QuantumTantra 2015

Happy New Year 2016 from Quantum Tantra blog

On the longest night of the year, it seems appropriate to summarize the old year's notable happenings.

This year witnessed the deaths of Don Joyce, Terry Pratchett and my brother Tom. The world is poorer and much less funny with their passing.

I've read a lot of books this year but three in particular stuck in my mind: 1. Victor L. Wooten's The Music Lesson: a Search for Spiritual Growth Through Music. Wooten is a virtuoso bass player (review of the book and video of Wooten jamming here,) Wooten's writing has been compared to Carlos Casteneda's as he describes meeting up with various unlikely musical shamans who trick and tease Wooten into seeing more deeply into the magic that hides behind all the notes and the practice.

2. Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey is a science-fiction portrayal of a society in which one's rank is determined by the range of one's color perception ("greys", who perceive only in black-and-white, live at the bottom of the heap.)  In Fforde's fictitious Chromatacia, color possesses extraordinary power -- it can be used to damage and to heal. A particular shade called "Lincoln", available only to doctors, is a powerful painkiller and if stared at for more than 10 seconds causes hallucinations. On his blog, Fforde actually displays some of the more stunning shades (including Lincoln) that play a big part in his story.  But don't expect to get high off these tints -- we humans just aren't put together that way.

3. Charles Seife's Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception shows how easily people can be impressed by a number no matter how fictitious or meaningless that number might be. Seife uses mostly examples from politics, showing how the numbers from polls and elections are almost always misleading. He analyzes in great detail a few famous close political races and as a bonus explains who actually won the recent Gore/Bush presidential election. (It's not whom you think.) Seife's book deserves a place on the shelf next to Darell Huff's classic How to Lie with Statistics which covers much the same ground. Cuts through numeric bull shit like a hot scalpel. The biggest message I took away from Seife's book is this: 73% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

This blog's main concern is quantum physics, poetry, and more recently, music.

On the physics front there appeared Some Notes on Quantum Entanglement in which I present a simple and informative new way to describe the classic double-slit experiment. For reasons unknown, this post has accumulated a comparatively large number of hits. In The JJCCTT Device I analyze a new FTL signaling scheme proposed by a student from Jerusalem Center for Technology. The main advantage of the JJCCTT proposal is that the correlation between Alice and Bob consists of 2 bits rather than the usual 1 bit. After some calculations we find, as might have been expected, that this doubling of possible outcome patterns does not allow FTL signaling. Thanks, Omer!

Following up on our early invention and investigation of Sirag Numbers, we define the notion of Sirag Triangles and discover a surprisingly elegant solution that generates all Sirag Triangles with integer sides.

In The Quantum Olympics we look at recent attempts to experimentally discover the largest material object that displays clear quantum effects.

And in Six Optical Miracles we describe the remarkable yet little known Ewald-Oseen Extinction Theorem that explains why a pane of glass is transparent rather than behaving like a dense fog.

See also Does Earth Possess a Second Season? my small contribution to the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming conversation.

On the poetry front, the world of letters has been enriched by a dozen mostly new poems cooked up inside the frenzied minds of Nick Herbert and his alter ego Doctor Jabir 'abd al-Khaliq. These poems include: Is Jack a Tacit Muslim?, Church of the Origin, Esalen Institute (written to honor founder Michael Murphy's 85th birthday), Jabir's Proof, The Philosopher's Bone, Thirteen Unnatural Acts, Kiss My Bare Art, Ninety-nine Names of Goddess, Reading Readiness, Altered State, Dangerous Candy, No Torture Please.

And lastly Abduction by Aliens, a videoed performance at the Grand Conclave of Glad Scientists convened at a secret Pacific beach front location by Dr and Mrs Future.

In this little collection, even the most jaded reader will find something that will please, educate, amuse, mystify, enlighten and offend.

Finally, this years achievements on the music front in both composition and performance.

For the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Bell's Theorem, the museum at Queen's University in Belfast asked to exhibit my song "Bell's Theorem Blues" as an example of art inspired by this famous result in physics. I persuaded a trio of musicians in Boulder Creek to perform the song and sent lyrics, sound and video recording to the month-long Bell Fest.

Then our little Irish band Blarney was asked to play at the Santa Cruz Art League's theater on Broadway Avenue: Blarney on Broadway. For two hours the four of us performed for an enthusiastic and responsive audience and here is one of our tunes.

All in all, a very good year.

On this, the season's longest night, may your New Year be brightened by the coming of the light.

Matt, August, Kim and Nick are Blarney

JJCCTT Device for FTL Signaling

Omer and Nick's JJCCTT Device for FTL Signaling

JJCCTT Device for FTL Signaling

Bell's Theorem proves that quantum reality must be non-local.

Belfast-born physicist John Stewart Bell based his important proof about reality on the EPR Device (named after Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen) which uses TWO ENTANGLED PHOTONS whose wave function ψ can be written:

ψ (EPR) = 1/√2 ( |HH> + |VV> )          (EQ1)

Bell showed (and John Clauser subsequently measured) that this quantum wave function's statistical predictions exceed any result that any merely local reality is able to muster. Thus quantum reality is non-local.

Later Greenberger, Horne and Zeilinger used THREE ENTANGLED PHOTONS described by the GHZ wave function:

ψ (GHZ) = 1/√2 ( |HHH> + |VVV> )        (EQ2)

to prove a "Bell's Theorem without Inequalities". GHZ showed from EQ 2 that a local reality predicts a certain result will never happen, while quantum mechanics says that this same result must always happen. Since quantum mechanics gives the correct prediction, one measurement suffices to prove that quantum reality is non-local.

In recognition of GHZ's concise proof, the quantum state described by EQ 2 is usually called a "GHZ state".

Recently, Omer Dickstein, a physics student at Jerusalem College of Technology, proposed to exploit the non-locality exhibited by FOUR ENTANGLED PHOTONS for faster-than-light signaling. His wave function just adds one more photon to the GHZ state:

ψ (GHZ + 1) = 1/√2 ( |HHHH> + |VVVV> )        (EQ3)

As a place holder I have tentatively called EQ 3 the "GHZ plus one" state. How this state will eventually be designated will depend on what we learn from temporarily construing it as the core ingredient of an FTL signaling machine -- the so-called JJCCTT Device where JJCCTT stands for "Joint Jerusalem-California Collaboration on Transluminal Telecommunication".

The state |HHHH> represents the simultaneous emission of FOUR Horizontally-polarized photons, two of which are measured by Alice, and two of which are measured by Bob, each of whom possess two detectors that register "H" when accepting a Horizontal photon and "V" when accepting a Vertical photon.

The state |VVVV> represents the simultaneous emission of FOUR Vertically-polarized photons, two of which go to Alice, and two of which go to Bob.

One nice thing about the JJCCTT situation is that, unlike the EPR situation where Alice and Bob possess only one detector each (hence can obtain only ONE BIT of information), in the JJCCTT situation both particles possess two detectors (hence each can potentially obtain TWO BITS of digital information. The JJCCTT Device represents, information-wise, a more broad-band channel than its EPR competitor.

One might naively imagine that EQ 3 represents a situation in which the 4-photon source emits EITHER a pulse of 4 H-photons OR a pulse of 4 V-photons but that is not the case at all. In this peculiar process (called "polarization entanglement") illegal for all except quantum systems, the source emits BOTH a quadruple of H-photons and a quadruple of V-photons AT THE SAME TIME.

You might think of EQ 3 as describing a kind of "four-photon Schrödinger Cat state". When unlooked-at, "this cat" is in a superposition of both a 4H-cat and 4V-cat. (4H-cat has four Hazel (yellowish-brown) feet and 4V-cat has four Vermilion (yellowish-red) feet). Each foot simultaneously is both colors. That's when not looked at. But whenever it's looked at, whoever looks will always see this cat with each foot having the same color -- either four Hazel-colored feet or four Vermilion-colored feet -- no matter how far apart the cat's feet are. Bob and Alice might be 100 light-years apart and this feet-coloring process will happen exactly the same way.

According to quantum mechanics, when this ambiguous pulse of 4-light (quantum cat) encounters a detector, the detector "flips a coin" and randomly decides which one of these two possible polarizations it will "make real". Will it be the all-H-state or the all-V-state? It is important to understand that quantum theory tells us that this choice of what polarization will be recorded is made at the detector, not at the source.

Once this decision is made by one detector (we can never really identify which one), the other 3 detectors follow suit, so that each detector, no matter how far it might be separated from all the others, immediately comes to the same conclusion concerning which possible polarization state (H or V) it will also make real.

It is easy to see how this apparent instantaneous conspiracy between far-distant detectors to always record the same polarization, when up until the moment of choice both polarizations were actively possible, might embolden some physicists to attempt to exploit this system to send signals faster than light.

The configuration pictured above won't work as an FTL channel between Alice (the traditional sender) and Bob (the inevitable recipient), because EQ 3 allows only two elemental events to happen, either HHHH or VVVV, none of which are under the control of either Alice or Bob.

But here's how Omer from JCT in Jerusalem plans to change all that. We note that in the START STATE (pictured below), only two things ever happen to Alice and Bob. They either both receive 4 H-photons. Or both receive 4 V-photons. Bob always registers HH or VV in his two polarization detectors. And so does Alice. Never anything else.

START STATE: Only two events can happen, either HHHH or VVVV.

In particular Bob never observes a "cross term" such as HV or VH, where one of his two detectors counts a H-photon and the other counts a V-photon.

If there were something Alice could do with her photons that would produce "cross terms" in Bob's results, then Alice would be able to send a message to Bob at superluminal speed.

The essence of the JJCCTT Project is to examine all the things that Alice can do to her 2 photons, while looking for effects that Alice's actions might have on Bob's 2-photon cross terms.

Here's a hint about what Alice might do to induce cross-terms into Bob's detectors.

Alice might decide, for instance, to "make real" states of Right and Left Circularly polarized light rather than H and V polarized light as in the START STATE. Alice can easily configure her two detectors (using a phase plate and a beam combiner) to register R and L light rather than H and V light.

If Alice's R-and-L-making action causes any amount of R and L light to appear at either one of Bob's detectors, this will have drastic consequences. Because R light incident on an H/V detector (the kind Bob has deployed) will always produce a random mixture of H and V counts -- that will certainly lead to cross terms in Bob's data. Likewise L light incident on Bob's detectors will inevitably produce cross terms via the same procedure.

The 2-photon EPR situation offers some hope that this could happen, via a process that Irwin Schrödinger dubbed "steering". Starting with EQ 1, which represents a perfect correlation of H and V photons between Alice and Bob, Alice can transform her detectors from the Plane-Polarized basis H/V to the Circularly-Polarized Basis R/L, where R and L are Right- and Left-circularly polarized photons. This transformation turns EQ 1 into:

ψ (EPR) = 1/√2 ( |RL> + |LR> )          (EQ4)

One interpretation of EQ 4 is that by Alice's choice to measure R/L polarization rather than H/V polarization, she was able to "steer" Bob's distant photons from a mixture of the H/V eigenstates into a mixture of the R/L eigenstates.

Can the same "steering mechanism" that works for the EPR state work its magic on the GHZ +1 state? If Alice can steer even the tiniest fraction of Bob's H/V photons into a R state and/or a L state, then transluminal signaling will be accomplished via the instant appearance of cross terms {of the form HV or VH) in Bob's two HV detectors.

Any physicist familiar with purported FTL signaling schemes will reflexively credit such a vaguely plausible argument as no more than a hopeful conjecture. And will suspend judgement until seeing some actual calculations. Omer at Jerusalem Center for Technology and Nick at Quantum Tantra Ashram in California are currently calculating the 16-term quantum correlation matrix that encodes the full behavior of the JJCCTT device for whatever detector choices Alice can make to try to signal Bob. These are very elementary calculations. But it is easy to make mistakes.

For the record: It was Omer who suggested that the GHZ + 1 system might be a promising candidate for FTL signaling. And it was Omer who proposed that Alice-controllable cross-terms in Bob's HV detectors might function as an FTL signal. And it was Nick who suggested that Alice might use Schrödinger "steering" to remotely create cross-terms in Bob's HV detectors. And Nick did the graphics.

RESULTS: Omer calculated the correlation matrix for the case where Alice chooses to measure R and L photons rather than H and V photons:

Now eight events can happen, but none produces Bob's HV or VH cross terms.

Next Omer considered rotating both Alice's detectors by 45 degrees so that Alice registers Diagonal (D) and Slant (S) polarized photons instead of H and V.

Again eight events can happen, but none produces Bob's HV or VH cross terms.

Neither of these two efforts on Alice's part succeeds in producing cross terms in Bob's detectors. And indeed a more general calculation that allows Alice to effect any possible combination of rotation and phase change in her detectors gives the same result. Nothing that Alice can do will produce an FTL signal in Bob's detector.

So the JJCCTT proposal fails as an FTL signaling device.

"Science is great, but it’s low-yield. Most experiments fail. That doesn’t mean the challenge isn’t worth it, but we can’t expect every dollar to turn a positive result. Most of the things you try don’t work out — that’s just the nature of the process. Rather than merely avoiding failure, we need to court truth." -- Ferric Fang, microbiologist

Citing the FTL signaling Impossibility proofs of Philippe Eberhard and many others, it would be easy to have anticipated our negative result, These well-known impossibility proofs state, in essence, that 1. YES, quantum Theory is non-local (by inspection); 2. YES, quantum Reality is non-local (proved by John Bell) but; 3. NO, the quantum Facts are as local as can be.

Despite the FTL nature of the Theory that represents the World, despite the FTL nature of the Reality which underlies the World, the World Herself displays not a speck of evidence for any FTL connections.

I wish to thank Omer at JCT for proposing this project and I appreciate the fun we had doing these calculations. But now, as in so many other encounters with quantum reality, we end up where we started, back home again at Physics for Beginners.

Omer and Nick: two collaborators separated by 10 time zones.

Six Optical Miracles

Paul Peter Ewald (1888-1985) and Carl Wilhelm Oseen (1879-1944)

Exactly 100 years ago a remarkable paper appeared in Annalen der Physik, a prestigious German physics journal in which both Max Planck and Albert Einstein published their findings. This paper, by German physicist Paul Peter Ewald explained how light behaves when it strikes a sheet of glass. Ewald, in 1915, explained, in effect, how a window works. A few year later, Swedish physicist Carl Wilhelm Oseen extended these findings to explain how light behaves when it strikes a crystal. Together the work of these two men is known as the Ewald-Oseen Extinction Theorem.

(A new proof of the extinction theorem by Mansur Mansuripur has recently been published here,)

What's so mysterious about how a window works. Isn't a window merely a sheet of glass?

A light wave traveling through a sheet of glass

When light strikes a window some of it bounces off (about 10%) and the remainder is refracted (bent) into the glass at an angle that depends on a number "n" called the refractive index which is different for different materials. If n is greater than 1, the light bends deeper into the material; if n is less than 1, the light bends towards the surface. 

In a vacuum the speed of light is equal to a constant c. But in material media, the velocity v of light is equal to: v = c/n. For visible light in glass, the refractive index is about 1.5, so light travels at about 70% of its vacuum speed: inside glass, light travels SLOW. On the other hand, for X-rays in many materials, the refractive index is less than 1, so X-ray light travels FAST -- faster than light in a vacuum.

But those "in the know" realize that not only did Einstein prohibit anything from traveling faster than light, he also showed that light always travels at the same speed no matter who's looking at it. So both the notion of fast X-ray light and slow light in glass would seem to be outlawed by relativity. However this notion of fast and slow light in material media is being taught to high school students. It's called Snell's Law (and seems to have been discovered first by Arab physicist ibn Sahl during the Islamic Golden Age.

Snell's Law (Ibn Sahl's Law) does not violate relativity, because Einstein and Snell (ibn Sahl) are talking about two different ways of measuring velocity. Einstein's prohibition refers to group velocity, how fast a packet of light can move, while Snell's Law refers to phase velocity, how fast the peaks of a wavelet can move. The difference between group and phase velocity is often illustrated by the difference between how fast a caterpillar moves (group velocity) and how fast one of his humps moves (phase velocity). It is clear from this analogy that the phase velocity can be faster or slower than whatever speed limit the caterpillar must obey. Here's a nice animation showing the difference between group and phase velocity for deep ocean waves. (In this ocean wave case, phase velocity is faster than group velocity.)

To fully appreciate the miraculousness of the Ewald-Oseen Extinction Theorem, we must first realize that glass consists of a random arrangement of electrically-excitable molecules. And that light is a traveling electromagnetic wave that will excite each of the molecules it encounters. Each excited molecule will emit a omni-directional light wave (of the same frequency as the incident light) in somewhat the same manner as an ocean buoy will emit a scattered wave when struck by an incident wave train.

Incident ocean wave striking a buoy produces scattered wave.

But light approaching a sheet of glass is not just going to strike one buoy, but approximately 10^24 buoys or about 1 million billion billion buoys (electrical excitable molecules). And these buoys (in glass) are arranged in a random fashion. What is the first thing you would imagine happening if a wave of light impinged on a medium composed of zillions of randomly arranged excitable molecules? Total chaos. That's what I would guess. The window will turn into some sort of deeply frosted glass that will randomly scatter light in every direction.

If windows are made of zillions of randomly arranged excitable molecules, then windows can not be transparent. That's what I would predict.

The first optical miracle is that windows are transparent. But the second, third and fourth miracle are even better.

Ewald proves for random media like glass (and Oseen does the same for ordered media such as crystals), that the net result of all of those zillions of little excited light waves add up to zero in every direction but three.

Only three big waves survive the fierce destructive interference between zillions of little waves. The first surviving wave travels in the same direction as the incident wave but vibrates exactly 180 degrees out of phase with the incident wave. Thus the incident wave is extinguished as it passes into the glass over a length of a few tenths of a micron (the extinction length). This exceedingly unlikely mechanism for extincting the incident wave gives the extinction theorem its odd name.

Two more waves survive the Great Destruction -- the reflected wave that seems to bounce off the glass but in reality is created by zillions of tiny molecules all radiating with the proper timing to direct a beam only in the reflected direction (and no other) much in the manner of phased-array radar antennas which do not physically move but are aimed by changing the phase relation between separate fixed transmitters. The glass molecules (like the phased-radars) are radiating in all directions but in both radar and window pane destructive interference removes light from every direction except one.

The third wave that survives the Great Cancellation is the internally transmitted wave that travels into the glass at "Snell's angle" with a "slow" phase velocity of c/n. Everywhere inside the glass the little wavelets travel at velocity c, but the net product of all their activity is an effective slow-phase wave, produced, like the reflected wave, by a kind of internal phased-antenna array consisting of zillions of glass molecules.

Here then are four optical miracles:

1. That glass is transparent despite its consisting of zillions of randomly situated electrically-excitable molecules;

2. That the excitable medium, all by itself, completely extinguishes the incident wave;

3. That the excitable medium, all by itself, synthesizes a "reflected wave" traveling in exactly the right direction and no other.

4. That the excitable medium, all by itself, synthesizes an "internal wave" traveling in exactly the right direction (Snell's Law) and no other.

These four miracles apply not just to windows but to anything made of glass, or to anything transparent for that matter, such as the lenses in telescopes, the lenses in your cameras, your eyeglasses, your contact lenses, the living lens and the clear fluid that fills your eye. The inner operation of each of these optical devices is explained by the four-fold miraculous Ewald-Oseen Extinction Theorem. (Happy Hundreth Anniversary!)

But wait. There's more. The EOET was derived in 1915 before quantum mechanics was devised. And quantum mechanics has one final miracle to add to the wonder of classical window panes and lenses.

Classical physics considered all of its waves to be "real", that is, made of something actually vibrating at every location where the wave exists. Quantum physics, on the other hand, considers its waves to be "unreal", that is, made only of sheer possibility. A light wave, for instance, represents only the possibility for a "photon" (or quantum of light) to be observed.

Quantum waves only become real in the act of observation, in a still mysterious process called by some "the collapse of the wave function".

Now imagine the situation of a single photon striking a window pane. I remind you that a window pane consists of a million billion billion electrically excitable molecules. And photons like to excite molecules. 

What do you suppose the odds are for the photon to exit the window pane without collapsing its wave function? Because there seem to be a zillion ways for that photon to lose its phase, to shed its dignity, to become entangled with the randomly arrayed electrically-excitable mess that we call "a pane of glass", I would naively guess that a pane of glass must collapse the photon wave function with 100% certainty.

But this conclusion is wrong. For exactly the same reason that the window pane is transparent (namely the Ewald-Oseen Extinction Theorem), the window pane has a lot of fun with the photon but does not actually collapse its wave function.

This is the fifth optical miracle: Window panes do not collapse the photon wave function.

Lenses do not collapse the photon wave function. Your contact lens does not collapse the photon wave function The living lens in your eye does not collapse the photon wave function. Your aqueous and vitreous humours do not collapse the photon wave function.

But inside your retina the photon wave function does somehow finally collapse into an actual event.

Which gives rise to this marvelous visual experience.

The sixth optical miracle.

Verse & Universe

Happy New Year 2015 !

Browsing through the Capitola Library on Christmas Eve, I came across a real gem. It's a big anthology of poetry about science and math called Verse & Universe. The poetry is mainly by non-scientists, taking the material of science as their inspiration. John Updike's justly famous poem about neutrinos is included but none of my own verse -- not even the eminently anthologizable Physics For Beginners. I am enjoying this big book in small bursts as if eating a box of chocolates. Reading this anthology is a good way for a scientist to begin the New Year, to appreciate so many fresh new perspectives on the craft of doing science. So far, having gobbled up only about 40 pages of the 300 plus in the box, my most favorite poem is one by Serbian-American Charles Simic which I reprint here:


MADONNA TOUCHED UP WITH A GOATEE

Most ancient Metaphysics, (poor Metaphysics!)
All decked up in imitation jewelry.
We went for a stroll, arm in arm, 
                                 smooching in public
Despite the difference in age.

It's still the 19th century, she whispered.
We were in a knife-fighting neighborhood
Among some rundown relics 
                      of the Industrial Revolution.
Just a little further, she assured me.
In the back of a certain candy store 
                                 only she knew about,
The customers were engrossed in 
              the Phenomenology of the Spirit.

It's long past midnight, my dove, my angel!
We'd better be careful, I thought.
There were young hoods on street corners
With crosses and iron studs 
                           on their leather jackets.
They all looked like they'd read Darwin 
                             and that madman Pavlov,
And were about to ask for a light.

Nick Emits Antimatter

Nick emits: 1 positron every 12 seconds

Fausto Marcon recently drew my attention to a blog post  by "tertiary source" entitled What's the Antimatter Content of a Banana? .

I guessed "Zero" but I was wrong.

I know that bananas are radioactive because they contain a lot of Potassium. And some of that Potassium exists as Potassium-40 (K-40), a long-lived radio-isotope left over from the creation of the Earth. But I had imagined, that K-40, like most naturally occurring radio-active substances, emitted beta and gamma rays which are just high-speed electrons and high-frequency light. In other words, ordinary matter -- just a bit more highly excited than the matter in your lipstick and in your coffee cup.

And that's for the most part correct.

But if you look up Potassium-40 in Wikipedia (which can be trusted on subjects as uncontroversial as the properties of atoms), you will find that this isotope possesses three separate decay modes. And that one of these decay modes involves the emission of a positron (or anti-electron) which is a fundamental particle with the same mass as the electron but with opposite charge. The positron is the simplest example of "antimatter" with the property that when an electron (matter) meets up with a positron (antimatter) both particles disappear in a flash of light (gamma rays) -- a process aptly named matter-antimatter annihilation. The positron was the first anti-particle discovered (by Carl Andersen in 1932) but every known particle has an antimatter partner, all of whom (I believe) have now been detected.

So along with a bunch of ordinary radioactivity, a banana emits antimatter as well, at a rate "tertiary source" estimates to be about 1 positron every 75 minutes -- or about 20 positrons per day.

But my body is filled with Potassium too. And I weigh a lot more than a banana. How much antimatter does Nick emit per day?

Let's face it. Everybody emits radiation whether they are aware of it or not. The main bodily radioisotopes are Potassium-40 and Carbon-14. If you are of average height and build, your radioactive Potassium will produce about 5000 decays per second while your radioactive Carbon produces 3000 decays per second. Much of this radioactivity is absorbed by the body but some escapes and can be detected by a sensitive radiation detector.

Though no fault of your own your body is radioactive.

During the past 60 seconds, the Potassium and Carbon inside your body have produced nearly 1/2 a million radioactive decays. But only a small fraction of these half-million decays are made of antimatter. The body's positron emission rate is about 5 per minute.

A banana takes about 75 minutes to create a single positron, but Nick emits antimatter every 12 seconds.

Nick emits antimatter every 12 seconds.

And so do you.

Just Ask Isaac

Isaac Newton

JUST ASK ISAAC
(for Ruth Kastner)

And where lies the Source of Gravity--
That draws to Earth both Moon and dingo?
"Beats me," spake the smartest man alive:
"Hypotheses non fingo."

Now Vicar Sacks is here to ask:
Sir, does your mother cheat at Bingo?
The Master of the Mint just scowled:
"Hypotheses non fingo."

Tell us, Lord, which is thy fave:
John or George or Paul or Ringo?
The Principia's author merely sneered:
"Hypotheses non fingo."

Professor, what do women want?
Can you uncrypt their alien lingo?
Newt pulled his cowl across his face:
"Hypotheses non fingo."

KISS -- a New Superluminal Communication Scheme

Demetrios A. Kalamidas

The phenomenon of quantum entanglement is truly bizarre. Two quantum particles (photons, electrons, atoms, for instance) that have once interacted seem in theory to behave as a single entity. No matter how distant their separation, an action on one seems (again only in the theory) to instantly affect the state of its distant partner -- which suggests that entangled particles can communicate faster than light. However no experiment with entangled particles has ever revealed a human-usable superluminal connection. Furthermore, using the very theory that describes entanglement, one can prove (in agreement with all current experiments) that superluminal signaling is impossible. However any impossibility proof is only as good as the assumptions that go into it. One can easily imagine that an ingenious way of making a quantum measurement might be discovered that evades the assumptions underlying these proofs, hence opening the door to a practical faster-than-light signaling scheme.

Recently Demetrios Kalamidas, who has a degree from CCNY and is currently working at New York nanotech company Raith USA, has proposed an FTL signaling scheme using a novel kind of quantum measurement. His proposal (which I have called KISS, for "Kalamidas's Instant Signaling Scheme) has been accepted for publication in the March 2013 issue of the Journal of the Optical Society of America. A preprint version with essentially the same content as Kalamidas's JOSA article appears here.

The KISS proposal is based on the observation that one member A of an entangled pair AB can show interference effects when its distant partner B is measured in a manner that "destroys which-path information". These interference effects vanish when B is measured in a manner that detects which of two paths B actually took. On the face of it this looks exactly like superluminal signaling were it not for the fact that in order to see this interference, "coincidence information" about results at B must be sent (at light speed or slower) and this information is necessary to separate the superluminal signal from noise.

One way of looking at this situation is that, using entangled particles, superluminal signals can indeed be sent. But these FTL messages are encrypted in a perfectly unbreakable cipher that can only be decoded using a key sent at light speed or slower. So far all schemes to send signals FTL have failed due to the necessity of sending this decryption key by conventional means.

The KISS scheme purports to be different. Kalamidas proposes to destroy "which-path" information in a novel way (that involves mixing the photons that carry this information with a kind of light that possesses an indefinite number of photons). Kalamidas calculates, in his JOSA paper, that this clever new way of introducing ambiguity into the which-path measurement of the B photon has an immediate effect on its A partner -- an effect that is "in the clear" and does not need to be decoded.

Although it is evident that this proposal is a bare naked FTL communication scheme, Kalamidas modestly entitles his paper A Proposal for a Feasible Quantum-optical Experiment to Test the Validity of the No-Signaling Theorem.

Sketch of the KISS proposal (from JOSA article)

Coille Effect

Frank Crawford playing his corrugahorn

Frank Crawford was a remarkable Berkeley physicist known for his flamboyant popularizations of physical phenomena. He built wave machines in the Sproul Plaza fountain, demonstrated the physics of
bull roarers, whistles and other acoustic noise-makers in public places, sold a musical instrument of his own invention (the corrugahorn) on Telegraph Avenue and authored a classic textbook Waves on wave phenomena.

I met the legendary Frank Crawford only once. In 1960, I was working at the Bevatron at Berkeley's Rad Lab, which was the Large Hadron Collider of its day, where the antiproton had just been discovered using instruments designed partly by Frank Crawford. I was standing next to the Bevatron beam line with a group of other scientists and Crawford spontaneously produced one of the first Aphorisms of Quantum Tantra: "Have you ever wondered, Nick, if we physicists have not all along been looking at Nature's backside?'

Among his many large accomplishments, Frank Crawford is the author of a small masterpiece: a physics paper with a rare measure of gallantry-- Coille Effect: A Manifestation of the Reversibility of Light Rays which appeared in the American Journal of Physics, Vol 41 1370 (1973) and which I reproduce here in its entirety:

One lovely late summer afternoon a friend and I were sitting outside basking in a very large tub of hot water. The afternoon sunlight was fragmented by the branches of a tree into many parallel beams, These beams were refracted at the water surface and gave leafy patterns of sunlight on the bottom of the tub. At the edges of the patterns Coille noticed color effects. With smug erudtion I explained these as being due to the greater refraction of blue than of red light. But that wasn't what she meant. Coille had noticed a peculiarity of the color effects. Depending on where she sat, the patterns either had colored edges or did not! When she sat with the sun coming over her shoulder the patterns appeared perfectly white (or sun-yellow rather). When she faced the sun and looked at the same patterns from the other side of the tub they had colored edges. At first I didn't believe her. How could the color depend on where you sit? Finally I was able to overcome my prejudice and see the effect. Then I didn't believe my eyes.

How can it be that a color pattern produced by refraction can look so different depending on the angle of view and whether one is close to it or not?


The explanation is straightforward and leads to a nice demonstration of the reversibility of the paths of light rays. In the Figure below we see a narrow beam of white (W) light incident along path 1 to 2, striking the water surface at point 2.

The blue (B) component of the white light is refracted more than the red (R) and goes from 2 to 4. Red goes from 2 to 3.

The bottom of the pool is a diffuse reflector. Therefore the points 3 and 4 each constitute a light source sending out light in all directions.

Coille effect in a Berkeley hot tub

Consider an observer whose eye is located near the point 1 and who looks to the pattern of light emitted by the sources at 3 and 4. Because of the reversibility of light rays the path of the red light from point 3 to the obsever at 1 must be along path 3 to 2 to 1. Similarly, blue light from 4 that gets to the observer must take path 4 to 2 to 1.

Thus both red and blue return to point 1 along path 2 to 1, that is, they enter the observer's eye traveling in the same direction along the same ray. Thus the observer sees points 3 (red) and 4 (blue) superposed. They both appear to come from the direction of point 8. Her eye and brain now combine the color spectrum and she sees a white spot on the bottom of the pool.

Now consider what happens when she moves her head from point 1 to point 7. (The light beam is still incident along ray 1 to 2.)

Suppose that the blue light from point 4 travels along path 4 to 6 to 7. What path must the red light take in going from 3 to 7?

If it could go along path 3 to 6 to 7, then the blue and red beams would superpose to give a white spot.

But that would demand that the red light refract more than blue at point 6, whereas we know that the red refracts less than the blue.

Thus the red light takes a path 3 to 5 to 7. The observer at 7 therefore sees red and blue light incident from different directions, and thus sees a smeared-out color spectrum on the bottom of the pool.

Thus we have explained Coille's observation.

In case one has a suitable pool (several feet deep with a smooth water surface) and sunlight, but no foliage to make beams, one can make sunbeams by punching holes in a large piece of cardboard and floating this on the surface of the water.

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the acute observations of Coille Hooven which were the basis of this note.

====================================

 NOTE: I have not seen what I call the Coille effect mentioned anywhere. I searched in standard optics textbooks and in that beautiful book by M. Minnaert Light and Color (Dover, New York 1954).

 ====================================

The Bologna E-Cat

Four Bologna E-Cats: nearest one covered in insulation.

A remarkable new source of energy has been demonstrated at the University of Bologna. It appears to be a type of cold fusion in which nuclear reactions are initiated at temperatures of a few hundred degrees. At present the mechanism is unknown but the device produces substantial quantities of power for several hours.

In a preliminary demonstration in January 2011, the inventor Andrea Rossi and his scientific collaborator Professor Sergio Focardi at the University of Bologna showed off a version of their device, called "E-Cat" for "energy catalyzer", which produced 12 kW for a number of hours. The energy emerges from the device in the form of hot steam.

The E-Cat's fuel consists of Nickel powder and Hydrogen gas plus a "secret Italian sauce" that is necessary for the reaction to proceed. Rossi apparently discovered this secret catalyst though a long process of trial and error.

On March 29, 2011, the Bologna scientists performed a second demonstration of a smaller "more stable" version of the E-Cat (pictured above) that produced 4.4 kW for a period of 6 hours resulting in a total energy output of 24 kWh. Besides the "secret sauce" the reactor was fueled with 50 grams of Nickel and 1.1 grams of Hydrogen. I infer from their report that the reaction was terminated before the fuel was exhausted so we do not as yet know the ultimate capacity of this new Bologna energy source.

The second demonstration was witnessed by two members of a Swedish skeptics society who were allowed complete access to the E-Cat at all stages of its operation. The Swedish team could not discover any covert sources of energy and concluded from the facts available that some new form of nuclear reaction was involved. 

According to physicist Brian Josephson, who has followed the cold fusion effort more closely than I, the Bologna research is self-funded but a Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies has contracted Rossi and Focardi to build a 1 MegaWatt reactor in Athens, Greece, which they hope to achieve by linking together 300 of the 4.4 kW demonstration model E-Cats.

Rossi and Focardi are also carrying out experiments to determine the nature of the reaction or reactions that power this device. For a nuclear scientist the most puzzling feature of the Rossi-Focardi E-Cat is that it produces substantially no gamma rays and no radioactive byproducts. A cursory study of possible reaction mechanisms between protons (Hydrogen) and Nickel suggests that both gamma rays and radioactive isotopes of Nickel should be produced. Because these expected products seem to be absent, the answer to the question: "What is the mechanism for the Rossi-Focardi reaction?" will probably turn out to be highly unconventional.

Until a plausible (and experimentally verifiable) nuclear mechanism is put forth, scientists are wise to suspend their belief. One obvious experiment that begs to be done is to run a small E-Cat to exhaustion while carrying out isotopic analysis at various stages of the process. I am hoping that Rossi and Focardi will publish soon the results of such an experiment.

Nuclear Data Table on the Ni/Cu region. Click to expand.

Above is the nuclear data table for the Ni/Cu region of nuclides. Click to expand. First number under the element sign is that element's natural abundance and/or half life. For instance the natural abundance of Ni58 is 68.3% and the half-life of Ni59 is 80,000 years. When a nuclide absorbs a proton it makes a pawn-like move one square upwards in the chart.

We can use this table, for instance, to see what happens when the most abundant Nickel isotope absorbs a proton.  Ni58 + p --> Cu59. (We see from the table that Cu59 has a half-life of 81.8 sec and decays into Ni59 by emitting a positron and gamma rays.) Since this reaction produces gamma rays, both directly and through the annihilation of the resulting positron, and also produces a radioactive residue of Ni59, this hypothetical reaction cannot be responsible for the E-Cat's energy production.

So if it's a nuclear reaction, which reaction is it? Using this table, can you devise a plausible cold-fusion scheme that 1) emits no gamma rays and 2) does not create a radioactive residue of Ni59, Ni63 or Ni65?

Whatever the origin of its power, this new Bologna power source is extremely light (10 pounds) and compact, producing 4.4 kW for at least 6 hours (and probably much longer) using 50 grams of Nickel (an American Nickel coin weighs exactly 5 grams) and 1.1 grams of Hydrogen (an amount that would fill a seven-foot balloon).

For comparison purposes let's consider the properties of the largest home electric generator sold by Honda--the Honda Eu6500.

The Honda Eu6500 (pictured below) weighs 250 pounds and produces 6.5 kW of power (compared to one E-Cat's 4.4 kW). The Honda is fueled by gasoline and will run 5 hours on its 4.7 gallon tank producing about 30 kWh of energy compared to the 25 kWh produced by one E-Cat during its most recent demonstration.

Quantitatively the Bologna E-Cat's output is comparable to the Honda generator but there is one important difference. The Honda outputs its energy in the form of electricity while the E-Cat in its present stage of development produces its energy in the form of heat.

Congratulations, Rossi and Focardi! May your secret Italian sauce transform the world.

Honda Eu6500 Portable Generator

Fukushima Fallout Reaches Berkeley

University of California at Berkeley

Radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear reactor catastrophe reached the American West coast around March 18 and was measured by physicists at the University of Washington in Seattle and at the University of California in Berkeley.

Both Jonathan Diaz Leon and his team in Seattle and Kai Vetter's team in Berkeley agreed that the amount of radiation recorded was insignificant compared to everyday radiation inside our own bodies
(due mainly to Potassium 40), in the air we breathe (Radon 222) and from cosmic rays from outer space. Both teams measured the number of radioactive particles in air by passing the air through filters, removing the filters and placing them inside sensitive gamma-ray detectors. Because each radio-isotope emits gamma rays with a unique energy, the researchers were able not only to measure the quantity of radioactive fallout but its specific isotopic composition.

In addition to measuring increased radiation in the air, the Berkeley team gathered rainwater and measured its radioactivity as well.

Both teams reported their results in official physics units as Becquerels/liter. One Becquerel equals one atomic decay per second. Both teams independently detected the same pattern of radioactive isotopes in the air.  For Berkeley air, the highest results were on the order of 3-4 mBq/liter. For Seattle air, the results were similar but slightly higher.

In addition to measuring the increased radioactivity of both rainwater (3-20 Bq/liter) and air (0.7 - 3.2 mBq/liter), the Berkeley team compared their results to a radiation risk that most people take for granted--air travel. Humans at sea level are shielded to a large extent from cosmic rays by the atmosphere above them but because commercial aircraft fly so high much of this atmospheric shielding is absent. Consequently the cosmic ray exposure of airline passengers and crew can be up to 100 times the exposure on the ground. Cosmic rays however are only a small part (10%) of natural radiation (see pie chart). Roughly speaking, for every three hours you spend in the air you might expect to accumulate an extra day's worth of natural radiation.

For communicating with an anxious public, the Berkeley researchers decided to report the results of their air and rainwater sampling like this:

Fukushima radiation in Berkeley air: According to our measurements, the exposure to the public is very low -- at the highest levels we measured, breathing the air for 2,000 years would increase one's radiation dose by the same amount received by taking a cross-country airplane flight.

Fukushima radiation in Berkeley water: The calculated exposure to the public is so low that the consuming of ~500 liters of this water would only increase dose by the same amount received by taking a cross-country airplane flight.

A good source of information about natural radioactivity (including information about the activity (in Becquerels) of such unlikely radioactive objects as bananas, Brazil nuts and lima beans) may be found here. Another good source for natural radiation (from which the pie chart was taken) and a wonderful photograph of M. Becquerel, the discoverer of radioactivity, can be found here. A remarkable chart prepared by Randall Monroe of XKCD comic fame that provides a fresh perspective on radiation dosages is located here.

A Black Hole in Nick's Sink

William Unruh

The fastest velocity that any object in the universe can attain is the speed of light. But in certain extreme situations even the speed of light is not fast enough.

For instance, at the event horizon of a black hole, gravity warps spacetime so strongly that nothing can escape, not even a light beam. Also in a universe which is expanding at an ever-increasing rate (which was recently discovered to be the case for our own universe), there will be times and places for which the rate of expansion will be faster than light speed. When space is expanding faster than light, light traveling in such a space will always "fall behind" and there will be places ahead of it that the light can never reach--even in infinite time. Such an cosmic expansion-induced barrier to light travel is called a "future horizon" and resembles in many ways the event horizon of a black hole.

Physics thrives on experiment but we cannot build black holes nor future horizons in the laboratory. However William Wooters and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia are investigating situations in which the speed of sound in a liquid behaves in analogous ways to the speed of light in spacetime. Despite many differences between sound and light propagation there is much to be learned from these sonic analogs of black holes and future horizons.

In a recent paper "Dumb Holes: Analogues for Black Holes" Unruh imagines a fish has just fallen over a waterfall whose rate of fall at some distance is greater than the speed of sound. Once the fish falls past this point, its screams for help can never reach its fellows on top of the falls. The fish has fallen into what Unruh calls a "dumb hole" in the sense of "deaf and dumb". The fish has fallen into the sonic equivalent of a black hole. Just as light cannot escape from a black hole, sound cannot escape from a Unruhian dumb hole.

It is easy in the laboratory to produce streams of water that travel faster than sound. In fact you can do this in your kitchen sink. A stream of water falling into the sink from the faucet and hitting a flat surface will usually be traveling faster than sound and its speed will decrease as it spreads out into a circular shape. At a certain distance from the faucet this speed will have slowed to the point where it is close to the velocity of sound. At this point an unusual phase change called a "hydraulic jump" takes place in which the water abruptly slows by using some of its kinetic energy to raise a bump in the flow.

The hydraulic jump phenomenon is robust and easily reproducible. And the math describing this peculiar sonic transition is similar enough to the situations at future horizons and black hole event horizons that these simple kitchen sink experiments can stimulate and inspire better descriptions of powerful cosmic processes out near the edges of the universe.

"Black Hole" in Nick's kitchen sink

77 Arguments

John Duns Scotus (not Giovanni Riccioli)

77 ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE MOVEMENT OF THE EARTH

In a recent paper published in the Physics ArXiv, Christopher Graney presents a translation from the Latin of a section of Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli's Almagestum Novum (1651) in which Riccioli presents 77 arguments against the motions of the Earth that the new Copernican (1473-1543) system required. Riccioli (1598-1691) was a Jesuit priest who is still remembered for mapping and naming the main features on the Moon's surface (including ironically the giant Copernicus crater) and for being the first to measure the Earth's gravitational acceleration.

In Riccioli's day, questions about the true motions of the Earth and planetary system were as topical and exciting as today's speculations about the results from the Large Hadron Collider with the additional spice (not present in today's frontier physics) that certain answers could get you locked up or burned at the stake as was the case with Galileo (1564-1642) and Bruno (1548-1600).

Graney presents Riccioli's arguments plus the Copernican counter argument which in many cases was non-existent. In particular Riccioli cites many physical effects (the Coriolis force, for instance) which should be observable if the Earth is really rotating. None of Riccioli's effects had been observed in his day so the experimental facts did indeed seem to support a stationary Earth just as the Catholic Church's doctrines required.

One amusing use of Riccioli's arguments is to test your own knowledge of physics. Of course "everybody knows" that the Earth is rotating but can you defend today's common knowledge against the arguments of an educated seventeenth-century Jesuit? Why, for instance, do we not witness powerful winds blowing from East to West as the Earth rotates (at a supersonic equatorial velocity of 1000 miles/hour)? When NASA launches its rockets eastward it utilizes the Earth's eastward rotation as an additional boost. Why does this work in space but not on Earth? Why--if the Earth is really rotating so rapidly--doesn't a ball thrown to the East travel further than a ball thrown to the West? asks Father Riccioli in Argument #20. A very instructive physics course could be designed using Riccioli's arguments as a basis for teaching Newtonian mechanics.

Reading Riccioli is also a excellent exercise in the realization that Today's Obvious Truth is forever in danger of suddenly being demoted to Tomorrow's Naked Absurdity. Pay special attention to areas where acquiring and publishing knowledge has been declared illegal or is being actively suppressed.

Graney points out that the Copernican System was accepted not because its supporters refuted all of Riccioli's arguments--some of his predicted rotational effects remained unobserved well into the 19th century--but because of the persuasive power of Newton's new laws of motion which provided a firm theoretical foundation for the Copernican moving-Earth model against the fixed-Earth picture of Tycho Brahe.

In preparing this post I accidentally discovered that riccioli is a type of pasta. But it was not named after the Italian Jesuit who published these 77 arguments against the Copernican motion of the Earth.

Zen Education

Sheldon Glashow (recent pix)

In 1979 Sheldon Glashow shared the Nobel Prize in physics for his part in the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces, but in 1962, he was just another faculty member at Stanford with a taste for big cigars and small red sports cars.

In the crowded quarters of the Inner Quad, because I was a teaching assistant in a second-floor lab, I was given an office on that floor while less-fortunate grad students were relegated to "the Zoo" on the third floor--a large open area full of desks directly under the roof which was also home to pigeons, squirrels and (some claimed) owls. My second-floor office happened to be located right across the hall from Shelly Glashow's lair.

Lasers had just been invented then and were a topic of hot discussion. I had heard that red lasers were easy to make but that green lasers were harder, and blue lasers almost impossible. (Few are aware that the Blue-Ray laser in your DVD player represents a remarkable technological breakthrough.) I wondered what physics principle mades high-frequency lasers so difficult to build so I decided to ask Shelly Glashow.

I knocked on his door, posed my question and he asked: "Who are you?"

I told Shelly I had an office across the hall, was a second-year graduate student and he replied: "Get out of here. You can answer that question by yourself."

Shelly was right. In a few hours I was able to derive the answer from basic physics principles.

Not only did I discover the answer but I never forgot it. If Glashow had explained it to me I would almost certainly have forgotten it along with thousands of other physics facts that entered my mind in those days and quickly exited the other side.

Thanks, Shelly, for encouraging me to think for myself, and for embodying (no doubt unknowingly) the subtle art of teaching without teaching.

Les Blatt Finally Graduates

In the early 60s S. Leslie Blatt and I worked for our PhDs under Walter Meyerhof, sharing time on the same accelerator in the basement of Stanford's Varian Lab. Earning an undergraduate degree at Princeton, a PhD at Stanford, Les went on to do research at Ohio State University and chaired its physics department for many years. Then he took a post at Clark where he was Dean of their graduate school. After a long and distinguished career in physics, summarized here, Les Blatt is at last getting out of school. He's retiring this month--finally graduating from the academic community he served so well.

One well-kept secret about Professor Blatt is that when the world got Les as a physicist, it lost a talented writer of musical comedy. It was the custom at Stanford for graduate students to satirize their profession and their professors at the annual physics Christmas party. Most of these satires are best forgotten but one of the most ambitious efforts along these lines deserves to be remembered--an unabridged parody of Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady by Les Blatt and Dave Coward. I remember this production especially well because the principals rehearsed it in the living room of the house in Woodside that I shared with fellow Stanford grad student Chuck Buchanan.

Highlights follow (from my copy of Physical Revue--its title a spoof of America's major physics journal Physical Review--thanks, Les):

The play opens with Higgins (a theorist) and Pickering (an experimentalist) striding about Higgins's office, bemoaning the low quality of physics students. They sing:

...Clever grad students--two or three--

Working hard for their PhDs.

Who'd do my work for me.

Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?...

Higgs: By golly, Pickering, you've got something there. A clever student once in a while would be a real joy. But they seem so rare these days.

Pick: Rare? They don't exist. What's more there isn't one who's even average. They're all stupid!

Higgs: Now, now, You're being too harsh. Perhaps we ourselves are partly to blame...

Pick: Nonsense! Students are irrational, that's all there is to that--their heads are full of wires, nuts and brads. They're nothing but an oscillating, relaxating, congregating group of beer and coffee drinking, never-thinking, irritating grads!

Higgs: Why can't we teach our physics students how to think?

The subject matter's easy; the concepts are distinct.

If YOU learned as slowly as a lot of your students do,

Why you might end up in engineering too!

Pick: I beg your pardon!

Higgs: Why can't we teachers teach our students how to think?
We say it to them clearly; they just sit there and blink...

Psychologists ply their art on man
Which seems quite narcissistical,
While chemists learn their alchemy
With methods that are mystical!

But educating physics students is the task I preach.
Oh, why can't professors
Why can't professors
Why can't professors...learn...to...teach?

Pick: Well, perhaps you are right. But if you feel that way, why haven't you done anything about it?

Higgs: Pickering, I have. I'm convinced that the new method I'm working on is the answer. Why I could turn ANYONE into a first-rate quantum mechanic, thermo-dynamo and general all-round good guy at coffee hour. And in just a few weeks.

Pick: Oh? There you go exaggerating again. If your method is so good, why haven't I seen any of these marvelous products of your mind?

Higgs: Simply not enough time.

Pick: Ha! I call your bluff, mister wiseguy theoretiker. The next person that walks in that door is your guinea pig, sir. You've got to turn them into a physicist. And I'll give you exactly thirty days, no more.

[A knock on the door reveals Liza Doolittle, a Stanford pom-pom girl selling Big Game tickets. Higgins goes to work, teaching Liza how to pass as a physicist and Pickering schedules a PhD oral exam for her in thirty days in front of Stanford's top professors.]

Liza: Alpha j commutes with gamma five.

Higgs: By Schiff, she's got it! By Schiff, she's got it!

Now once again, the game we play...

Liza: Alpha j, alpha j!

Higgs: Now make the sign survive...

Liza: Gamma five, gamma five!

Liza, Higgins, Pickering: The alpha j commutes with gamma five.

The alpha j commutes with gamma five.

[On the appointed day, Liza and Higgins enter the Small Seminar Room where she will be examined by a trio of eminent Stanford profs--Sid Drell, Charlie Schwartz and Wolfgang Panofsky.]

Higgs: Thank heaven for Wolfgang Panofsky!

If he hadn't been there, I'd have died of boredom.

Yes, he was there, all right, and up to his old tricks.

Armed with his perennial grin,

His form factors and pion spin,

He made it his devilish business to show

How much Miss Doolittle didn't know.

First I tried to slow him down--

Persons of such great renown should take it slow.

Finally I decided it was foolish

Not to let him carry out his plan.

So I stepped aside...That's when the fun began!

Using problems from his book

He thought he had her on the hook...

Maxwell tensors, gee-mu-nu's

But he could not get her confused.

And when at last the test was done,

He turned and said: "Okay, you've won!"

Pick: That's why I say you did it,

You did it, you did it!

You said that she would do it,

And indeed she did!

You took a pure beginner

And you made of her a winner.

There's no doubt about it.

YOU...DID IT!

[Higgins celebrates with Pickering but, upon returning to his office, discovers a telegram from Liza declaring that she has left Stanford for a high-paying job in industry. Higgins is dismayed and dejected by Liza's departure. But eventually Liza changes her mind, arrives back in Higgins's office and expresses her decision to stay.]

Liza: I've grown accustomed to this place;

I like its easy-going way.

I like the Navy paying bills,

The monster in the hills,

The lecture tower,

The coffee hour--

They're quite a habit with me now...

I didn't know how much I'd miss it when to industry I went.

Now that I'm back at Stanford, I'm starving but content.

I've grown accustomed to the search for fundamental facts--

Accustomed...to this...place.

CURTAIN FALLS TO THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE

Congratulations S. Leslie Blatt on your distinguished career in the service of science! I wish you many happy years of retirement and encourage you to consider writing musical comedy again. These few highlights only hint at the brilliance of your full production which bore the unforgettable title:  

MY FINE MAN