Recommended Reading

Books, articles, and online links that are recommended by members of the Lyncean Group of San Diego.

Recommendations are listed in chronological order by the date they were uploaded, with the most recent at the top.  The date is the date the recommendation was uploaded.

Books

3/5/20
We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe by Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson; Riverside Books; 2017

Also see “Other” below for a link to a podcast created by Whiteson & Cham

Recommended by: Bill Hagan
Comment:  Humanity’s understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore —there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don’t know about the universe: the enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and unusually entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available for a lot of questions that are still perplexing scientists, including:

* Why does the universe have a speed limit?
* Why aren’t we all made of antimatter?
* What (or who) is attacking Earth with tiny, superfast particles?
* What is dark matter, and why does it keep ignoring us?

It turns out the universe is full of weird things that don’t make any sense. But Cham and Whiteson make a compelling case that the questions we can’t answer are as interesting as the ones we can.

This fully illustrated introduction to the biggest mysteries in physics also helpfully demystifies many complicated things we do know about, from quarks and neutrinos to gravitational waves and exploding black holes. With equal doses of humor and delight, Cham and Whiteson invite us to see the universe as a possibly boundless expanse of uncharted territory that’s still ours to explore.

6/14/19
The Quantum Decameron by Giancarlo Borgonovi; 2019

Recommended by:  Bill Hagan
Comment: Giancarlo Borgonovi is a founding member of the Lyncean Group of San Diego and a physicist by training.  The Quantum Decameron is a collection of his short stories modeled after The Decameron, a collection of 100 stories that range from the erotic to the tragic written in Italy in the 1300’s.  To quote from the Preface to Giancarlo’s book: “The field of physics, both classical and quantum, is very large indeed.  The field today is arguably not as fertile as it was at the beginning of the 1800s or at the beginning of the 1900s (at least in terms of discoveries that can be comprehended by the average person) but it is vast enough to offer opportunities for humor.  In this spirit, the short stories in the book have in common some implausible connection with the world of physics, more quantum than classical, and some attempt at racy humor, hence the name Quantum Decameron.”

5/4/19
The Pentagon’s Brain – An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen; Little, Brown & Co.; September 2015

Recommended by: Pete Lobner
Comment: Prompted by the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union, the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) was created by President Eisenhower and approved by Congress in 1958 to serve as a central research and development organization for the Department of Defense.  This book explores the scope of DARPA’s involvement in the U.S. military-industrial complex.  DARPA has engaged the Jasons.  SAIC has been, and probably still is a DARPA contractor.  This is a fascinating history.

5/4/19
The Jasons – The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite by Ann Finkbeiner; Viking; 2006

Recommended by: Pete Lobner
Comment: In April 2019, DoD cancelled a task order contract with Mitre Corporation that served as the tasking and funding vehicle for federal government agencies to engage the Jasons.  Now there is a scramble to get a new contract vehicle in place, perhaps sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration.  What’s all the fuss about?  This book sheds some light on the impressive and controversial history of the Jasons as independent advisors to DoD and other federal agencies.

4/1/19
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham; Simon & Schuster; February 12, 2019

Recommended by: Hugh Kendrick
Comment: I had not read any of the previous accounts of this disaster except UNSCEAR and WHO reports. It is a fascinating, if long, account, and quite horrifying. I had read of the “positive void coefficient” flaw in the nuclear design of the RBMK but not of the “control rod tip” effect that could lead, and did, to a runaway under certain conditions.  I believe it is well researched and there are nearly 100 pages of Notes at the end organized by Chapter…..but there are no references in each Chapter to the Notes—what a blunder!
The author has consulted with lots of people—Frank von Hippel being one who caught my eye—and does a pretty good job from a technical accuracy point of view…….but some anti-nuke stuff creeps in toward the end, for example, equating Fukushima with Chernobyl.  I couldn’t put it down!

3/23/19
The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture by Brian Dear; Pantheon; 2018

Recommended by:  Roger Johnson
Comment: This book chronicles the history of the development of the PLATO computer-based education system at the University of Illinois over the period of 1960 -1980s. The 50th anniversary of this activity was celebrated with a two day event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA in 2010. This system spawned many of the early ideas relating to what we now call time sharing, computer gaming, social media, modem technology, flat displays (plasma), touch input, etc. The author, Brian Dear, lived and worked in La Jolla over the 25 year period during which he researched and wrote this book. I was involved as a member of this team from 1965 through 1977 beginning as an undergraduate and leaving as a tenured professor in 1977 when I joined SAI at 1200 Prospect Street in La Jolla to help form the SAI Technology Division. I supported Brian’s efforts during his research and authoring of this book via several interviews and as a fact-checker in a number of areas. Brian now lives in Santa Fe, NM.

2/11/19
Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor by Brian Keating; W. W. Norton & Company; 2018

Recommended by:  Bill Hagan
Comment:  “By losing the Nobel Prize, Keating and BICEP2 has led us to an even greater victory: the recognition that there are more important things in this Universe, like scientific truths, than the fleeting glory of an earthly award.” – Forbes

7/29/18
When Einstein Walked with Godel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought by Jim Holt; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2018

Recommended by:  Steve Dahms
Comment: A collection of Jim Holt’s elegant essays, which make big subjects — like the illusion of time — both intelligible and enticing.

7/29/18
Post-Truth by Lee McIntyre; The MIT Press; 2018

Recommended by:  Bill Hagan
Comment: McIntyre is a Research Fellow at BU and Instructor in ethics at Harvard.  He takes an objective, scientific, and even quantitative approach to explain how we arrived in a post-truth era, when “alternative facts” replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence.  He also takes on the question of what can be done to remedy the situation.

5/27/18
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs From Outer Space by Janna Levin; Knopf; March 29, 2016

Recommended by:  David Groce
Comment: Behind the scenes, the scientists, and the engineering of LIGO

5/27/18
Rise of the Rocket Girls:  The Women Who Propelled Us , From Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt; Little, Brown and Company; April 5, 2016

Recommended by:  David Groce
Comment: A history of JPL and the women computers who became the top coders

5/27/18
Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines by Richard R. Muller; W. W. Norton & Company; Auguat 17, 2008

Recommended by:  David Groce
Comment:  Prof. Muller is at UC Berkeley, where his class of the same title is the largest on the UCB campus. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwxNvM6uLU

5/27/18
Now: The Physics of Time by Richard R. Muller; W. W. Norton & Company; September 20, 2016

Recommended by:  David Groce

5/27/18
The Instant Physicist: An Illustrated Guide by Richard R. Muller; W. W. Norton & Company; December 6, 2010

Recommended by:  David Groce
Comment: Surprises, paradoxes, and unexpected contradictions in physics

5/24/18
Without Warning
by Thomas Sanger; River Grove Books; 2017

Recommended by:  Bill Hagan
Comment: This historical fiction novel tells the true story of the first sinking of a ship during World War II. The ship was the passenger liner Athenia and she was sunk by a torpedo from a German U-boat on 3 September 1939.  The author will be speaking to the Lyncean Group on 14 November 2018.

5/24/18
The Science of TV’s The Big Bang Theory – Explanations Even Penny Would Understand
by Dave Zobel; ECW Press; 2015

Recommended by:  Pete Lobner
Comment:  Dave discussed his book at the 98th Lyncean Group meeting on 16 September 2015.

5/24/18
The Meaning of It All
by Richard Feynman; Basic Books; 1998

Recommended by:  Bill Hagan
Comment: Based on three lectures Feynman gave in 1963.  Free ranging discussion of lots of topics from religion to politics to science.  Easy to read and short (122 pages).

5/24/18
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow; Bantam (reprint edition); 2012

Recommended by: Pete Lobner
Comment: This is a short, but significant, book

Other (articles, online links, etc.)

3/5/20
PODCAST: Daniel & Jorge Explain the Universe

Recommended by:  Bill Hagan
Comment:  In addition to their book, Professor Whiteson and his co-author, Jorge Cham, also have a very interesting podcast, called “Daniel & Jorge Explain the Universe”. You can find a link to this podcast on their website at danielandjorge.com.  From the website: “A fun-filled discussion of the big, mind-blowing, unanswered questions about the Universe. In each episode, Daniel Whiteson (a physicist who works at CERN) and Jorge Cham (a popular online cartoonist) discuss some of the simple but profound questions that people have been wondering about for thousands of years, explaining the science in a fun, shorts-wearing and jargon-free way.”

6/24/19
Murray Gell-Mann died on May 24, 2019 at age 89.   

Recommended by:  Steve Dahms, David Groce, and Pete Lobner
Comment:  Murray Gell-Mann was one of the chief architects of the standard model of particle physics.  In 1964, he proposed the theory of quarks; which we now know are the fundamental particles that make up most ordinary matter.  See the articles from Caltech and Nature at the links below.
Link: Caltech: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-mourns-passing-murray-gellmann
Link: Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/index.html

6/24/19
“A Cool Accretion Disk Around the Galactic Centre Black Hole”
by Elena M. Murchicova, E. Sterl Phinney, Anna Pancoast, and Roger D. Blandford; Nature 570, 83-86 (2019), June 5, 2019.

Recommended by:  David Groce
Comment: Elena Murchicova spoke to the Lynceans on February 25, 2015.  Her topic was “A Russian PhD Theoretical Physicist’s Experience in US Astrophysics and Movie Making with Kip Thorne (Interstellar).”  More recently, as principle investigator, she postulated that a “cool accretion disk” around our galactic black hole, Sagittarius A*, existed and should be detectable. Her team got viewing time at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile and found the expected evidence that the disk existed.  Results were published in Nature. Only the abstract is free at the following link.
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1242-z

6/24/19
“One thing we can do is boil water efficiently”
by Tom Murphy; New York Times; May 29, 2019

Recommended by:  Pete Lobner and Bill Hagan
Comment: Tom Murphy, a professor of physics at UCSD, previously spoke to the Lynceans on September 12, 2012.  His topic then was “An Astrophysicists Approach to Understanding Global and Renewable Energy.”  This is article in the NYT is self-explanatory.
Link:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/climate/nyt-climate-newsletter.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

5/24/18
“Feynman at 100”
by Paul Halpern; Nature; Vol, 557; 10 May 2018

Recommended by:  Steve Dahms
Comment: Richard Feynman died on 15 February 1988 at the age of 69.  This article celebrates his lasting legacy in the fields of the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, and more.
Link: https://www.nature.com/magazine-assets/d41586-018-05082-4/d41586-018-05082-4.pdf