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The Ethereal Aether is a historical narrative of one of the great experiments in modern physical science. The fame of the 1887 Michelson-Morley aether-drift test on the relative motion of the earth and the luminiferous aether derives largely from the role it is popularly supposed to have played in the origins, and later in the justification, of Albert Einstein’s first theory of relativity; its importance is its own.

As a case history of the intermittent performance of an experiment in physical optics from 1880 to 1930 and of the men whose work it was, this study describes chronologically the conception, experimental design, first trials, repetitions, influence on physical theory, and eventual climax of the optical experiment. Michelson, Morley, and their colleague Miller were the prime actors in this half-century drama of confrontation between experimental and theoretical physics.

The issue concerned the relative motion of “Spaceship Earth” and the Universe, as measured against the background of a luminiferous medium supposedly filling all interstellar space. At stake, it seemed, were the phenomena of astronomical aberration, the wave theory of light, and the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time.

James Clerk Maxwell’s suggestion for a test of his electromagnetic theory was translated by Michelson into an experimental design in 1881, redesigned and reaffirmed as a null result with Morley in 1887, thereafter modified and partially repeated by Morley and Miller, finally completed in 1926 by Miller alone, then by Michelson’s team again in the late 1920s.

Meanwhile Helmholtz, Kelvin, Rayleigh, FitzGerald, Lodge, Larmor, Lorentz, and Poincaré—most of the great names in theoretical physics at the turn of the twentieth century—had wrestled with the anomaly presented by Michelson’s experiment. As the relativity and quantum theories matured, wave-particle duality was accepted by a new generation of physicists. The aether-drift tests disproved the old and verified the new theories of light and electromagnetism. By 1930 they seemed to explain Einstein, relativity, and space-time. But in historical fact, the aether died only with its believers.

During World War II, a group of physicists who had once been close friends found themselves on opposite sides of a deadly race. German scientist Werner Heisenberg and American physicists Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Sam Goudsmit were all leading figures in nuclear research. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor, their shared passion for science turned into a high-stakes competition to build the world’s first atomic bomb—a weapon that could determine the outcome of the war. Heisenberg had a two-year head start, and the possibility that Nazi Germany might beat the Allies to the bomb terrified American scientists. The Manhattan Project, led by U.S. Army General Leslie Groves, became a massive effort to catch up. Fear of Heisenberg haunted Manhattan Project scientists. At one point, Groves even approved plans to bomb Heisenberg’s lab and assassinate him to stop Germany’s progress. Meanwhile, Sam Goudsmit led a secret military unit tasked with tracking down Heisenberg and uncovering the truth about the Nazi nuclear program. What they found would surprise everyone. The Greatest Scientific Gamble tells the dramatic and little-known story of how personal relationships, wartime fear, and scientific ambition collided in the race to unlock the power of the atom.

From the brilliant Philip Ball, a thrilling biography of Nobel Prize–winning Danish physicist Niels Bohr, the most radical quantum mechanician of all.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the tremendous energy locked up in the nucleus of an atom was discovered and then liberated, bringing both the promise of utopia and the threat of apocalypse. The dawn of the nuclear age is often associated with Albert Einstein, whose iconic equation E = mc2 revealed the staggering energy available from radioactive transformation, or with J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the project at Los Alamos to build the first nuclear bombs. But the person who arguably did more than any other to shape the Promethean era in which we now live was the Danish physicist Niels Bohr.

In The Man Who Broke Reality, renowned science communicator Philip Ball reveals that it was Bohr who first explained the physics of the nuclear atom, and it was his model of the atom’s dense nucleus that enabled scientists to understand how it could be split apart. Ball also shows how Bohr was the central figure in the development of quantum mechanics, the theory of matter and energy that destabilized centuries of thinking not just about the microscopic nature of the world but about physical reality itself.

Bohr’s story is the story of modern physics and its transformative impact on the world. But The Man Who Broke Reality is not merely an intellectual drama. It chronicles a heroic life lived in turbulent times, across two world wars, the Manhattan Project, and the arms race of the Cold War. And it establishes Bohr as one of the most profound, inventive, and iconoclastic thinkers of the twentieth century.

From the brilliant Philip Ball, a thrilling biography of Nobel Prize–winning Danish physicist Niels Bohr, the most radical quantum mechanician of all.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the tremendous energy locked up in the nucleus of an atom was discovered and then liberated, bringing both the promise of utopia and the threat of apocalypse. The dawn of the nuclear age is often associated with Albert Einstein, whose iconic equation E = mc2 revealed the staggering energy available from radioactive transformation, or with J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the project at Los Alamos to build the first nuclear bombs. But the person who arguably did more than any other to shape the Promethean era in which we now live was the Danish physicist Niels Bohr.

In The Man Who Broke Reality, renowned science communicator Philip Ball reveals that it was Bohr who first explained the physics of the nuclear atom, and it was his model of the atom’s dense nucleus that enabled scientists to understand how it could be split apart. Ball also shows how Bohr was the central figure in the development of quantum mechanics, the theory of matter and energy that destabilized centuries of thinking not just about the microscopic nature of the world but about physical reality itself.

Bohr’s story is the story of modern physics and its transformative impact on the world. But The Man Who Broke Reality is not merely an intellectual drama. It chronicles a heroic life lived in turbulent times, across two world wars, the Manhattan Project, and the arms race of the Cold War. And it establishes Bohr as one of the most profound, inventive, and iconoclastic thinkers of the twentieth century.

Each "brief" is based on interviews with named scientists, engineers, or administrators in a nuclear specialty, and each has been reviewed by a team of independent experts. The objective is not to make a case for or against nuclear-related technologies, but rather to provide definitive background information. (The approach is based on that of The Reporter's Environmental Handbook, published in 1988, which won a special award for journalism from the Sigma Delta Chi Society of professional journalists.)

Other features of the book include: a glossary of hundreds of terms, an introduction to risk assessment, environmental and economic impacts, and public perceptions, an article by an experienced reporter with recommendations about how to cover nuclear issues, quick guides to the history of nuclear power in the United States, important federal legislation and regulations, nuclear position statements, and key organizations, print and electronic resources.

Explore the scientific crescendo of the Manhattan Project through newly contextualized and never-before-seen photographs from Los Alamos National Laboratory’s legacy collections—some just declassified.
 
Twenty-one days before the world learned of the atomic bomb through its wartime use against Japan, a team of scientists led by J. Robert Oppenheimer detonated the first nuclear device on a remote stretch of New Mexico desert, in an operation codenamed Trinity. Both a military proof test and an elaborate, well-documented scientific experiment, the Trinity shot on July 16, 1945, brought under the control of humankind a new fire: the energy of the atom.
 
In this expertly curated journey through the beginning of the atomic age, hundreds of carefully restored photographs, still frames, and once-secret documents bring new and vivid focus to a watershed moment in science and history. Written for all to understand, Trinity weaves steadily through subplots and surprises set against the evolving, looming backdrop of a world at war. It shadows the humans and hardware at work in the rugged landscape of the test operation; dissects a fiery mushroom cloud unfurling frame by frame, frozen in time; and follows soldiers, scientists, and two atomic bombs across the Pacific Ocean to Tinian Island, onto the strike planes Enola Gay and Bockscar, and to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two Japanese cities devastated on August 6 and 9, 1945.
 
Inviting readers into the clandestine spaces where a new era began—behind the cameras, the bunker doors, the gates and guard posts—Trinity strives, grieves, celebrates, and ponders. It artfully captures that extraordinary summer when scientists invented urgently in the waning months of the “before”—and the tension between violence and progress, hope and fear, that persists into the after.