08.11.2021 : The Economic Connections..

I hated history in school. So did most of my contemporaries. So do most of today's children. (Can't envisage any change there unless history teaching goes for a complete overhaul.) Not surprisingly, it is the popular culture that has helped shape the perceptions of history for many of us. In fact, my interest in history was seriously piqued, for the first time, by Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (almost singularly responsible for ruining the summer internship work of a capricious masters student)!

Notwithstanding the academic debacle, medieval mysteries (and other such entertaining reads) have since been my standard go-to for historical perspectives. So, it was a pleasant surprise when yesterday's late night indulgence turned out to be based on a little piece of WWII physics history. The Catcher Was a Spy, a little known eponymous film (2018) based on a biographical book by Nicholas Dawidoff, narrates the story of Morris Berg (1902 – 1972).

Berg was a catcher in American Major League Baseball and later spied for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of the USA. Primarily because of his academic background (Princeton, Columbia) and linguistic proficiency, he was tasked (1944) with interviewing European physicists and trying to convince them to move to the US. The primary goal of this was to prevent Germany from making The Bomb before Manhattan project succeeded in doing so.

Though a great number of German (mostly Jewish) scientists had fled from Germany once Nazis came to power, there was no doubt about the calibre and capability of Heisenberg and other remaining German scientists to produce an Atomic Bomb. However, whether they had the resources to do that and/or had the willingness to do so were questions the Allied Powers were most keen to know the answers of. 

The climax of the film (as also of Berg's career, I suppose) took place in December, 1944 when Heisenberg traveled to Zurich to deliver a lecture on the invitation of the Swiss physicist Paul Scherrer. Berg's brief was to gauge the status of Germany's nuclear weapons program and to kill Heisenberg if they appeared to be close to success. Heisenberg lived, because Berg (correctly) assessed that the German efforts were not close enough!

Such an irony of fate! In the early 1930s, it was Heisenberg who was labeled as a White Jew (German Christians sympathetic to or in good terms with the Jewish people)! He was persecuted, his career suffered and things only improved through personal intervention from a family friend (Heisenberg's mother was a friend of Himmler's wife). Yet, because Heisenberg elected to stay back in Germany (many non-Jewish scientists left because of their differences with the Nazis) and because of his aforementioned family connections, he was never trusted by the scientists of the western bloc. At the end of the war, Heisenberg, von Weizsacker, Otto Hahn and other scientists working on German nuclear program were picked up by the British and interned at Farm Hill to investigate their wartime work. (https://sushan-konar-musings.blogspot.com/2021/06/28062021-of-different-era.html)

Almost exactly twenty years ago, I had an opportunity to visit the University of Leipzig where Heisenberg was a professor of theoretical physics (since 1927). He was awarded the Nobel prize (1932) while at Leipzig, and also met (1937) his future wife Elisabeth Schumacher at a musical evening there. Elisabeth was the sister of Friedrich Schumacher (1911 – 1977), the famous statistician and economist and author of Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973) - a must-read for our generation!

This book made economics in general, and Schumacher's ideas in particular, accessible to a wide audience. Schumacher argued that our technological progress must take into account the fact that the natural resources (like fossil fuel, coal) are finite. This coincided with the emergence of environmental concerns (which has now taken centre-stage of world policy-making, as is evident from the ongoing COP26 being held in Glasgow).

Schumacher had a deep connection with many Asian countries and had also served as a consultant to the Planning Commission of India for a while. However, a long time has passed since then. As Sanjeev Sanyal, our current Principal Economic Advisor says, the economics of today is adopting the dynamical world-view appropriate of a complex system (instead of the deterministic world-view of Newtonian physics). Indeed! Giorgio Parisi, theoretical physicist who pioneered the study of complex systems, is one of this year's physics laureate! (https://sushan-konar-musings.blogspot.com/2021/10/25102021-value-of-science.html) 

The personal economics of many of our persuasion (academic scientists, that is) may not be something to write home about, but it suits a physicists ego very well to imagine that our discipline is still defining the rules of the game! 😎

[The morning program of a Calcutta-based TV channel reminded me that it's Usha Uthup's birthday today. For me, her unusual voice, her unusual story, has always epitomised the many fights women must fight to find their own space, on their own terms. Because, despite all the odds she has been able to define her own space. Here's one song that I loved listening to in my younger days, and is rather appropriate for all those WWII references. The import of the song remains true even today. Because, the threat of violence is never very far from human endeavours. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k9K088qTII (a recent stage performance)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65adlW50S-w (original recording)]

16.08.2021 : The Martian

 It was the 15th of August yesterday. For the second time in a row, our schools stayed empty and silent on an Independence day.

Independent India was in her thirties when our generation attended school. In most schools, like my own, this used to be the biggest celebration of all. For an entire month we would prepare for the day - every class practicing their special song, fierce competition raging between groups making India-themed charts, or splashing tri-colour decorations all around...

Things haven't changed much in the intervening decades, it appears. A few years ago, the young one showed me a poem that they were learning for the Independence Day program. It was "Jhansi ki Rani" by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, the well-known poetess, born on this day in 1904 [Today's Google Doodle is in her honour.]. It is perhaps no casual coincidence that Chauhan happened to be the first woman Satyagrahi to court arrest for protests against the British rule, while Rani Laxmibai has been an iconic symbol of resistance in India's first fight of independence against the British 'colonial' rule.

Throughout history, explorations for resources has one of the major reasons behind colonialism. Given the trend of population growth, our exponentially increasing requirement for a vast array of resources and given the limited resource reserve of planet Earth - space is quite obviously the new frontier. Clearly, we are about to enter the era of 'space-colonisation'.

For long, asteroid mining (for precious minerals) and terraforming (of other planets) have been standard science fiction fare. Recent space-exploration developments seem to suggest that the colonisation of Mars could just be around the corner. Serious suggestions are being tabled for terraforming (creating an Earth-like or habitable environment) of Mars.

Even though Earth is similar to Venus in composition, size and surface gravity, Mars has certain advantages for a long-term human habitation. Consider the following similarities -
a) A Martian day is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds.
b) A Martian year is about twice as long as an Earth year.
c) Mars has an axial tilt of 25.19°, hence seasonal variations are similar.
d) Mars has water (ice) and other elements (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulphur etc.)

Despite these, it would not be an easy task to terraform Mars. The current Martian atmosphere is too thin, the pressure being just 0.6% of the average atmospheric pressure on Earth. And it is also rather cold. Terraforming Mars would therefore entail - building up the atmosphere, and raising the temperature. And even if an adequate atmosphere is created it would be difficult to retain that, because Mars does not have a global magnetic field (which deflects solar wind and stops it from stripping the Earth's atmosphere). We also have no idea about the long-term health effects in such a low surface gravity (about 40% of Earth's) environment.  

A recent study by NASA suggests that it may not be possible to terraform Mars using current technology. However, space-agencies, both public (NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, ISRO, CNSA, UAE) and private (SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing), are now engaged in activities to test the feasibility of setting up small, self-sustaining, sealed enclosures on Mars for limited time human habitation. [Yep! Just like in the movie 'The Martian'. Last month, in a lecture organised by the HAPP Centre (Oxford), Jim Green of NASA explained how the movie was made with close collaboration with NASA scientists and how much of what was shown could be achieved in not too distant a future.]

However, space exploration is not only about science. According to the UN 'Outer Space Treaty' (1967) no country may make absolute claim over an extra-terrestrial space or its inhabitants. But, given the participation of commercial entities (like the Space-X) in these ventures, such legal documents would require a thorough rewrite. There would also be ethical issues, as discussed recently by Nicholas Dirks (Scientific American, 10 August 2021). Dirks raises very valid points regarding the ownership of the regions, mining rights and so on.

However, our explorations have not yet discovered any large life forms on Mars (or Moon, or the asteroids that have been investigated), though search for micro-organisms continue. Therefore, worrying about the impact of our explorations on 'resident life-forms' seems a bit of an overkill. Rani Laxmibai and Subhadra Chauhan fought against `imperialistic colonialism'. It is perhaps somewhat disingenuous to transpose the 'colonialism' lexicon (and its implications from the European experience on Earth) unqualified onto near-future space-explorations.

 

 

09.08.2021 : The Bomb connection..

 The 2020 Olympics, concluded yesterday in Tokyo, has almost been like a symbolic rise of the resilient human spirit after the devastation caused by and the 'clear and present danger' of the Covid-19 pandemic. Japan has presented the world with an exciting fortnight and we should all be grateful for that. However, we can't really move our focus away from Japan just yet.

Seventy-six years ago on this day (9 August 1945) the Japanese city of Nagasaki was completely destroyed when the US army dropped an atomic bomb on it. The city has since been rebuilt but the scars remain, so does our firm entry into the age of nuclear armament.

[But the political significance of 9th August goes way back. A British charter of 1683 (granted on 9th August) effectively gave 'sovereign' power to the East India Company over Asian territories, and sowed the seeds of British Empire. Then, close to 250 years later to the date (9 August, 1925) a group of dedicated freedom fighters (Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Rajendra Lahiri, Chandrashekhar Azad..) robbed a train (carrying money for the British treasury) in Kakori, near Lucknow, to fund the movement to free India from the clutches of that selfsame empire.]

This day also saw the birth of the noted physicist, Alladi Ramakrishnan (9 August 1923 – 7 June 2008), a couple of years before the Kakori incident. Ramakrishnan, son of the famous lawyer Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer (who took a prominent role in drafting the Indian Constitution), made significant contributions to stochastic processes, elementary particle physics, matrix algebra, and the special theory of relativity.

After completing his studies at Presidency College, Ramakrishnan worked with Homi Bhabha at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and then moved to the University of Manchester to work under M. S. Bartlett. He joined the physics department of the University of Madras (where crystallographer G. N.  Ramachandran was the head) upon returning to India (1952).

A few years later, Ramakrishnan met Robert J. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and went on to spend a year (1957-'58) at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton at Oppenheimer's invitation.

Inspired by this visit he became desirous of inducting talented students into theoretical physics. In particular, he wanted to expose them to the latest advances through seminars given by scientists working at the frontiers of the field. Because he considered such seminars to be “the essence of intellectual activity, where there is as much desire to imbibe as there is to impart, where opportunities are provided for a clash of intellects which would produce creative ideas”.

Ramakrishnan used to invite eminent scientists from all over the world for these seminars and hold the seminars at his Madras home. Niels Bohr visited in 1960 and recommended the creation of an institute of advanced research. Bohr's recommendation, steadfast political support from C. Subramaniam, and (last but not the least) Ramakrishnan's enthusiastic students directly petitioning the prime minister paved the way for setting up of such an institute. The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (Matscience) was launched on January 3, 1962 and Ramakrishnan served as its director for 21 years till his retirement in 1983.

Today, Matscience is counted as one of the top research institutes of India, in the field of mathematical sciences. It is a curious coincidence that this institute of eminence had its origin in a private seminar series, born out of Ramakrishnan's connection with the 'father of the atomic bomb'!

28.06.2021 : Of a different era..

Many neutron star theorists spend their working lives delving into the intricacies of nuclear physics. While nuclear theories allow astrophysicists to interpret faint signals coming from exotic neutron stars; these celestial objects, in turn, act as unique laboratories (unlike any that can be built on Earth) for the nuclear physicists. Recently, my friend Sarmistha Banik organised a meeting to discuss such interconnections (between nuclear physics theory and neutron star observation) and to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Prof. Debades Bandyopadhyaya (her academic guru) who has been working in this area for a very long time.

But neutron stars arrived later (discovered in 1967) on the scene. Nuclear Astrophysics has been walking hand-in-hand with nuclear physics since the beginning of the twentieth century. The last century decidedly belonged to physics. Even the world wars were fought on the back of physicists. Not surprisingly, many (or perhaps most) of the nuclear physicists (as well as nuclear astrophysicists) were involved in the process of Bomb making.

German-American Maria Geppert-Meyer (28.06.1906 - 20.02.1972) was one such nuclear physicist, whose nuclear shell model, explaining the properties of atomic nuclei, earned her the Nobel prize. [In the entire history of the Nobel Prize (1901 - 2021), only FOUR women physicists have been honoured - Marie Curie (1903), Maria Geppert-Mayer (1963), Donna Strickland (2018) and Andrea Ghez (2020). Though Geppert-Mayer had to wait for sixty long years after Curie, the last two have come in a quick succession and one hopes that the future would be reflective of the mores of our own times.]

Geppert-Mayer worked at Gottingen University for her doctoral thesis and moved to the US (after marrying Joseph Edward Mayer) in the 1930s. Then war came and she worked at Columbia University on the separation of uranium isotopes for the atomic bomb project. At around the same time Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (28.06.1912 – 28.04.2007), exactly six years younger than Geppert-Mayer and a former student of Gottingen, was also working on the atomic bomb project, albeit on the `wrong' side of the Atlantic.

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Weizsäcker, was a prominent member of the team (headed by Warner Heisenberg) that worked on the German Bomb-making project. In August 1939, Albert Einstein wrote to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to say - "the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated". Uranium-enrichment was one of the key steps of the Bomb project.

Heisenberg and Weizsacker, 1933

The opinions have been divided about the nature of Weizsacker's (and others') participation in the Bomb project. Robert Jungk's Brighter than a Thousand Suns, based on post-war interviews with Weizsacker, suggested that they intentionally held the program back. But letters and documents appearing later have hinted at a somewhat different version of the story. Even now, the story intrigues people urging modern playwrights to interpret the events in their own way. Farm Hall by David Cassidy and Operation Epsilon by Alan Brody are two such efforts in recent years. 

Who knows? Perhaps politics was in von Weizsäcker’s blood. His father was a career diplomat and his younger brother, Richard von Weizsäcker, was that West German president who presided over the reunification of Germany in 1990.

Nevertheless, after the war Weizsacker joined a group of prominent German physicists to protest against the nuclear armament of West Germany and in later life moved to philosophical and ethical issues - a behaviour not very different from many of the physicists who participated in the Manhattan Project. 

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Notwithstanding his war efforts (or lack thereof), von Weizsäcker would be remembered for his pre-war work on nuclear physics. Like Geppert-Mayer, he too worked on the atomic nuclei and developed (1937) a method, now known as the Bethe–Weizsäcker formula, to estimate the mass and other properties of atomic nuclei from the number of constituent neutrons and protons.

Weizsäcker also developed a theory of the Solar System formation with the important implication that other stars like our Sun are also likely to have planetary systems similar to our own. This theory was later corroborated by Russian-American physicist George Gamow (and others) after the War.   

However, I feel the most significant work of von Weizsäcker has been his discovery of the CNO cycle, in which carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen act as catalysts in a sequence of nuclear reactions that leads to the conversion of hydrogen into helium. Later (1939), Hans Bethe corroborated this through a more detailed work and the process came to be known as the Bethe–Weizsäcker cycle. Interestingly, Bethe's family had moved to Kiel in 1912, where Weizsacker was born that year. Bethe left Germany in 1933, but their intellectual endeavours converged again and again.

CNO cycle is one the two known processes through which the stars convert hydrogen into helium, and is expected to be dominant in stars that are somewhat heavier than our Sun. It is only in 2020 that the Borexino collaboration has finally detected the neutrinos from the Sun that bear distinct signatures of the CNO-cycle (Nature, 2020, 587, 577).

The Borexino neutrino detector lies deep under the Apennine Mountains in central Italy, patiently waiting for astrophysical neutrinos. Let us hope that such exciting detections from the "India-based Neutrino Observatory" (INO), planned to be constructed under the Bodi West Hills in Tamil Nadu, are not too far in the future.  

[Today also happens to be the birth-centenary of P. V. Narasimha Rao (28.06.1921 – 23.12.2004), the 9th Prime Minister (1991 - 1996), who opened up the Indian economy ushering in the vibrancy we have become so used to in the last few decades. But that is a completely different story requiring a completely different kind of storyteller. 😁]