From: hal@finney.org
Date: Mon Dec 11 2000 - 00:16:35 MST
Amara forwards, from the May 2000 Physics Today,
> Now an emeritus professor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced
> Studies, Dyson is perhaps best known to physicists for synthesizing
> into quantum electrodynamics the seemingly conflicting theories of
> Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. He's gained
> a wider audience among the lay public with his books, beginning in
> 1979 with _Disturbing the Universe_. His writings, he notes, "have
> quite a lot to do with ethics, and to some extent with religion as
> well."
It's funny that they should mention his wider audience, without also
referring to what I would think is his best known idea, the Dyson sphere.
It made it into Star Trek and lots of science fiction. Engineering,
even on the grand scale, seems rather mundane compared to lofty ideas
about religion and ethics, I suppose.
Dyson is also well known among Extropians for his speculative
extrapolations of physical conditions in the distant future, if the
universe is expanding. These have been investigated in more detail by
Frank Tipler, of course, and recently Krauss and Starkman.
Hal
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