnetic; then which magnetic behaviour do they show? I guessed it, and the good answer was my second trial, so I got the highest possible points and was released. And now it turns out that 3 rare earths, Gd, Dy and Tb, are really ferromagnetic, Gd even up to room temperature!
The important thing is: it is easy to guess that Fe atoms are the best to build a ferromagnet. But you must calculate the data of the metallic lattice too! And some lattices are not ferromagnetic; only just the stablest lattices of Fe, Co and Ni at room temperature happens to be ferromagnetic and this is enough. But this is a mere fact, not a simple consequence of Laws. Slightly and only qualitatively different Physical Laws could lead to non-ferromagnetic cold iron.
But in Operations it is stated that it is possible to get rid of ferromagnetism with exactly the same Laws via some (for us) unknown Laws of a yet unknown United Theory. But of which one? Seemingly (h+c), because Magnetism belongs to c.
Magnetism indeed does. But Ferromagnetism is not a relativistic effect. And, again: in OTL we do have a united (h+c) theory which does not show any ability to degauss cold iron. To be honest, I do not see any reason to expect that Unified (G+h) would do this; but we may think anything still. And look: ferromagnetic domains are macroscopic, with sizes ~10-3 cm. You may demonstrate the domains in simple experiments for unaided eyes!
While the size range of genuine Unified (G+h) effects is 10-5 cm, smaller than domains. So if Nature wants to, She may suggest a way disturbing Ferromagnetism via new effects. I do not believe that She wants to; but we cannot be sure. Only, Moseley was shot, and even if not, he would be 116 year old now.
NOTES & REFERENCES
[1] I will not follow the recent requirement of Anglo-Saxon intelligentsia to use the clumsy "non-sexist" grammatical construction he/she. Anderson's invention "heesh" would be much better. But the best way is to get rid of grammatical genders (I mean: if you are disturbed by them). That is the Hungarian way (and all Uralic and Altaic, including Japanese). For us there is a single 3rd Sg. pronoun, which we automatically translate as "he".
[2] ***: Poul Anderson. http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/sf/books/a/anderson.htm
[3] Operation Chaos is the complete novel including the stories Operation Afreet, Operation Salamander, Operation Incubus & Operation Changeling.
[4] The main part of Midsummer Tempest contains no interreality travel. But it does contain discusions about goetics (see in later Chapters), and it does contain an Old Phoenix inset.
[5] The Lady of the Winds and The Valor of Cappen Varra have the same protagonist, without any discrepancy between them, so they probably belong to the same reality. Fairy Gold happens at the home country of Cappen Varra, his poems are still read, and again there is no evidence against the idea that we are in the future (with some centuries) of the same reality.
[6] A. J. Toynbee: Some Problems in Greek History, Oxford University Press, London, 1969
[7] B. Lukács: The Rise and Fall of Atarneus. http://www.rmki.kfki.hu/~lukacs/atarn.htm
[8] Ágnes Holba & B. Lukács: in Stochastic Evolution of Quantum States in Open Systems and in Measurement Processes (eds. L. Diósi & B. Lukács), World Scientific, Singapore, 1994, p. 69
[9] E. Schrödinger: Naturwissenschaften 23, 807 (1935); Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc. 31, 555 (1935)
[10] Ágnes Holba & B. Lukács: Acta Phys. Hung. 70, 121 (1991)
[11] L. Jánossy: Acta Phys. Hung. 1, 423 (1952)
[12] G. Berkeley: Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge. Dublin, 1710
[13] F. Károlyházy: Magy. Fiz. Foly. XXII, 23 (1974)
[14] L. Diósi & B. Lukács: Annln. Phys. 44, 488 (1987)
[15] L. Diósi & B. Lukács: Phys. Lett. 142A, 331 (1989)
[16] L. Diósi & B. Lukács: Nuovo Cim. 108B, 1419 (1993)
[17] L. Diósi & B. Lukács: Phys. Lett. 181A, 366 (1993)
[18] J. Bolyai: Appendix Scientiam Spatii… This is an Appendix of an elementary geometry schoolbook (in 500 copies) of his father, a high school teacher. So students did not understand it and nobody else read it. But great Gauss received a reprint of the Appendix and reported to be good. For this Artillery Captain J. Bolyai got an official good note in his military documents because Gauss was a member of the Saxonian Hofrat. However now for documentation I give the complete bibliograhic data. The Appendix's full title is: Scientiam spatii absolute veram exhibiens: a veritate aut falsitate Axiomatis XI Euclidei (a priori haud unquam decidenda) independentem; adjecta ad casum falsitatis, quadratura circuli geometrica. And now I have to give the data of the book itself, but observe that the author, who is F. Bolyai, is circumscribed. So: Tentamen juventutem studiosam in elementa matheseos purae, elementaris ac sublimioris, methodo intuitiva, evidentaque huic propria, introducendi. Cum Appendice triplici. [Ed. by] Josephus & Simeon Kali de felsô Vist. Auctore Professore Matheseos et Physices Chemiaeque Publ. Ordinario. Maros Vásárhelyini. 1832 (Vol. 1), 1833 (Vol. 2). This Latin was a living language; in the Hungarian Parliament representatives spoke always Latin. There was a second edition at Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1897-1904. But if you are weak in Latin and the same time need only János Bolyai's part, you may turn e.g. to: J. Frischauf: Absolute Geometrie nach Johann Bolyai, Teubner, Leipzig, 1872. The Appendix has a lot of translations to French, Italian, English, German, Japanese & Magyar, but I think this is the proper place to stop.
[19] Aristotle: Prior Analytica, Book 2, Chaps. 16-19, Bekker N° 68-70
[20] Very infrequently two physicists can do this. I was able one time to explain to another physicist, what should be in the axioms.
[21] J. von Neumann: Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, Springer, Berlin, 1932
[22] H. Everett III: Rev. Mod. Phys. 29, 454 (1957)
[23] B. de Witt & R. Neill Graham (eds.): The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1973
[24] P. Kher (ed.): Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Diplomatarium Germaniae ex Stirpe Karolinorum I. Berolini, 1934, p. 145. By the way, observe that this Marcha Uuangariorum is much the same as the Eastmarch of the Western Empire of Béla, aka Poul Anderson, e.g. the Eastern March of the Western Kingdom.
[25] Originally A. Eddington (1934); I have seen only the Hungarian edition: A. Eddington, A természettudomány új útjai, Franklin, s.d. , but you can find a whole Chapter about it in J. Singh: Modern Cosmology, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1970
[26] M. Rees: Just Six Numbers. The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1999, and citations therein.
[27] Lord Kelvin: Phil. Magazine, 2, 1 (1901)
[28] W. Wien: Annln. Phys. 58, 662 (1896)
[29] M. Planck: Verh. der Deutschen Phys. Gesellsch. 2, 237 (1900)
[30] Albert Einstein - Mileva Maric'. The Love Letters. Eds. J. Renn & R. Schulmann, Transl. Shawn Smith. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1992. The end-c' in the name of the lady is simply a lip service for Yugoslav (or Illyrian) National Idea. For individual letters I will use the notation {x} where x is a number.
[31] A. Einstein: Annln. Phys. 17, 891 (1905)
[32] A. Einstein: Annln. Phys. 17, 132 (1905)
[33] P. A. M. Dirac: Proc. Roy. Soc. London A114, 243 (1927)
[34] A. Einstein: Jahrbuch f. Radioakt. und Elektronik. 4, 411 (1907)
[35] A. Einstein: Annln. Phys. 35, 898 (1911)
[36] A. Einstein: Annln. Phys. 49, 769 (1916)
[37] R. Penrose: Shadows of the Mind. Oxford University Press, New York, 1994
[38] F. Károlyházy, A. Frenkel & B. Lukács: in Physics as Natural Philosophy, eds. A. Shimony & H. Feshbach, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. 1982, p. 204
[39] B. Lukács: in Triality in Evolution, Proc. 6th Symp. on Matter Evolution (eds. B. Lukács & al.), KFKI-1995-21, p. 6; but see also L. Diósi: in Evolution from Cosmogenesis to Biogenesis, , Proc. 1st Symp. on Matter Evolution (eds. B. Lukács & al.), KFKI-1990-50, p. 19
[40] G. Jaumann: Grundlagen der Bewegungslehre. Springer, Leipzig, 1905
[41] W. Hong: Paekche of Korea and the Origin of Yamato Japan. Kudara International, Seoul, 1994
[42] T. Akima: Japanese J. of Religious Studies 20, 95 (1993)
[43] P. Langacker: Phys. Rep. 72C, 185 (1981)
[44] S. H. Aronson & al.: Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 1342 (1986)
[45] E. Fischbach & al.: Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 3 (1986)
[46] R. von Eötvös, D. Pekár & E. Fekete: Annln. Phys. 68, 11 (1922)
[47] L. Jánossy: Theory and Practice of the Evaluation of Measurements. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965
[48] G. Jaumann: Theorie der Gravitation. Sitzungsber. Kaiserl. Akad. Wiss. (Wien) Abt. IIA 121, 95 (1912)
[49] G. Tschermak: Sitzber. Math.-Naturw. Kl. Akad. Wiss. Wien 65, 122 (1872)
[50] K. Slezevicius, M. Kaveckis & M. Kodaitis: Mat.-Gamtos Fakulteto Darbu 5, 131 (1930)
[51] R. Brauns: Centralblatt für Mineralogie 4A, 401 (1930)
[52] Ágnes Holba & B. Lukács: Sphaerula 2, 25 (1998-2001)
[53] H. G. J. Moseley: Phil. Magazine 26, 1024 (1913) & 27, 703 (1914)
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