Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation [Hardcover]

Joao Magueijo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2003

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, and light travels at one fixed speed. This idea is considered a foundation of modern physics, but what if it is wrong?Theoretical physicist Magueijo presents the idea that light traveled faster in the early universe than it does today. The varying speed of light theory solves some of the most intractable problems in cosmology, and could have major implications for the study of physics.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Among physicists, it is widely assumed that one's greatest chance for a breakthrough discovery will come before one reaches the age of 30. True or not, this idea leads young physicists such as João Magueijo to pull out all the intellectual stops in the search for glory and immortality. In Faster Than the Speed of Light, Magueijo reveals the short, brilliant history of his possibly groundbreaking speculation--VSL, or Variable Light Speed. This notion--that the speed of light changed as the universe expanded after the Big Bang--contradicts no less prominent a figure than Albert Einstein. Because of this, Magueijo has suffered more than a few slings and arrows from hidebound, jealous, or perplexed colleagues. But the young scientist persisted, found a few important allies, and finally managed to shake up the establishment enough to get the attention he merited and craved. Magueijo begins the book with a suitably accessible explanation of special and general relativity, then moves on to the ideas that laid the groundwork for VSL. In the process, he rips the doors off of scientific academia and airs quite a bit of dirty laundry. Comparing himself to Einstein throughout the book, Magueijo approaches his topic and its dissemination with cocksure genius, expecting readers to sympathize with him as he battles to win favor. And we do. The scientific process is "rigorous, competitive, emotional, and argumentative," writes Magueijo. His theory could knock down two solid pillars of cosmology--inflation and relativity. Not only does his radical notion deserve a trial by fire, it also deserves a champion like Magueijo, who isn't afraid of the flames. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly

Could Einstein be wrong and Magueijo right? Equally pressing for Magueijo, a lecturer in theoretical physics at London's Imperial College, is whether the physics editor at the preeminent science journal Nature is in fact "a first class moron" for rejecting his last paper. And did that cosmologist from Princeton steal his idea? What about all those hours wasted writing requests for funding from those "parasites," those "ex-scientists well past their prime" who dispense the monies that make contemporary science possible? Welcome to the world of career science, disclosed here in all its flawed brilliance. Magueijo's heretical idea-that the speed of light is not constant; light traveled faster in the early universe-challenges the most fundamental tenet of modern physics. Deceptively simple, the theory came to the author during a bad hangover one damp morning in Cambridge, England (many of the author's breakthroughs seem to arrive at unexpected moments, like while he's urinating outside a Goan bar). If true, Magueijo's Variant Speed of Light theory, or VSL, rectifies apparent inconsistencies in the Big Bang theory. Magueijo cunningly frames his journey with the stories of other famous, courageous heretics, notably Einstein himself, and one suspects an apologetics at work here. Magueijo, a 35-year-old native of Portugal, is opinionated and can seem immature and almost bratty in his diatribes against the banalities of academia or the hypocrisy and backbiting of peer review. But his science is lucidly rendered, and even his penchant for sturm und drang sheds light on the tensions felt by scientists incubating new ideas. This book shows how science is done-and so easily can be undone.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Perseus Publishing; 1st edition (January 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738205257
• ISBN-13: 978-0738205250
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,034,264 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing look at the cutting edge of science, but..., February 26, 2003

By 

Howard L Ritter, Jr., M.D. (Toledo, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation (Hardcover)

It may be poor form to start off a review with a sentence that immediately establishes a tone, but this book could have been subtitled "A Self-Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Turk". The science is by no means secondary, but the constant reminders that Magueijo has a very decided young-mavericks-vs.-old-fogeys world view of institutional cosmology often becomes intrusive.
The author is a cosmologist in England and his book is the story of his development of an idea, that the velocity of light (the `c' in E = mc-squared) is not constant but has varied during the history of the Universe. His contention is that if the value of c had been enormously greater in the extremely early universe (trillionths of a trillionth, etc., of a second after the start of the Big Bang), that may account for numerous curious attributes of the observable universe, including the so-called "flatness" and "horizon" problems as well as the origin of matter and the nature of Einstein's cosmological constant and the "dark energy" of the universe. Suggesting that the speed of light has not been an eternal constant is such anathema in physics that it is difficult to convey the magnitude of the heresy. It would be comparable to asserting to the Church that Jesus was not divine
I can't comment on the validity of the science or the theory that Magueijo espouses (I don't think that anyone at this point in history can do more than just comment) except to guess that this book will become an eventual classic if VSL becomes widely accepted. Like many of the best writings about scientific progress, this is a first-person view from one of the central participants--THE central participant, if Magueijo's account is accurate. As such, and in its iconclastic, highly personal, and not always flattering second-person references to other participants and peripheral characters, it calls to mind James Watson's "The Double Helix" (and I'm guessing this is no coincidence). If VSL grows to repectable adulthood, the book will be a valuable record of its gestation, and this is where it really shines. Whether the reader really understands the basic science, or even whether VSL is correct or even well regarded, or not is almost irrelevant. The science is intriguing, especially if correct, but the unambiguously valuable, and enduring, content is the insight into the inspiration, the realizations, the excitement, the grinding intellectual labor and sweat, the reconsiderations and reworkings, the value of collaboration, the disappointments, the satisfaction of seeing one's young theory go from strength to strength--and the challenges and frustrations: of trying to air radical ideas without risking losing priority, of maintaining professional respectability while pursuing an idea utterly at odds with one of the nearly absolute and unassailable pillars of modern physics--and of trying to get into print with it. And contending all the while with the requirements of holding a post in academia.
However, the next reminder that the author holds himself aloof from the mundane world which provides him with a nurturing cocoon in which to develop his ideas is never far ahead. This is manifested in numerous ways. One of the most obvious is the gratuitous use of "hard" four-letter expletives (only one of which is in the context of a direct quote), where more ordinary expressions would have been better suited to a mass-market book. Another is the blatant criticism he liberally dishes out to those whose role in life he considers to be to thwart him and his efforts. Some of this seems to me to border on the libelous. For example, the identity of the editor of a named physics journal in a particular year is virtually a matter of public record, and I can't imagine that that individual can be pleased with the characterizations made in repeated references to "the editor of PRD". Several journal referees accused of "idiocy" and worse are referred to in contexts that will probably render them identifiable, even if only to insiders. And the continuing references to the fossilized natures of the administrative echelons of academic departments and university leaderships rapidly grow old and distracting. Come on! We all know how young scientists feel about academic departmental dinosaurs. But Magueijo carries this past the point of necessity; a much more economical brief description would suffice to let the reader know that the author, too, experienced this common perception. In particular, the especially vitriolic criticism of the senior leadership at his own institution (Imperial College London) seem not only carping but downright ungracious. Tenure should not be regarded as license to kill.
There are other curious habits; for example, a recurring character to whom Magueijo refers as his "girlfriend", and of whom a snapshot is printed, is identified only by her first name. Their informal and indefinite relationship would have made a reference without name or picture more appropriate for a published work. Cosmic strings are likened to pubic hairs. Also, the values of several physical/astronomical quantities are spectacularly incorrect as stated.
I suppose much of this is what passes for courageous, tell-it-like-it-is honesty and intellectual brashness, but in a popular science book it just looks puerile. Some of the quirks can be attributed to the fact that the author is not a product of American/English culture and, to judge from a subtle (and engaging) "feel" to the structure and cadence of his narrative language, probably not a native speaker of English (Magueijo is Portuguese). Better editing would have solved much of the irritating details. One wonders whether the overall tone of the non-science aspects of Magueijo's story accounts for the fact that this book's publisher was not one of the major science-book houses. All in all a worthwhile book, a look at a work in progress and a vivid portrait of the personal process, but I think this is a dish that could have been served without the whine.

29 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but Tedious, January 22, 2003

By 

Sarah Ilky (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation (Hardcover)

The beginning sections of this book, in which relativity is covered, were kind of interesting (although the material is covered in many other books). But when the subject turned to the author's own theories and the in's and out's of getting it published, the book really got tedious. If you are a total physics junky and want to know intricate details of how it's decided which papers get published, you might enjoy this book more than I did. But if you are looking for a meaty book on the cutting-edge of real physics, this is not it.

27 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars very opinionated, January 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation (Hardcover)

The most striking thing about Magueijo's book is how unpleasantly opinionated Magueijo seems. It's not surprising that he's opinionated: it fits the profile of someone who would propose the sorts of audacious theories he proposes. Being opinionated is in itself not a bad thing, since it can make a book a lot more interesting and thought-provoking. However, Magueijo seems determined to offend everyone he can: a large fraction of the book is devoted to calling the cosmology editor of the prestigious journal Nature scientifically incompetent, asserting that administrators are always failed researchers who try due to jealousy to make things difficult for practicing scientists, questioning the dedication and decisions of his coauthors (and supposed friends!), making childishly insulting comments about other branches of physics (e.g., comparing superstrings to pubic hair), etc. I would have had more fun reading this book if Magueijo had dropped his "Oh, look how refreshingly honest I am in telling you these things" pose. Even if they are true, I'd respect Magueijo more if he could make his case civilly.

Aside from that, this book could be worse. It combines a certain amount of standard background with a very detailed account of Magueijo's work on VSL ("Varying Speed of Light") models in cosmology. This is the book to read if for some reason you want to know exactly where and when he came up with each idea, which things he worked out and which his coauthors did, where the papers were submitted and how the referees from each journal responded, etc. Like most scientists, I'm quite skeptical of VSL, but it can't be entirely ruled out. If it turns out to be true, then we'll all be glad Magueijo documented the early years. If not, then his book will be forgotten.