: Nine Crazy Ideas in Science

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web. Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network servers. What's a " Crazy " Idea? HAVE YOU EVER wondered why so many of the ideas in modern science sound so crazy, and how to evaluate which of the current crop of crazy ideas might be true? This book will show you how you can sort out the more promising ideas without having to rely on the opinions of experts. As a physicist, I have always had an affinity for crazy ideas. Please don't misunderstand me. It's not that physicists are any crazier than anyone else. Despite the many unfortunate media portrayals of mad scientists you may have seen, some of us are reasonably sane. It's just that physics, by its very nature, is continually challenging the conventions of our commonsense world and revealing secrets about our universe that often seem fantastic to most people. Even physicists sometimes find their creations quite bizarre. One of the leading developers of ideas in modern quantum mechanics , Richard Feynman, used to tell students that they shouldn't worry too much if they don't understand quantum mechanics because it is so paradoxical that nobody really understands the subject. In fact, it's when you think you finally do understand quantum mechanics completely that you have probably got it wrong. But, even the weirdest theories of science must pass one rigorous test or be discarded: their predictions must be in agreement with phenomena observed in the physical world. Well, at least that's the ideal. Sometimes developers of new theories find ways to modify the theories in order to keep Chapter One 4 them alive, even when their initial predictions don't work out. And sometimes scientists concoct theories incapable of being tested in their lifetime, or without the expenditure of billions of dollars to build the apparatus needed to test their ideas. (Despite the eagerness of scientists to promote employment opportunities for their unemployed colleagues, theorists do not intentionally seek ideas that will prove very expensive or difficult to test. It's just that most of the easy stuff has already been done.) Scientists who develop crazy new theories have a strange relationship with …