Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Physics welcomes the idea that space contains energy whose gravitational effect approximates that of Einstein's cosmological constant, \ensuremath{\Lambda}; today the concept is termed dark energy or quintessence. Physics also suggests that dark energy could be dynamical, allowing for the arguably appealing picture of an evolving dark-energy density approaching its natural value, zero, and small now because the expanding universe is old. This would alleviate the classical problem of the curious energy scale of a millielectron volt associated with a constant \ensuremath{\Lambda}. Dark energy may have been detected by recent cosmological tests. These tests make a good scientific case for the context, in the relativistic Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre model, in which the gravitational inverse-square law is applied to the scales of cosmology. We have well-checked evidence that the mean mass density is not much more than one-quarter of the critical Einstein--de Sitter value. The case for detection of dark energy is not yet as convincing but still serious; we await more data, which may be derived from work in progress. Planned observations may detect the evolution of the dark-energy density; a positive result would be a considerable stimulus for attempts at understanding the microphysics of dark energy. This review presents the basic physics and astronomy of the subject, reviews the history of ideas, assesses the state of the observational evidence, and comments on recent developments in the search for a fundamental theory.

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The Cosmological Constant and Dark Energy

On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of 1.0×10(-21). It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203,000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1σ. The source lies at a luminosity distance of 410(-180)(+160)  Mpc corresponding to a redshift z=0.09(-0.04)(+0.03). In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are 36(-4)(+5)M⊙ and 29(-4)(+4)M⊙, and the final black hole mass is 62(-4)(+4)M⊙, with 3.0(-0.5)(+0.5)M⊙c(2) radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90% credible intervals. These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.

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The Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

It comes as something ofa surprise to reflect that the New York Review ofBooks is now over twenty years old. Even people of my generation (that is, old enough to remember the revolutionary 196os but not young enough to have taken a very exciting part in them) think of the paper as eternally youthful. In fact, it has gone through years of relatively quiet life, yet, as always in a competitive journalistic market, it is the controversies that attract the interest of the reader and to which the history (especially an admittedly impressionistic survey that tries to include something of the intellectual context in which a journal has operated) must give some attention. Not all the attacks which the New York Review has attracted, both early in its career and more recently, are worth more than a brief summary. What do we now make, for example, of Richard Kostelanetz's forthright accusation that 'The New York Review was from its origins destined to publicize Random House's (and especially [Jason] Epstein's) books and writers'?1 Well, simply that, even if the statistics bear out the charge (and Kostelanetz provides some suggestive evidence to support it, at least with respect to some early issues), there is nothing surprising in a market economy about a publisher trying to push his books through the pages of a journal edited by his friends. True, the New York Review has not had room to review more than around fifteen books in each issue and there could be a bias in the selection of

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3507774.pdf

The New York Review of Books

object but always involves knowledge about this knowledge as well, that is, meta or second-order knowledge. This reflexivity of knowledge also accounts for its self-organizing, self-promoting qualities. Second-order knowledge is the origin 22

The Globalization of Knowledge in History

According to the commonly accepted view, David Hilbert completed the general theory of relativity at least 5 days before Albert Einstein submitted his conclusive paper on this theory on 25 November 1915. Hilbert's article, bearing the date of submission 20 November 1915 but published only on 31 March 1916, presents a generally covariant theory of gravitation, including field equations essentially equivalent to those in Einstein's paper. A close analysis of archival material reveals that Hilbert did not anticipate Einstein. The first set of proofs of Hilbert's paper shows that the theory he originally submitted is not generally covariant and does not include the explicit form of the field equations of general relativity.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/278/5341/1270.full.pdf

Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute

I Relativity in the Making- The Search for Gravitational Absorption in the Early Twentieth Century- Minkowski, Mathematicians, and the Mathematical Theory of Relativity- Heuristics and Mathematical Representation in Einstein's Search for a Gravitational Field Equation- Rotation as the Nemesis of Einstein's Entwurf Theory- II Relativity at Work- Einstein, Relativity and Gravitation Research in Vienna before 1938- Controversies in the History of the Radiation Reaction Problem in General Relativity- The Penrose-Hawking Singularity Theorems: History and Implications- III Relativity at Large- The Cosmological Woes of Newtonian Gravitation Theory- Genesis and Evolution of Weyl's Reflections on De Sitter's Universe- Milne, Bondi and the 'Second Way' to Cosmology- Steady-State Cosmology and General Relativity: Reconciliation or Conflict?- IV Relativity in Debate- Larmor versus General Relativity- Kretschmann's Analysis of Covariance and Relativity Principles- Point Coincidences and Pointer Coincidences: Einstein on the Invariant Content of Space-Time Theories- Contributors

The expanding worlds of general relativity

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Exploring the limits of preclassical mechanics

Gravitational lensing, now taken as an important astrophysical consequence of the general theory of relativity, was found even before this theory was formulated but was discarded as a speculative idea without any chance of empirical confirmation. Reconstruction of some of Einstein's research notes dating back to 1912 reveals that he explored the possibility of gravitational lensing 3 years before completing his general theory of relativity. On the basis of preliminary insights into this theory, Einstein had already derived the basic features of the lensing effect. When he finally published the very same results 24 years later, it was only in response to prodding by an amateur scientist.

Jürgen Renn

Papers

The Globalization of Knowledge in History

Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute

The expanding worlds of general relativity

Exploring the limits of preclassical mechanics

The origin of gravitational lensing: a postscript to Einstein's 1936 Science paper.