Sky & Telescope - February 2022 - 39

BOOK REVIEW by Peter Tyson
Pushing Boundaries
FEAR OF A BLACK UNIVERSE: An Outsider's Guide to the Future of Physics
Even as we contemStephon
Alexander
Basic Books, 2021
245 pages, ISBN 9781541699632
US$28, hardcover
EARLY IN Fear of a Black Universe, Stephon
Alexander describes giving his first
professional talk. His topic was iconoclastic,
but he felt confident, having just
published a paper on it in the Journal of
High Energy Physics. But the audience of
physicists kept interrupting him with
skeptical questions and comments.
" Then came a voice from the back of
the room, " Alexander recalls. Everyone
shushed as a distinguished Indian
physicist in his 70s stood up. " Let him
finish! " the old man said. " No one ever
died from theorizing. "
Now a professor of physics at Brown
University, Alexander recalls that
moment as " the biggest lesson with the
fewest words " he could have learned
about the art of doing theoretical physics.
It's a lesson he has since taken to
heart in his career tackling the most
bracing questions. This book showcases
that propensity in a captivating way.
" It is even crazier that we came
into being to even be able to
ponder these questions. "
Alexander raises one provocative
question after the next. How does
life emerge from a finite collection of
chemical elements that are themselves
lifeless? Is there some undiscovered link
between quantum mechanics and consciousness?
How is it that the classical
universe of planets and people emerged,
as physicists think it did, from quantum
beginnings just after the Big Bang? Is
there a link between the origin of life
and the expansion of the universe?
plate these questions,
Alexander offers refreshers
on some of the field's
major findings over the
past century and more,
from Einstein's massenergy
relation and
general relativity to the
concepts of emergence
and entanglement. He
returns multiple times
to the profound mystery
revealed by the famous
double-slit experiment:
How is it that an electron behaves like a
wave until we observe it, when it reveals
itself as a particle?
This weirdness is hard enough for us
to grapple with today, but its implications
for the early universe are truly
out there. If a particular quantum state
doesn't reveal itself until it's measured,
then what happened to make the infant
universe settle into the single state we
know now? The book's title gets at such
unilluminated realms, including the
grand enigmas of dark matter and dark
energy, about which physicists remain
as in the dark as when those mysteries
were first discovered.
But the title encapsulates another
theme: a fear of outside-the-box thinking
and those who do it. Today, Alexander
says, theoretical physics suffers
from a sense of dissatisfaction, a feeling
that in recent decades researchers
have been unable make discoveries as
groundbreaking as relativity and quantum
mechanics were a century ago.
" Why is this? " he asks. " Is it because
these problems are too hard for us? Or
is it that in the search for the truth,
some scientists are afraid to look at
uncharted or forbidden territories,
afraid because there may be penalties,
reputational and professional,
for stepping outside
accepted paradigms?
I think it's the latter. "
Alexander thrives on
the uncharted and forbidden.
As a Black man
born in Trinidad and
Tobago, he has always
felt an outsider in the
predominantly white
man's world of theoretical
physics - yet another
of the book's themes. But
he sees this as an advantage,
along with being a self-described
" positive deviant " who can shake up the
order in creative ways. As he notes, scientists
on the margins feel less pressure
to keep within their field's constraints
than those who " fit in. " " Perhaps it is
time, " he writes, " to value and elevate
minorities . . . not in spite of their outsider's
perspective, but because of it. "
As for those positive-deviant ideas,
they keep coming in a quiet crescendo.
Alexander wonders if quantum computers
operated by advanced alien civilizations
might explain the mystery of
dark energy. He asks if consciousness,
like charge and quantum spin, might
exist to some degree in all matter, from
humans right down to cosmic dust, and
whether our consciousness is a subset of
a cosmic mind.
" If you find this line of reasoning
preposterous, " he writes about that last
thought, " it is even crazier that we came
into being to even be able to ponder
these questions. " He ends the book
abruptly, as if in mid-thought, which is
essentially where he finds himself.
¢ Editor in Chief PETER TYSON enjoys
musing on the biggest questions, even if
he has no hope of answering them.
sk yand tele scope .o r g * FEBRUARY 2022 39
Sky & Telescope - February 2022

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