The Allure of the Multiverse

An extraordinary voyage into the history of how parallel universes, higher dimensions and time travel have captivated us in imaginative books, films, and series, while stirring raging controversy in science.

Now available:
amazon.com/Allure-Multive…

'The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.

It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.'

-Albert Einstein (The World As I See It)

'Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control ...

Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.'

-Albert Einstein

'All religions, arts, and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling a person's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence, and leading the individual toward freedom.'

-Albert Einstein (YMCA Founder's Day Address)

'I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care for money. Titles or distinctions mean nothing. I do not crave praise.

The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow worker.'

-Albert Einstein

Plaque at Princeton honors Albert Einstein's walking route from his home to his office during his early years working at the Institute for Advanced Study, then located at Fine Hall.

'It is our responsibility as scientists ... to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed'

-Richard Feynman

A Tale of Four Blackboards:

Albert Einstein: estimating the age of the universe

Niels Bohr: final blackboard depicting quantum thought experiment called the Einstein Box

Richard Feynman: final blackboard with inspiring words

John Wheeler: thinking in pictures

Four extraordinary scientists and their blackboards:

Lise Meitner
Vera Rubin
Maria Goeppert Mayer
Margaret Burbidge

'If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.'

-Albert Einstein

In April 1945, Albert Einstein thanked a New York bakery for its #Passover gift of matzo (traditional unleavened bread):

tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

Albert Einstein's #Passover wish for peace, friendship, and cooperation among the Jewish and Arab communities of Palestine (1935):

nytimes.com/1935/04/21/arc…

#Passover 2024

In 1947, Albert Einstein thanked activist Helen Keller for her contributions to international relations and world peace:

afb.org/about-afb/hist…

Quantum pioneer Niels Bohr was known as brilliant, soft-spoken, and absent-minded.

Once, during a lecture, he wanted to dim the lights. He pressed the wrong button, and the platform on which he was standing lowered until he sank beneath the stage.

Nonetheless, he kept talking!

The only known photograph of Albert Einstein explaining his famous equation E = m c^2 on a blackboard.

Lecture at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), 1934

cmu.edu/news/stories/a…

Richard Feynman delivering a lecture at the Jablonna conference on gravitational physics in August 1963.

The conference was held near Warsaw, Poland.

Note the 'Feynman diagrams' on the blackboard behind him.

In his new book “The Allure of the Multiverse,” physicist Paul Halpern takes a wild ride through the multiverse, probing space-time, string theory, and everything in between.

Read the #ScienceBooks Review: scim.ag/5N8

'I believe in peace ... because peace must and will be.'
-Albert Einstein

(Interviewed by Aldo Sorani on 26 October 1921 in the Rome newspaper Il Messagero.)

einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol12-doc/620

#histSTM

New episode of Thoughtfully Mindless, featuring Paul Halpern out now!

Dive into the Science of the multiverse with this thought-provoking conversation!

Available now on all podcast streaming platforms. Video available on the one with the green logo. Links in comments shortly.

Richard Feynman delivering a lecture at the Jablonna conference on gravitational physics in August 1963.

The conference was held near Warsaw, Poland.

Note the 'Feynman diagrams' on the blackboard behind him.