How the Fringe Funded the Higgs - A Short Trailer

Transcript

in 1950 interest in general relativity research in the united states had waned almost to a standstill this is the story of how a husband and wife team of physicist bryce and cecile dewitt and a pair of american businessmen interested in anti-gravity roger babson and agnew banson jr set in motion a set of events that led to the founding of the institute of field physics at the university of north carolina chapel hill and the first general relativity and gravitation conference in the united states that helped to spark new interest in the field bryce and cecile were married in paris france in 1951 out of a feeling of penance for having married an american physicist and moved to the united states cecile founded the ecole de physique des houche a physics summer school in des huches france 26 lecturers and students who attended the school went on to become nobel physicists cecile and bryce always had a sense of adventure and after they were married moved to bombay india where bryce had a fulbright appointment with the tata institute of fundamental research while there they had their first daughter nicolette and authored their first paper together the quantum theory of interacting gravitational and spinner fields upon returning to the united states three years later bryce discovered there were no jobs available in general relativity and took a position with edward teller at the livermore radiation laboratory while there he wrote the essay new directions for research in the theory of gravitation and submitted it to the then little-known gravity research foundation essay contest the gravity research foundation was a child of roger babson roger babson was an investor and entrepreneur in the early 1900s who made his money by selling stock picking reports where he based his stock analysis on newton's laws and mechanics his stock analysis allowed him to get all his money out of the stock market six weeks prior to the great crash in 1929 on preserving his millions uh there was some tragedy in babson's life his sister and his grandson both died of drowning banson blamed gravity for these drownings and started the gravity research foundation to try to find a way to control gravity to prevent future incidents like these two of the early members of the gravity research foundation were clarence birdseye and thomas edison both of these men had achieved their fame and fortune through relatively random experimentation and convinced babson that he could probably find the secret to anti-gravity in the same way towards the end of his life edison became convinced that through evolution birds had developed some organ or excretion that gave them anti-gravity abilities and convinced babson to purchase a collection of over 5 000 stuffed birds to study this in addition to the stuffed bird collection the institute also sponsored the gravity research foundation essay contest early announcements read awards were to be given for suggestions for anti-gravity devices for partial insulators reflectors or absorbers of gravity or for some substance that can be rearranged by gravity to throw off heat and not surprisingly not one serious scientist entered the contest for the first three years until bryce dewitt came along bryce dewitt won first place in the concept contest and said it was the easiest thousand dollars he'd ever made agnew banson was a member of the gravity research foundation's board he had read bryce's essay and sent bryce an almost apologetic letter asking him to consider being the directory for director for a gravity research institute at a university in north carolina agnew benson is kind of interesting in his own right cecile dewitt described him as being larger than life and he shows up in a lot of places this painting is hanging in the museum of fine art in philadelphia and it's a painting of agnew's namesake dr hayes agnew dr agnew and his assistant dr hunter removed a portion of agnew's grandfather's elbow bone and hence agnew's name agnew hunter banson another grandson dr harry theodore henry theodore banson went on to become the first surgeon to successfully perform a heart and liver transplant and here he is shown with agnew early in his career agnew made his millions by successfully running the banson company but he had other interests he wanted to be the first man on the moon and to that end he wanted an anti-gravity solution and he also wrote a science fiction novel called the stars are too high in addition to funding serious gravity research agnew was hedging his bets with by sponsoring fringe physics research at the time here he is shown with thomas townsend brown of electrogravitator fame and you can see that agnew took out a patent on one of brown's inventions in college agnew hung out with scientists and uh met david tressel griggs the geophysicist in his dormitory he and dr griggs uh made an expedition to the cacoos mountains uh on the way there they were involved in a car crash dr grigg's legs were crushed he later recovered and he used the insurance payment to purchase a lucom airplane and that was used at the first radar test at mit during world war ii i initially thought this was an interesting little aside to the history of agnew hunter banson um but i later found out that actually agnew may be an interesting aside to the history of dr griggs um it turns out that dr griggs was the head of air force science from 1950 to 1952 and was instrumental in starting livermore labs with the help of edward teller and doing some of the first underground nuclear tests there he was also instrumental in starting the rand corporation where thomas townsend brown did some of his work so dr griggs has a tie to almost everybody in this story the institute of field physics found bankroll by agnew banson did a lot of great work in his 11-year tenure um cecile dewitt helped to organize the first conference on general relativity and gravitation in the united states and that helped to spur interest and rekindle uh gr research in the united states by 1966 they were sponsoring peter higgs when he wrote his paper on the higgs boson in 1966 banson passed away and sadly his passing was reminiscent of a roger babson quote babson was trying to encourage scientists to bequest their laboratory equipment upon death to the gravity research foundation and said too often a man spends his life on something he feels to be of utmost importance only to have it pushed on the ash heat by his disinterested heirs a year after benson's death his family ceased all funding to the institute of field physics even in death banson has brushes with fringe physics a friend of his coined the phrase out of body experience and wrote a book where he claims to have communicated with manson beyond the grave uh conspiracy theory fans will know banson from the book the philadelphia experiment where it is implied that the plane crash that killed agnew was actually done on purpose because he was getting too close to finding secrets of anti-gravity babson passed away a year later in 1957 leaving behind him babson college in massachusetts and the gravity research foundation essay contest now a respectable essay contest thanks to the efforts of bryce dewitt with some other winners such as roger penrose stephen hawking banesh hoffman and joe weber cecile and bryce dewitt wound up at the university of texas austin center for relativity research they never lost their sense of adventure and in 1973 led an expedition to mauritania to reproduce eddington's solar eclipse experiments with modern equipment bryce also helped to popularize the mini world interpretation of quantum mechanics by everett leading to many books comic books and television shows such as fringe on the subject and then each choice you take create a new reality lest you think that corporations no longer sponsor physics uh the end of the gravity probe b experiment was sponsored by capital one bank the founder of capital one bank richard fairbanks is the son of william fairbanks one of the initial architects of the gravity probe b project and there's still a gravity prize michael gurda of the institute for gravity research in germany is offering a million euro prize to anyone who can offer technology to control gravity thanks very much