In the standard picture of the history of special relativity, Henri Poincaré’s and Albert Einstein’s reformulation of simultaneity is considered a quasi-philosophical intervention, a move made possible by their disconnection from the standard physics of the day. Meanwhile, Einstein’s engagement at the Patent Office (or Poincare’s in the Bureau of Longitude) enters the story as a lowly day job — irrelevant to fundamental work on the nature of the world. I have argued, on the contrary, that the all-too material and the most abstract notions of time cross in essential ways. In a collaboration with the artist William Kentridge (“The Refusal of Time”) we explored this intersection, pushing on history, physics, and philosophy into a more associative-imaginative register. This talk is an account of this complex of problems at the boundary of art and physics history.
In the standard picture of the history of special relativity, Henri Poincaré’s and Albert Einstein’s reformulation of simultaneity is considered a quasi-philosophical intervention, a move made possible by their disconnection from the standard physics of the day. Meanwhile, Einstein’s engagement at the Patent Office (or Poincare’s in the Bureau of Longitude) enters the story as a lowly day job — irrelevant to fundamental work on the nature of the world. I have argued, on the contrary, that the all-too material and the most abstract notions of time cross in essential ways. In a collaboration with the artist William Kentridge (“The Refusal of Time”) we explored this intersection, pushing on history, physics, and philosophy into a more associative-imaginative register. This talk is an account of this complex of problems at the boundary of art and physics history.
Around the horizon of a black hole, an edge of the universe, light is captured, spun into orbit by the black hole’s powerful gravitational pull. Lying within the orange donut in the famous first image of a black hole, this “photon ring” would be a prize...
My world was jolted by two shadow images: one, thrilling, the other terrifying. After a years-long effort—with 200 other scientists—we made the first image of a black hole, its shadow of no return. Then I fell into debilitating pain. A deadly shadow...
1930, Madras, India. On a steamship to England, 19-year-old Indian physics prodigy, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar makes a paradigm-shattering discovery about the life cycle of stars: a discipline pioneered by Sir Arthur Eddington, the world’s most famous...
