Creating Our Wild Future Today: A look back at Neil Turok’s The Universe Within (2012)

Neil Turok. The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos. House of Anansi Press, 2012. 312 pp. $15.00 (paperback). ISBN: 978-1-77089-015-2.

The opportunity of all time. This is where Dr. Neil Turok, now serving as director for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, says we stand today. We are on the verge of experiencing a full-fledged technological revolution that will bring us closer to nature than ever before. Our computers, communications, and politics; our bodies, medicine, and ideas about what makes us happy and healthy: all of these are set to change. For over 75 years lessons from quantum mechanics–getting to know how things work at a sub-atomic level–have shown us that nothing is really real until we see it as such. It just may become so that from the comfort of our kitchen we will be able to stop deadly disease from stressing and ruining our bodies, or that our computers will block Facebook from opening when it senses our procrastination urge building up to critical levels.

In 2012, Dr. Turok partnered with the CBC to deliver five lectures to prepare us for this opportunity of a lifetime by showing us how we got here and what sort of mindset we should adopt to best proceed. Those lectures are collected in the five chapters of The Universe Within. In an interview about his tour, Turok foretold computers not only able to hold every book that can be written, but every book that could ever be written. Computer bits of 0 or 1, he has written, will be replaced by bits of possible 1s or maybe 0s (p. 222).

This life of tomorrow—if it does all work out—is totally at odds with what we think of life today: a day-to-day life that follows the laws as laid out by Newton’s Principia, and which, on the whole, works well with defined movements and places in time and space. Turok’s task of preparing us for a life based on probability is not an easy one. Although he characterizes the near future as a “program or be programmed” world (p. 237), this book is not so much a warning as a call to action, for us to “run our societies more creatively and responsively, based on a greater awareness of the whole” (p. 198). Quantum physics has taught us that nature is choosing from an infinite set of options at any one time, and we as whole societies (not just the scientists) should exercise our power to choose what we want for our future. The lectures aim to tell people what the choices are and they all share a friendly, enlightening tone. They can be read out of order without any comprehension lost.

This book has some science history, but not enough to satisfy an amateur of that field. The history of ancient texts transcribed into Latin, for example, does not exceed more than ten lines across the book. Brief accounts of breakthroughs are matched with social commentary, and recommendations for a scientific way of life. Aside from key anecdotes surrounding key moments of paradigm shift, Turok’s goal is not to rewrite what many historians of science have already covered. More than anything, this book is about the state of affairs of science as we have inherited it today. Neil Turok wants us to double down on our understanding of this universe (forget the multiverse for now, as he is famous for arguing), and in so doing, build life systems that reflect nature and her beautiful improbabilities, rather than those that approximate human thought and action.

The book begins with Turok recounting his family’s struggle against the apartheid system in South Africa, his childhood home. The end of that era, when an old idea of inequality lost its footing and its premises lost their validity, serves as a foundation for the main message of this book: that (to borrow the words of American teacher Wayne Dyer) when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.

This may not be a history book, but readers who enjoy time-traveling will still enjoy it. We get whisked off to the Trinity College office of Sir Isaac, where he stood on the shoulders of Kepler and those who came before to reach for the cosmos and bring to Earthly phenomena what he understood as universal laws of physics. We are led through brief outlines of the advancements made by the Principia’s beneficiaries, on toward what I think is the most exciting eureka moment described in the book: when, in 1861, James Clerk Maxwell clocked the speed of an electromagnetic wave as the same speed as light.

A young J.C. Maxwell. Image from Nature.com, credited Bettmann/CORBIS.

The view on life that one needs to make such discovery is an open one, and it is engendered by a society, as Turok writes, that is optimistic, confident, and open (p. 50). Anaximander, the ancient Greek philosopher, embodies the spirit of inquiry that has touched the lives of scientists through the ages. Despite having lived in the 6th century BC he appears throughout The Universe Within as a spirit guide, because he combined a confident sense of being able to know the universe, even though he also somehow figured it to be infinite. This sense of proceeding in thought and action without being crippled by a paradox—a marker of first-rate intelligence by the measure of F. Scott Fitzgerald– is portrayed again by Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Paul Dirac, and their scientific compatriots gathered in Brussels in 1927 at the Fifth International Solvay Conference (p.80).
The second chapter takes a look at the paradigm-shaking inquiry that took place here, when the “classical view of the world had finally collapsed” (p. 57). This chapter (Our Imaginary Reality”) would be the most interesting to scholars of science history as Turok places the launch of quantum theory in 1925, when Werner Heisenberg published an article calling for scientists to change their expectations of what can be measured at the quantum level, especially with regard to the position and the orbital movements of electrons. A paradigm change was needed because none of the laws of physics could describe electrons and photons.

Anaximander spotted in Raphael’s The School of Athens (Scuola di Atene) (approx. 1510)

This is a particularly moving part of the book because it shows the different kinds of genius personified by Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. It is recounted here how Bohr told Einstein to stop telling God what to do, and how Bohr was able to bring an open, philosophical mindset to scientific inquiry. Albert Einstein, despite having trouble trusting in a new paradigm as called for by Heisenberg, where probabilities become more important than defined parts and pieces, had established that matter was energy, and his life’s work become formulating around a paradigm of general relativity. Thomas Kuhn wrote that, “To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself”. Einstein knew this, and it is no wonder that he and his colleagues looked so forlorn in the Brussels group picture which is included in a set of pictures in the middle of the book.

Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) is a physicist turned philosopher whose model of paradigm change affected the understanding of many disciplines, both scientific and otherwise.

Cosmology and the study of the universe’s history and fate began to be influenced by discoveries made in that time of scientific revolution. Chapter three finds Turok at Princeton, delving into the mysteries of deep space, an activity of science which aims to produce an answer to the chapter’s title: “What Banged?”. Turok describes his earliest exposure to the inflationary model, finding it hard to lend credence to such a bold claim that comes from envisioning a time and space billions of years away from any human set of eyes. In 1992 though, the Far Infrared Radiation Survey aboard the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) sent pictures to confirm such a model: the radiation of space’s vacuum had a temperature that fluctuated by small amounts. These variations in temperature could be calculated to match the fluctuations in matter density as it expanded from a point.

A series of infrared imaging satellites have taken photographic evidence of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation: the Cosmic Background Explorer launched in 1989, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe of 2001, and the ESA’s Planck Satellite of 2009. (Image credit JPL , NASA, and the ESA)

Part of the magic that Turok wished to share with the general public was how physical experience can be predicted from mathematics worked out on paper and that there is a beauty to making such formulae. Chapter Four presents Richard Feynman and Paul Dirac’s influence on beautifying the math behind what we know about the universe and Turok’s version of the final result is presented as a graphic. “The World in an Equation” sets out a brief account of the lives of the physicists (Planck, Noether, Dirac, Hubble) whose work contributed to this equation of all known physics. Turok focuses on what made them different, in a social identity sense, from those who came before: some were Jewish, some were women—people who, a generation earlier, would not have been allowed to expound so publicly on our universe from the podiums of universities.

The Universe Within is most valuable for its lesson on the value of activating untapped talent around the world. Turok speaks about Africa in particular, but it is easy to connect the experience of his African students to different class and gender divides in other countries, even in the industrialized West. Turok, in 1993, worked a double-life to found the African Institute for Mathematical Science in South Africa, and the professional scientists and educators who emerged from training at AIMS helped set that community’s dream for the next Einstein to be African. The power of belief in a paradigm of opportunity is revisited here: Turok’s contemporaries warned him that these students would need remedial math and physics. Instead of seeing his students as fundamentally “behind”, he saw them as beings conscious of the opportunity being granted to them, and thus willing to work harder than ever to achieve their goal.

The AIMS in Cape Town, South Africa is an example of modern educational breakthrough.

Louis C.K. introduces us to the “Opportunity of All Time” of the final chapter, where everything is amazing and nobody’s happy. Turok urges us to mix our humble humanity with a spirit of confidence that we can know, an action-oriented spiritual mix that would match that of Anaximander and his colleagues across space and time. Lead our lives with open minds and we can let ourselves pursue new goals and direct science accordingly. Scientists ought not to despair at the vast complexity of nature, and the rest of society should take comfort in being able to control their own destiny and understanding of the world around them. Turok sees adventure into the unknown as exciting rather than a futile adventure, a self-admitted difference between him and some of his famous contemporaries who have been writing about cosmology, space, and time. A big part of this book’s value comes from this optimistic take on the power of our current technology. Particularly prescient is the reflection of the world libraries we carry in our pockets, whereby the libraries of the greats (like Darwin and Newton) can fit on one normal bookshelf (p. 223).

The Universe Within is written for a general readership, though not everyone will be able to grasp the particular aspects of what makes discoveries in quantum physics fascinating, even though Turok tries his best to analogize. His metaphors can get messy, such as when he uses J.K. Rowling’s Dementors in combination with a microeconomics analogy to describe the “ultraviolet catastrophe” and its solution thought up by Max Planck (p. 68).
Such a concept may remain vague to me, but I understand that in part this is because I have little practice with the quantum paradigm. I am not troubled, because Turok provides enough evidence from being a life-long learner and educator in science that with the power of a community working to understand together, individuals can understand, and we can come to know one thing or another. Among the important messages in this book is that science ought to have a purpose, and that it finds its purpose in the human community: “Science is about people… scientists need to have a purpose for their work, and society needs to have the same sense of purpose in supporting the scientists (p. 50)”. If we give ourselves a chance to understand nature at its fundamental patterns of probability and uncertainty, and so orient ourselves on a path that on many days might seem futile, we might succeed in building a better world than any of us can dream today.

Sometimes a great picture, like this one of the Milky Way, can inspire us to understand even if it’s all so complex.

Quirks and Quarks: Open Season on Knowledge

There is lots of prettiness to the Canadian view of seasonal change. There’s something out there, though, that can’t be seen– and yet it is as exciting as the crisp air calling for layers, and as stirring as the color on the dying leaves. Every Saturday afternoon, this part of the world gets a radio signal from the CBC within which rides a new episode of Quirks and Quarks!

The fortieth season premier of this famed science investigation programme was broadcast last Saturday, September 6th, and served up the latest in fresh, assorted science stories. Bob McDonald returned as our guide amidst the latest activity in world scientific inquiry, once again granting us access to the products and possible consequences of such endeavours.

Canadian science culture is in no better hands than those of its champion, Mr. McDonald. With his team of producers, he has made Quirks and Quarks into a powerhouse of what many call ”popular science”. Since the show’s inception in the 1970s, popular science came into its golden era and science writers have created a name for themselves at every major news publication. This show still carries a unique legacy: it’s pure public inquiry– facts and findings yet uncolored by politics, the most useful kind of publicized inquiry available right now.

Nowhere else can we get faster access to the experts in the latest issues of interest and concern. Some of these stories are distressing– Ebola killing researchers, and a surge in tusk-less elephant carcasses— but McDonald’s candour in building rapport with his guests lets us see where solutions can come from. If we can be a part of that solution (even by raising awareness and sticking to the facts we hear from these researchers), our own experience can be as scientific as that of the people who started the conversation.

Not all the stories seem relevant to our lives but that doesn’t mean we can’t use the lessons they reflect to remind us what it means to benefit from a scientific mindset. Take last episode’s segment on moose spit, as an example. Dr. Bazely of the York University in Toronto found that moose saliva inhibits toxin growth on fescue grass– a finding that came from discussions of “Friday afternoon science”, as the professor calls it, and a “why not just see” attitude. By applying a scientific method to a place that instinct told them to look, Dr. Bazely’s team gained insight into the evolution of animal diet and digestion.

In a world that needs better ways to sustain large-scale agriculture and clean water reservoirs, it isn’t such a stretch to consider that such a study could become very valuable very quickly. Most of the time, the world around us– even our government policies– are organized by instinct alone. Commissioned studies easily get swayed by superstition and various biases when carried out.

Quirks and Quarks episodes arrive as a welcome break to hundreds thousands of the world’s thinkers, but it is a learning experience as much as one of leisure. Each hour covers news from an unlimited spectrum of domains (this last episode brought us the words of biologists, a computational geneticist, a paleontologist, and a glacial ecologist). The show’s style of truthiness and its focus on observable facts is refreshing at a time when many science stories need to appear alongside other topics of popular discussion, and need to have an arresting headline– which might cause the public to learn to disregard the discussion as a whole.

Even if we don’t know the basics of astrophysics, we can still use the latest news from space to shift our perspective of what kind of life system we are a part of. By working according to a clearer picture of the cosmos and our place in it, we can be more truthful with ourselves and others, and our work in the world can reflect these circumstances that have been found to be closest to reality.

To listen to the latest Quirks and Quarks and access a six-month archive of shows, visit this page. One can also simply input “Quirks” into whatever podcast aggregator service they have. The show plays on CBC Radio at noon EST on Saturday and at 3 PM on Mondays, airing on Sirius XM channel 169 at the same time.

This week’s episode was released today! It has an interview with the CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society who was on the expedition that discovered the remains of one of Cpt. Sir John Franklin’s ship earlier this week. On the side, Bob McDonald published his latest column on the two-way relationship between this discovery and the changing Arctic climate.

Also, series producer Jim Lebens debuts “The Next Big Thing”, a series examining the building of science mega-projects, and what we can expect from the inquiry being conducted at these places. First up in the series: the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. Thirty-five countries are trying to get this thing built so they can see whether nuclear fusion is a reliable and sustainable source for electric power!

photo of the ITER in Cadarache, France, from Belgium’s info-site on the project http://iter.rma.ac.be/

Music Review: Above, Convenience Store!’s Vermilion Concord

Consider the infinite universe: given the possibility of other worlds and other Earth-type planets—let alone the other Earths in alternate universes—how soon before we make contact with another life-form? The idea has troubled our creative consciousness for ages in the annals of science-fiction, and now it has been revived in musical form by Above, Convenience Store! This interpretation colored my experience of their latest record, Vermilion Concord, released on March 11th.

A still from the video for the track Supra Sun, out now on Sparkwood Records’ youtube channel.

Behind the release is the rising star of netlabel music, Sparkwood Records of Norway. Earlier this year, Simon von Bockstal of netlabelism.com referred to them as a possible new heavyweight dynasty for the IDM netlabel scene. They specialize in ambient, electronic, and experimental music and seek to promote original and intriguing music production. Their efforts have yielded impressive results so far, and this newest record by ACS! includes an uncommon offering for the Bandcamp.com price: a limited edition cassette tape mailed straight out of Norway.

As I mentioned above, what follows is my own interpretation of Vermilion Concord, based on its sounds and all other artwork attached to the product. I think that most listeners would agree, however, that ACS! and Sparkwood are shining examples of the musical ingenuity being produced today, making the internet a creative playground for producers and fans and all lovers of such music.

The symmetry of the tracks, both in configuration and by their titles, led me to consider Vermilion Concord as a concept album. All tracks are called by two-word phrases which evoke vague ideas of interplay between human activity and ecological or natural phenomena: Mount Myopia, Holocene Shores, Strange Harvest, Fallout Zone. The first half of the record is light, airy, and breathable whereas the second half is a mix of darker ambient textured with industrial tones. During Strange Harvest, the longest track on the record at just over 8 minutes, the listener is dropped into uncertainty: digital whirring, distorted voices, electronic devices calculating results with unimaginable consequences. One can sense the intrusion of some meddlesome presence that does not care for human valuations of beauty which were represented in the first four tracks by melodious strings and young voices at play outside. By the fifth track, Infect Route, these earlier tones are being challenged by sinister voices distorted by an infusion of some of the dark ambient which will follow.

The sounds begin to make less sense; the search for meaning is hopeless by the middle of Strange Harvest. A heavy bell tolls, a dog barks, and a final crashing thud ends it all. The track is book-ended by testimonies from people who sound genuinely traumatized by some perceived unnatural phenomena they witnessed out in the countryside where farm animals get targeted by visitors in spacecrafts.

Aerosol Horizon begins to whisk away the darkness and introduces a ghost-like quality to the ambience. The keyboard sounds out like a set of victory brass. What has won, the forces of good or of evil? The sense of the music is that such a question is void. The album’s tone is lightened for Vermilion Concord’s ambient tour-de-force: Supra Sun.

Supra Sun is the musical background for a mega solar flare or some supernova, a challenge from nature to viewers on the ground. This cathartic track sets the idea of relentless human progress against the natural need to the finality of a sunset. We hear vocal samples again, this time representing scientific authoritativeness but also of fear in the face of shattered life paradigms. Life and death forces twirl about the stream of scientific advancement, each waiting to jump in at humankind’s next eureka moment. The final track, Caldera (Cauda) can be heard as coming after the end of the record which was the fading out of Supra Sun. It is weak in tones of finality, reminiscent of movie end-title cards reading, “The End?”.

There is thoughtful artistry in the creation of the physical release. The cassette comes with a slip cover portraying the band’s mystical logo, and the record’s cover was illustrated by Inna Hansen, a Norwegian artist skilled in illustration both realist and fantastic. A dead or unconscious cosmonaut lies on some rocky red terrain, a glorious peacock standing above with its plumage magnified by an overbearing sunset.

Vermilion Concord’s cover illustration by Inna Hansen

It’s an exciting time for the ambient-electronic scene. In all its facets, Vermilion Concord represents the ingenuity that can flourish in the netlabel environment. Sparkwood Records is indeed becoming a champion in the field and will benefit listeners by continuing to form pairs of art and music that are high-energy but also introspective.

Vermilion Concord can be streamed and purchased on its Bandcamp profile page. The band’s soundcloud page is here and for Sparkwood Records click here.

Inaugural Post Courtesy of W.W.

I have found no words to more accurately represent the modern person’s approach to discovering himself or herself within a cosmos– how he works, where his impulses come from, how are they controlled and what changes she could make in her own life, how she can cultivate more of what she values– like those penned by the American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892). This poem was included in an anthology I covered in a History of the Scientific Revolution college course, and after I read it I knew that my studies had brought me to breach a field of history unlike any other, almost primeval in nature relative to the rest.

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.