Epstein Secrets

jects obscure that they are actually attracted to the earth's surface at the same rate; and Darwin's epic realization that the diversity of life on Earth could arise from a single progenitor by the simple process of natural selection. None of these connections was all that obvious, at first. However,

(although the idea that light might come in discrete packets had earlier been floated by the great Ludwig Boltzmann in 1877). I have come to admire Planck even more as I have learned about his life. Like Einstein, he was an unpaid lecturer and was not offered an academic position after completing his

risingly, the conventional approaches to this problem were unable to reproduce these observations. After struggling with the problem for six years, Planck presented a revolutionary proposal about radiation that agreed with observations. 2P_Glealer-StoryEverTold_Atirdd 78 12/16116 3:06 PIA EFTA002860

2 Gamma ray bursts and moving observers The focus of this paper is an experiment in which photons from gamma ray bursts are observed to arrive near Earth. Such experiments are of interest because they have already been used to test the hypothesis of an energy dependence of the speed of light, eq (1) [

s about how the principle of the relativity of inertial frames can be made consistent with the existence of a minimal length scale, taken to be the Planck length, Ip[1, 2, 3]. It may also be seen as making possible a maximum momenta for an individual particle. Over the almost decade since it was first

rtainty principle, as the energy it can carry is so small that no visible violation of the conservation of en- ergy will occur. Thus, an electron on Earth can emit a virtual photon that could travel to Alpha Centauri, four light-years away, and that pho- ton can still produce a force on an electron the

k had helped pioneer the quantum revolution by resolving the paradox of the spectrum of radiation emitted by atomic systems. So it was fitting that Planck should indirectly help resolve the paradoxical makeup of the nucleus. While he didn't himself spearhead the relevant research, he recognized the ta