Thomas Gold (physicist)

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Thomas Gold (born May 22, 1920 in Vienna ; † June 22, 2004 in Ithaca , New York ) was an American astrophysicist of Austrian origin, who, like Fred Hoyle, became known for unorthodox opinions in various fields. His fields of work were astrophysics and radio astronomy .

Life

His father Max Gold, was the younger brother of Alfred Gold and director of the Austrian Alpine Mining Society , the largest Austrian company for mining and smelting, and his mother Josefine was a former child actress. When an economic crisis loomed in the mining industry, Max Gold became a majority shareholder in a Berlin metal trading company. From the age of 10 Thomas Gold lived in Berlin. But in 1933 his family, who were of Jewish descent, left Germany and emigrated to England. Gold went to an English-run elite boarding school in Zuoz (Switzerland), the Lyceum Alpinum . In 1939 he began studying at Trinity College at Cambridge University , but was interned like almost all German and Austrian citizens after the outbreak of World War II in 1940 . On the first night in the Bury St. Edmunds prison camp , he met Hermann Bondi , as did Gold, an Austrian student at Trinity College. Although her parents were acquainted in Vienna, they had not yet met. After being interned for 15 months, Gold graduated with a BA in 1942 .

In 1946 he did his Master of Science with a thesis on the mechanisms of pitch differentiation in the ear, according to which the ear and not the brain distinguish the pitches. He adopted an active amplification mechanism with oscillators in the ear, which was confirmed in the 1970s by measuring otoacoustic emissions . With Bondi and Fred Hoyle he took part in the British war program to research and use radar in the navy. In 1952, Gold came to the Royal Greenwich Observatory and became an assistant to the Royal Astronomer. There he worked, among other things, on the development of the maser , an amplifier for microwaves for use in radio telescopes . In 1956 he became professor of astronomy at Harvard University . At the same time he began working as a consultant for NASA . In 1959 he was Chairman of the Astronomy Department at Cornell University , where he founded the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research (CRSR). He remained its director for 20 years until 1981. During this time he also initiated the construction and use of the radio telescope in Arecibo , which is still the second largest radio observatory in the world. From 1971 he also gave lectures at Cornell, where he stayed until his retirement in 1987.

Gold was married twice. He had three daughters with his first wife, Merle Eleanor Tuberg: Lindy Bryant, Philacy Gold and Tanya Vanasse. He survived his second wife Carvel (née Beyer) Gold, with whom he had daughter Lauren. After a long period of heart disease , Gold died at the age of 84.

research

In 1948, together with the mathematician Hermann Bondi and the astronomer Fred Hoyle, Gold developed the so-called steady-state theory of the universe , which, in contrast to the theory of the Big Bang , assumed a constant average density of matter in an expanding universe that had existed for indefinite times. for which they postulated a constant regeneration and destruction of matter. However, since background radiation was discovered in 1965, this theory has hardly been discussed in specialist circles.

In 1955, gold predicted that the surface of the moon was of a fine powdery consistency, which was doubted by many experts at the time, but was confirmed after the moon landing. He also developed a stereo camera that the astronauts took with them to the moon .

In 1968/69, Gold was the first physicist to suspect rotating neutron stars behind pulsars immediately after their discovery , his most famous discovery. Initially, however, a specialist conference rejected his corresponding lecture as being so absurd that it was not even considered worth discussing.

Controversy

Since many of his theses were initially hostile to the professional world, he developed a critical stance on the scientific peer review system, behind which he saw a “herd instinct”. Instead, he proposed a “science court” that would be filled with scientists from different specialist areas and yet had sufficient specialist knowledge to be able to judge a questionable topic from different perspectives.

In 1960 Thomas Gold set up the "Cosmic Garbage" theory. In it, he ventilated the possibility that extraterrestrial space travelers might have visited Earth long ago and inadvertently brought life to Earth with their leftover debris.

His last controversies were in the geological field. Gold did not suspect the formation of crude oil and natural gas, as is common belief, through the decomposition of organic material under anaerobic conditions, but assumed that large amounts of hydrocarbons had been present at great depths since the formation of the earth and, in his view, almost in the earth's crust when they escaped inexhaustible - natural gas and oil deposits formed ("Deep Earth Gas Hypothesis"). Among other things, he attributed the formation of earthquakes to rising gases. He later modified his theory to the effect that the entire upper crust of the earth was colonized by bacteria or archaea up to a depth of about 10 km (“ deep hot biosphere ”). Oil and gas on earth are metabolic products of hydrocarbon-utilizing , thermophilic and pressure-resistant bacteria in the earth's crust. He tried to prove his hypothesis in 1986 in a test drilling in Sweden (in the Siljansring , an old meteorite crater), but this could not provide the necessary clear evidence. His petroleum formation theory is ignored by the majority of Western geologists. Although there is now no question that there is a “deep biosphere”, there is no evidence that it has anything to do with the formation of oil deposits.

Appreciation

Gold was considered an “idea machine” because he kept looking at conventional views in completely new ways. He associates seemingly incompatible aspects of a problem and uses it to do what characterizes creative and successful scientists - according to gold student Peter Goldreich ( California Institute of Technology ) and the American creativity researcher Dean Simonton ( University of California ). Cornell University holds an annual guest lecturer lecture, The Thomas Gold Lectureship Series .

Honors

Thomas Gold has received numerous awards, including in 1985 with the highest price of the Royal Astronomical Society , the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society . In 1969 he received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University .

Memberships

In 1964 he was elected as a member (" Fellow ") of the Royal Society of London . Member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957), Member of the American Philosophical Society , Fellow of the American Geophysical Union . He also served as an advisor to the US government's Science Advisory Committee .

Fonts (selection)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz
  2. ↑ Thomas Gold, 1920–2004 adsabs.harvard.edu, accessed August 2, 2011
  3. ↑ According to them, the rate of production would be of the order of a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter per billion years.
    In: Bondi, Hermann and Gold, Thomas (1948): "The Steady-State Theory of the Expanding Universe", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 108, 252 - 270.
  4. ↑ Due to Gold's predictions, NASA was even concerned that the astronauts might sink in the lunar dust and sent the Surveyor space probe to test landings on the moon. In many cases, the surveyor results were seen as a defeat for gold, although the latter predicted a maximum sinking depth of around 3 cm, which was later confirmed again.
  5. ↑ "Shortly after the discovery of pulsars I Wished to present to interpretation of what pulsars were, at this first pulsar conference: namely thatthey were rotating neutron stars. The chief organizer of this conference said to me, "Tommy, if I allow for that crazy an interpretation, there is no limit to what I would have to allow" . I was not allowed five minutes floor time, although I in fact spoke from the floor. A few months later, this same organizer started a paper with the sentence, "It is now generally considered that pulsars are rotating neutron stars." Thomas Gold: "New Ideas in Science" ( Memento from March 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1989, Vol. 3, No. 2, 103-112.
  6. ↑ Thomas Gold: "New Ideas in Science" ( Memento of March 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1989, Vol. 3, No. 2, 103-112;
  7. ↑ Thomas Gold: Cosmic Garbage in: Air Force and Space Digest No. 43, May 1960, p. 65; quoted after George Basalla: Civilized life in the universe. Scientists on intelligent extraterrestrials Oxford University Press, New York 2006, ISBN 0-19-517181-0 , p. 145; "Garbage theory" of the origin of life daviddarling.info, accessed September 29, 2012
  8. ^ Carl Sagan: Direct contact among galactic civilizations by relativistic interstellar spaceflight. Planetary and Space Science, Vol. 11, S.485, 05/1963, doi: 10.1016 / 0032-0633 (63) 90072-2 , abstract @ osti.gov, accessed on August 3, 2011
  9. ↑ Thomas Gold: "The Deep, Hot Biosphere" , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 1992, Vol. 89, 6045-6049.
  10. ↑ Thomas Gold: Biosphere of the Hot Depth . edition steinherz, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-9807378-0-2 , table of contents ( Memento from April 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ “Deep Biosphere. Enigmatic world in the "basement of the earth", " scinexx.de, April 5, 2007, focus topic of the week
  12. ↑ a b section “An idea machine” , Science Magazine, July 2, 2004, p. 39
  13. ↑ "Creativity Research: Does Hard Work Make Genius Genius?" Spiegel online , December 18, 2004
  14. ^ The Thomas Gold Lectureship Series astro.cornell.edu, accessed April 5, 2013

Web links

Obituaries

personal data
SURNAME Gold, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tommie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astrophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 2004
Place of death Ithaca , New York