Set in a revolutionary era of physics and science when a series of rapid-fire discoveries was upending our understanding of the universe, Splinters of Infinity by Mark Wolverton tells a little-known story: the tale of two of America's foremost physicists, Robert Millikan (1868-1953) and Arthur Compton (1892-1962), who found themselves locked in an intense, often deeply personal, conflict about cosmic rays. Confirmed in 1912, cosmic rays-enigmatic forms of penetrating radiation-seemed to raise all new questions about the origins of the universe, but they also offered the potential to explain everything-or reveal the existence of God.
In engaging, accessible prose, Wolverton takes the listener through the twists and turns of the Millikan-Compton debate, one of the first major public examples of how heated the controversies among scientists could become-and the lengths that scientists would go to settle their disputes. Along the way, Wolverton probes the forever elusive question, still unanswered today, about where cosmic rays come from and what they reveal about black holes, distant galaxies, the existence of dark matter and dark energy, and the birth of the universe, concluding that these splinters of infinity may not hold the keys to the secret of creation but do bring us ever closer to it.
After the Soviet Union proved to the United States that it possessed an operational intercontinental ballistic missile with the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, the world watched anxiously as the two superpowers engaged in a game of nuclear one-upmanship. Amid this rising tension, eccentric physicist Nicholas Christofilos brought forth an outlandish, albeit ingenious, idea to defend the US from a Soviet attack: detonating nuclear warheads in space to create an artificial radiation belt that would fry incoming ICBMs. Known as Operation Argus, this plan is the most secret and riskiest experiment in history, and classified details of these nuclear tests have been long obscured.
Combining his investigation of recently declassified documents with more than a decade of experience in researching and writing about the science of the Cold War, Mark Wolverton tells the unknown and controversial story of this scheme, chronicling Christofilos' unconventional idea from inception to execution, and examines the scientific, political, and environmental implications of Argus, as well as that of the atmospheric tests that followed.
Burning the Sky is an engrossing read that will intrigue any lover of scientific or military history and will remind readers why Project Argus remains frighteningly relevant nearly sixty years later.
