MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, MA
  • Quantum Hippies: Natick man's book chronicles birth of counterculture physics

  • Physicist David Kaiser was driving with his son Toby when the 5-year-old turned to him and asked, ``Dad, what is nuclear fusion after all?''

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    The Natick resident patiently explained that by studying ``the smallest, little bits of matter'' scientists like his dad ``could have a very good understanding of how the biggest things in the cosmos behaved.''
    A senior lecturer in physics and professor of the history of science at MIT, Kaiser had always tried to encourage Toby and his twin sister, Ellie, that understanding the world doesn't detract from its beauty. He and his wife, Tracy Gleason, an associate professor of psychology at Wellesley College, have adapted the lyrics of children's poems like ``Twinkle, twinkle, little star'' to introduce the twins to the mysterious elegance of the universe.
    For the rest of us, Kaiser has written ``How the Hippies Saved Physics,'' a remarkably accessible sub-atomic joyride to distant realms of knowledge where the deepest secrets of physics reside.
    Subtitled ``Science, Counterculture and the Quantum Revival,'' Kaiser's fourth book, which was published in June, makes no attempt to be ``An Idiot's Guide to E=MC2 and Everything Else You Forgot from High School Physics.'' Rather than dumb things down, it carefully equips readers for a journey to the cutting edge of modern physics.
    Mixing social and scientific history, Kaiser chronicles how in the 1970s, hip, unemployed young physicists from Berkeley, Calif., who called themselves the ``Fundamental Fysiks Group,'' shook up traditional approaches to physics.
    Physicist Fred Alan Wolf, who quit his teaching job at San Diego State College, Fritjof Capra, author of ``The Tao of Physics,'' and Gary Zukav, who wrote ``The Dancing Wu Li Masters,'' along with others sought to take Einstein's discoveries to the next level and beyond through New Age approaches that rattled the scientific establishment.
    Their anything-goes-to-shake-free-the-cobwebs approach included psychedelic drugs, Eastern mysticism, pop psychology and consciousness raising amid the hot tubs of Esalen Institute. There's even an appearance by Ira Einhorn, an ecology activist, later dubbed the ``Unicorn Killer'' and now serving a life sentence for the murder of a girlfriend whose remains were found in a trunk in his closet.
    Madame Curie might have felt weirded out by these Furry Freaks of Physics.
    Members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group were among many physicists in the 1970s obsessed with understanding a mind-boggling discovery called ``entanglement,'' which states once quantum particles have interacted with each other, the connection endures even if they are galaxies apart.
    Based, in part, on research by Irish physicist John Stewart Bell in the mid-1960s, ``quantum entanglement,'' seems to open the door to the possibility of sci-fi prospects like the quantum computer. Back in the day, some thought it could also be used for faster-than-light communication.
    Page 2 of 2 - Kaiser compared the principle of entanglement to a sort of ``cosmic binding.'' ``If you tickle one particle here, its twin is instantaneously affected even if it's a galaxy away.''
    Einstein had worried that quantum theory might require such strange connections which went so strongly against his own intuitions, said Kaiser. He noted that Einstein even dubbed the notion of entanglement ``Spooky action at a distance.''
    Bell was the first to prove on paper quantum theory does require these bizarre bonds among subatomic particles.
    Kaiser said the first ever lab test of entanglement was performed by a member of the ``Fundamental Fysiks Group'' in the 1970s, proving for the first time that ``quantum entanglement is a real property of the universe.''
    ``It's not just a prediction on paper. We know entanglement happens in the world but it's hard to explain because we don't see it in ordinary experience. And that's a good reason to keep banging our heads against it,'' he said.
    Relaxing in a downtown Natick coffee shop, Kaiser said ``How the Hippies Saved Physics'' began as a single chapter in what he hopes to be a wide-ranging history of ``physics and the Cold War.''
    ``It's important to understand how new and unusual ideas enter the mainstream,'' he said.
    Don't worry: Kaiser doesn't look like Robert Carradine in ``Revenge of the Nerds,'' have a pocketful of pens or a ``goose honk'' laugh.
    In 2010, he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and in 2007, he earned the Pfizer Award for the best book in the history of science field for ``Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics.''
    Kaiser explained the academic and government emphasis on physics research has over the years gone through periodic ``ebbs and flows,'' often resulting from administration policies, national politics and available funding.
    Noting the book's title was meant to be ``playful and ironic,'' he said the Fundamental Fysiks Group might not have made the scientific breakthroughs they'd sought, but shook things up so much, they had opened the floodgates for discoveries by others.
    ``What I find so exciting about writing this book is that we're not going to find answers once and for all to the question of how to distinguish good science from bad science. There are changing assumptions about how we can make reliable knowledge about the world,'' he said. ``What counts as good science is an incredibly important, potent question today.''
    To learn about David Kaiser and his book, visit web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www.

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