NOTES
-
creation of the human brain via evolution does lower entropy, but this is
more than compensated for by the chaos that we create (e.g., pollution, waste
heat, global warming, etc.).
Page 269: One of the proponents of this idea... Tesla, however, was also
a tragic figure, probably cheated out of the royalties of many of his patents
and inventions that paved the way for the coming of radio, TV, and the
telecommunications revolution. (We physicists, however, have guaranteed
that the name of Tesla will not be forgotten. We have named the unit of magnetism after him. One tesla equals 10,000 gauss, or roughly twenty thousand
times the magnetic field of the Earth.)
Today he is largely forgotten, except that his more eccentric claims have
become the stuff of conspiracy buffs and urban legend. Tesla believed that he
could communicate with life on Mars, solve Einstein's unfinished unified
field theory, split the Earth in half like an apple, and develop a death ray that
could destroy ten thousand airplanes from a distance of 250 miles. (The FBI
took his claim of a death ray so seriously that it seized much of his notes and
laboratory equipment after his death, some of which are still kept in secret
storage even today.)
Tesla was at the height of his fame in 1931 when he made the front page
of Time magazine. He regularly dazzled the public by unleashing huge bolts
of lightning, containing millions of volts of electrical energy, to gasping audiences. Tesla's undoing, however, was that he was notoriously sloppy with
his finances and his legal affairs. Pitted against the battery of lawyers representing the emerging electrical giants of today, Tesla lost control over his
most important patents. He also began to show signs of what is today called
OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), being obsessed with the number
"three." He later became paranoid, living in destitution in the New Yorker
Hotel, fearing being poisoned by his enemies, and was always one step
ahead of his creditors. He died in total poverty at the age of eighty-six in
1943.
EPILOGUE: THE FUTURE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Page 286: Astronomer John Barrow notes, "Historians still debate..."
Barrow, Impossibility, p. 47.
Page 286: Mathematician David Hilbert, in rejecting Comte's claims...
Barrow, Impossibility, p. 209.
Page 286: "Two hundred years ago, you could ask anybody,.. ."Pickover,
p. 192.
Page 287: "All the great questions about the nature of the Universe-from
its beginning to its end-turn out to be unanswerable." Barrow, Impossibility,
p. 250.
Page 287: "But gravitational waves from [the] iryflation area are relics of the
universe.. ."Rocky Rolb, New Scientist Magazine, November 18,2006, p. 44.
Page 290: "These efforts will reveal intimate details of the Big Bang singularity. . ."Hawking, p. 136.
-
creation of the human brain via evolution does lower entropy, but this is
more than compensated for by the chaos that we create (e.g., pollution, waste
heat, global warming, etc.).
Page 269: One of the proponents of this idea... Tesla, however, was also
a tragic figure, probably cheated out of the royalties of many of his patents
and inventions that paved the way for the coming of radio, TV, and the
telecommunications revolution. (We physicists, however, have guaranteed
that the name of Tesla will not be forgotten. We have named the unit of magnetism after him. One tesla equals 10,000 gauss, or roughly twenty thousand
times the magnetic field of the Earth.)
Today he is largely forgotten, except that his more eccentric claims have
become the stuff of conspiracy buffs and urban legend. Tesla believed that he
could communicate with life on Mars, solve Einstein's unfinished unified
field theory, split the Earth in half like an apple, and develop a death ray that
could destroy ten thousand airplanes from a distance of 250 miles. (The FBI
took his claim of a death ray so seriously that it seized much of his notes and
laboratory equipment after his death, some of which are still kept in secret
storage even today.)
Tesla was at the height of his fame in 1931 when he made the front page
of Time magazine. He regularly dazzled the public by unleashing huge bolts
of lightning, containing millions of volts of electrical energy, to gasping audiences. Tesla's undoing, however, was that he was notoriously sloppy with
his finances and his legal affairs. Pitted against the battery of lawyers representing the emerging electrical giants of today, Tesla lost control over his
most important patents. He also began to show signs of what is today called
OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), being obsessed with the number
"three." He later became paranoid, living in destitution in the New Yorker
Hotel, fearing being poisoned by his enemies, and was always one step
ahead of his creditors. He died in total poverty at the age of eighty-six in
1943.
EPILOGUE: THE FUTURE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Page 286: Astronomer John Barrow notes, "Historians still debate..."
Barrow, Impossibility, p. 47.
Page 286: Mathematician David Hilbert, in rejecting Comte's claims...
Barrow, Impossibility, p. 209.
Page 286: "Two hundred years ago, you could ask anybody,.. ."Pickover,
p. 192.
Page 287: "All the great questions about the nature of the Universe-from
its beginning to its end-turn out to be unanswerable." Barrow, Impossibility,
p. 250.
Page 287: "But gravitational waves from [the] iryflation area are relics of the
universe.. ."Rocky Rolb, New Scientist Magazine, November 18,2006, p. 44.
Page 290: "These efforts will reveal intimate details of the Big Bang singularity. . ."Hawking, p. 136.