Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Physicist and climate skeptic Freeman Dyson has sadly passed away following a fall earlier this week.
RIP Freeman Dyson: The super-boffin who applied his mathematical brain to nuclear magic, quantum physics, space travel, and more
Science’s civil rebel dies aged 96
By Katyanna Quach 28 Feb 2020 at 22:53
Video Freeman Dyson, the eminent British-American physicist and mathematician best known for his theoretical work in quantum electrodynamics, died today. He was 96.
His death was announced by his daughter Mia Dyson via Maine public television and the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) – the top research hub in Princeton, New Jersey, once home to Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other giants of science and technology.
Mia said her father accidentally fell on Wednesday during one of his regular visits to his office at the IAS, where he had worked from 1953 until 1994. He died from his injuries at a hospital on Friday morning.
“No life is more entangled with the onstitute and impossible to capture — architect of modern particle physics, free-range mathematician, advocate of space travel, astrobiology and disarmament, futurist, eternal graduate student, rebel to many preconceived ideas including his own, thoughtful essayist, all the time a wise observer of the human scene,” said Robbert Dijkgraaf, the Director and Leon Levy Professor at the IAS. “His secret was simply saying ‘yes’ to everything in life, till the very end.”
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Read more: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/28/freeman_dyson/
Dyson was a giant of 20th century physics. The most memorable thing about Dyson from my point of view was his fearlessness; he was always someone who chose his own path, a rebel to the very end.
Dyson’s views on climate change and politics were complex. Dyson was a climate skeptic but he also strongly supported President Obama. He thought President Obama’s support for climate action was an unfortunate mistake in an otherwise excellent policy programme.
Climate activists were frequently triggered by Dyson’s outspoken views; because of his scientific reputation, because of his bipartisan fan base, because he was always ready to speak his mind, Dyson was an ongoing thorn in their sides, a significant impediment to their efforts to convince the world to embrace climate action.
I loved reading Dyson’s visionary articles and work, his son George Dyson’s book about Project Orion shows how close Dyson and his fellow scientists came to opening our way to the stars. They developed a known technology space drive with capabilities straight out of science fiction, so powerful yet affordable it could conceivably have propelled a manned mission to Alpha Centauri, or boosted space colonisation efforts by transporting entire cities to other planets or the Asteroid belt.
Project Orion was killed off by President Kennedy, when he signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
For his fearlessness, his vision, and many other reasons, Freeman Dyson’s legacy will endure; he will be remembered as one of the giants of the 20th Century.
He was very future oriented and did a lot of space based work. After Gerard O’Neill passed away he headed the Space Studies Institute (ssi.org) of which I was a long time member going back to the 80s.
A true giant among giants. RIP.
In reference to the passing of Freeman Dyson, I can’t help but mention two of his popular books that I read years ago. The first one, ‘Disturbing the Universe’ (1981) was a wide ranging autobiography, including World War II experiences, coming to the U.S. in 1947, physics contributions, etc. The second book that I read was ‘Infinite in All Directions’, an edited lecture series with a overall philosophical/theological theme.
Anyway, this is a milestone, the passing of one of the great minds of both the 20th and 21st centuries.
Gradually we are losing the only scientists with the knowledge and integrity to fight the green madness. Feynman fought NASA dyson fought everything else
Sad indeed. R.I.P.
Great man! Great mind! Except his so-called Dyson spheres would probably not be an option for an advanced civilization to build. For one, they would be difficult to build and for two, a sphere can’t orbit around something like a star. There’s no gravity on the inside of a sphere for the star to accelerate and make orbit.
Jim
Dyson’s original idea on this was basically an ultimate speculation as to what it would look like if a civilization made use of *all* the high quality (or high frequency) energy coming from a star (with the outer layers of that civilization only radiating in hard-to-use or impossible-to-use IR frequencies, the “garbage out” of energy being infrared, essentially).
So, the Dyson Sphere never had to be any sort of solid or near solid structure, although sf writers love to mess around that way.
The Civil Heretic;
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html
Perhaps, in Dyson’s honor, we could revive the Orion Project using the moon as a launch pad.
Sounds like a genuine scientist who didn’t let his personal politics influence the results of his research.
It’s a badge of honor and integrity that the MSM’s “climate scientist” got “mad” and ignored him when what he found became “An Inconvenient Truth”.
Hehe, I’ve happened across this report from 2007 as to some Freeman Dyson ‘heresies’,
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/14/freeman_dyson_climate_heresies/
A huge loss. Dyson was America’s most distinguished living scientist. America’s average IQ dropped slightly, yesterday, as did the average integrity of her scientific community.
Not being snippy but worth mentioning; Dyson’s birth in 1923 in Berkshire England, 1st class BA from Trinity Cambridge and Trinity Fellowship from 1946 to 1949 (with rooms below Wittgenstein). He was a scholar at both Winchester (‘public’ school) and Trinity and never found it necessary to get a PhD.
Great minds don’t need titles and most PhD are not great minds. Today’s education system is a big joke.
s/yesterday/Friday/
Oops.
s/yesterday|Friday/Saturday/r
What makes his loss so tragic is that he was still active and engaged…he will be missed.
Unfortunately another Orion spacecraft was made, which has nothing to do with the original one. It can only create misunderstanding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)
It is wrong, because we would definitely need nuclear propulsion, Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty notwithstanding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Treaty
We could construct nuclear spaceraft in space, thus avoiding the initial pollution connected to departure. What is more, we would need several such craft ready in orbit.
Because Earth would surely be hit by something large, sooner or later. In case it comes from the asteroid belt, we have plenty of time (provided the thing is identified early). But it is not so with Trans-Neptunian objects. Those can come fast, with no warning whatsoever. The only hope we have is a nuclear spacecraft ready in orbit. That can produce the necessary acceleration to reach and divert the fella in time.
May you rest in peace great mind and writer. Your words will stay with me and with millions of others. Now go and explain to god how his creation works.