The Vortex Theory of the Atom

From a review by Martin Gardner of Lee Smolin's and Peter Woit's books attacking String Theory:

In the nineteenth century, a conjecture called the vortex theory of the atom became extremely popular in England and America. Proposed by the famous British physicist Lord Kelvin, it had an uncanny resemblance to string theory. It was widely believed at the time that space was permeated by an in- compressible frictionless fluid called the ether. Atoms, Kelvin suggested, are super-small whirlpools of ether, vaguely similar to smoke rings. They take the form of knots and links. Point particles can’t vibrate. Ether rings can. Their shapes and frequencies determine all the properties of the elements. Vortex theory isn’t mentioned by Woit, although Smolin considers it briefly.

Kelvin published two books defending his conjecture. It was strongly championed in England by J. J. Thomson in his 1907 book The Corpuscular Theory of Matter. Another booster of the theory was Peter Tait, an Irish mathematician. His work, like Witten’s, led to significant advances in knot theory. In the United States, Albert Michelson considered vortex theory so “grand” that “it ought to be true even if it is not.” Hundreds of papers elaborated the theory. Tait predicted it would take generations to develop its elegant mathematics. Alas, beautiful though vortex theory was, it proved to be a glorious road that led nowhere.

I first read about the importance of the vortex theory to the development of knot theory in The Knot Book by Colin Adams.

Eddingtoniana

Last Saturday I watched the BBC drama "Einstein and Eddington".  I will just say that the wonder isn't that it was done well, but that it was done at all.  For a program about such an abstruse subject (the 1919 Eclipse test of general relativity) to appear on television is pretty unusual; for it to involve such high profile actors as Andy Serkis ("Gollum") and David Tennant ("Doctor Who") seems little short of a miracle.  So, instead of grumping about the inaccuracies, I will just provide a few links to some background material:

A. S. Eddington, "Report on the Relativity Theory of Gravitation", The Physical Society of London, 1920. (Eddington's report on general relativity, which got a mention in the program.)

Daniel Kennefick, "Not only because of Theory: Eddington and the Competing Myths of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition", arXiv:0709.0685, 2007. (A thorough debunking of the rumours that Eddington fudged the results of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition.)

And, finally, that famous little story about Eddington (here told in Walter Grazer, "Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes", Oxford, 2002):

Eddington was painfully shy but far from modest. His illustrious pupil Subramanyam Chandrasekhar recalled overhearing a conversation between Eddington and another astronomer, Ludwig Silberstein: Silberstein believed that he himself had a firm grasp of Einstein's theory and complimented Eddington for being one of the three people in the world to understand it.  When Eddington hesitated Silberstein asked why he was flaunting his false modesty.  'Not at all', came the reply, 'I am trying to think who the third one might be.'

Kitchen Cosmology

Every time you break an egg, you are doing observational cosmology

From this article by Sean M. Carroll at Scientific American.

The Case against Manned Space Exploration

From The Physics ArXiv Blog, a remark by 'KFC' on Anton Zeilinger's proposal to use the ISS in the Space-QUEST quantum entanglement experiment:

That should please mission planners for the International Space Station which has yet to host a single significant experiment in space.

A longer, more reasoned case is made by Philip Ball here.

Relativity for Dogs

Chad Orzel has been discussing physics with his dog again:

I look in the rear-view mirror. She's standing on the seat, wagging her tail and looking pleased with herself.
"Oh, God," I say. "Don't tell me you ran out of quantum physics books, and have started reading about relativity."

Click through for the full story.

Previous discussions are here and here.