How to Destroy the Universe

And 34 Other Really Interesting Uses of PHYSICS

PAUL PARSONS

New York • London

© 2011 by Paul Parsons

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Dr. Paul Parsons is a regular contributor to
Nature
,
New Scientist
and the
Daily Telegraph
. He was formerly editor of the BBC's award-winning science and technology magazine
Focus
.
The Science of Doctor Who
(Icon Books) and was longlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. His last book was
Science 1001
, published by Quercus.

Introduction

1. How to build the ultimate rollercoaster

2. How to predict the weather

3. How to survive an earthquake

4. How to stop a hurricane

5. How to deflect a killer asteroid

6. How to journey to the Earth's core

7. How to stop global warming

8. How to launch yourself into space

9. How to survive a lightning strike

10. How to cause a blackout

11. How to make an invisibility cloak

12. How to be everywhere at once

13. How to live forever

14. How to teleport

15. How to fit a power station in your pocket

16. How to see an atom

17. How to turn lead into gold

18. How to build an atomic bomb

19. How to harness starlight

20. How to visit the tenth dimension

21. How to survive falling into a black hole

22. How to see the other side of the Universe

23. How to recreate the Big Bang

24. How to make the loudest sound on Earth

25. How to destroy the Universe

26. How to travel faster than light

27. How to travel through time

28. How to contact aliens

29. How to make energy from nothing

30. How to generate a force field

31. How to predict the stock market

32. How to crack unbreakable codes

33. How to build an antigravity machine

34. How to create life

35. How to read someone's mind

Glossary

Why is it that when you read about physics in popular books, it's always about accelerating subatomic particles to near the speed of light in an attempt to unlock the ultimate secrets of the Universe, and yet when you study it at school all you end up doing is measuring the temperature of some ice in a bucket?

Perhaps that's an exaggeration but it's not really a surprise that for all too many people, physics lessons were boring. Tediously, mind-achingly, duller than defrosting the fridge on a rainy Sunday, boring.

When I was at school I had two physics teachers. One, Mr. H, spoke with a lisp and walked like the soles of his shoes were made of Zectron—that super-springy stuff they used to make balls that, if you lobbed them at the ground hard enough, could bounce right over your house. Despite his comical comportment he was, sadly, a droning bore. Albert Einstein once remarked how odd it is that an hour spent in the company of a pretty girl seems like a minute, while a minute with your hand on a hot stove seems like an hour. “That's
relativity,” he said. If only the great man could have come along to one of Mr. H's classes, he could have witnessed time actually appear to run backward. I developed a deep loathing for the sections of the syllabus that Mr. H inflicted upon us—which, included thermodynamics (the science of temperature, ice and, yes, buckets).

My other physics teacher—Miss M—was four foot ten and, so the story goes, had the power to make the school bully blubber without even raising her voice. Neither I nor any of my friends sympathized with school bullies but, nevertheless, we all regarded Miss M as quite terrifying and definitely not one to be aggravated. Homework was delivered promptly. That said, she was also perhaps the best physics teacher in the world. The vagaries of radioactivity, wave theory, gravity, optics, and all that other stuff, suddenly became clearer than centrifuged Evian. Not only that, but I don't ever recall being bored. Scared, yes. Bored, definitely not.

Thanks to Miss M, a very mediocre secondary school physics student was able to go away to university and ended up completing a doctorate in cosmology. Yes, that was me. I say “able to” but perhaps “wanted to” was her biggest achievement. I started off with next to no interest in physics, education or having a career of any sort, and came out of school inspired, largely as a result of her efforts.

But why should it take such a good teacher to make physics interesting? Physics, I think it's safe to say, is the best of all the sciences. That's not just because it covers nuclear explosions, which are the biggest explosions we're able to make. Or because it deals with space, which is inherently cool. It's more because physics is the most fundamental of all the sciences. As the great Ernest Rutherford—the man who first split the atom—once declared, “Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting.”

I think what Rutherford meant is that physics underpins the fundamental behavior of the Universe—from that, everything else follows. The interplay between the subatomic particles—in particular, electrons orbiting around atoms—is what determines the laws of chemistry. And biology is just the chemistry governing the strange set of chemical reactions we call life. Life is classified into families and species—but giving things names and maintaining lists is no more innovative than keeping stamps in an album … But I digress.

This book is your very own Miss M. I hope it won't scare you quite as much as she scared me and my friends, but the aim in writing it was much the same as her goal in teaching us: to provide an interesting and accessible guide to the big ideas in physics. I don't mean just the usual interesting fare of relativity and subatomic
particle physics, but also mechanics (the science of moving objects), electromagnetism (the science of electric and magnetic fields) and even thermodynamics (temperature, ice and buckets). Along the way, I've tried to include some history of the subject and to put it all in a real-world context so that it doesn't all seem like blue-sky science.

Of course, there's plenty of blue-sky science in here too—relativity and subatomic particle physics, along with antigravity, parallel universes, teleportation, time travel, immortality, invisibility and higher dimensions of space and time. You'll find out how to save the planet from energy shortages by mining the vacuum of empty space, engineer the Earth's climate to reverse the effects of global warming, and fend off killer asteroids like Bruce Willis and his vest. You'll learn essential survival skills such as how to live through a lightning strike, tough it out during an earthquake and fall into a black hole without being squashed into spaghetti. And you'll discover some plain old cool stuff like how to turn lead into gold, travel to the center of the Earth, crack supposedly unbreakable codes and use physics to predict the stock market.

Look at it this way: I got a physics education; you're getting the keys to world domination. Is that a good deal? This one's for you, Miss M—we salute you!

• Gravitational energy

• Launch catapult

• G-forces

• Centripetal force

• Mind the gap

Being accelerated from zero to 100 km/h (60 mph) in a little over a second, turned upside-down, spun round at over five times Earth's gravity and then dropped 100 m (330 ft) might not be everyone's cup of tea. But for rollercoaster thrill junkies it's their idea of heaven. The ultimate rollercoaster ride is a delicate balancing act between safety and being scared witless.

After an age spent queuing you finally climb aboard, buckle in and wait anxiously for the off. You've never done this before and aren't quite sure what to expect, although the green-faced individuals you've just watched stumble from the ride give you a fairly good
idea. Amid fleeting concerns for your wellbeing, the controller's voice crackles over the tannoy: “Go, go, go!” The car lurches forward and starts to accelerate. Most rollercoaster cars do not have their own internal power source. In fact, they are not propelled at all for most of the duration of their journey. Instead, they are hauled to the top of a high peak and then released. It is the speed the cars gain during this initial drop that provides the energy needed to carry them around the rest of the track. The rollercoaster really does “coast” the majority of the way. That this is possible at all comes down to a central principle of physics known as the “conservation of energy.” It says that when you add up the amount of all the different forms of energy locked away in a physical system you get a number—the total energy of the system—that must remain constant with time. Energy in the system is allowed to change from one type into another, but the sum total must always be the same.

In a rollercoaster, the principal kinds of energy are kinetic energy, which is the energy associated with the motion of the rollercoaster cars, and “gravitational potential energy”—the energy the cars possess because of their height in Earth's gravitational field, which can be thought of as rather like the energy stored in a stretched spring. At the peak marking the start of the ride, the rollercoaster's speed and kinetic energy are both zero. All of its energy is in the form of gravitational potential energy. When it is released and begins to fall, it
steadily gains speed, converting gravitational energy into kinetic energy as it descends—and back again as it climbs. In reality, this conversion is not perfect, as some energy will be lost due to friction between the wheels and the track and between the wheels and other moving parts of the rollercoaster. Friction is caused when the microscopic lumps and bumps on two surfaces chafe against one another as the surfaces rub together. There is also friction between the rollercoaster and the air. The lost energy is not destroyed but is carried away in the form of heat and sound. The loss of energy to friction means that all the peaks on a rollercoaster course must become progressively lower than the starting point. If any of the peaks were the same height (or higher), the rollercoaster would not have enough energy to clear them. Instead, it would roll back down into the last valley, oscillating back and forth in the dip as friction gradually carried the rest of its energy away, ultimately bringing it to a stop. While putting the dampers on most of the ride, friction is essential if you ever intend to stop and get off. It's how the brakes work on most rollercoasters—by applying friction pads to the rotating axles to deliberately turn the rollercoaster's kinetic energy into heat as quickly as possible.