From: Letters Never Sent, Stories Never Told
By James Baird
Andromeda
Somehow when I met Tom Emery in high school we got interested in astronomy. It was a curiosity born out of looking at the stars. Tom posed what he called important questions. I do not know where he got them, perhaps from his older brother Ralph, but they were to always ask "Why?" "What?" and "How?" And so we looked to the stars with some binoculars he had and asked these questions of the stars. We went to the top of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County and learned the constellations. We hunted in the region of Orion's belt and found what we were looking for, the Great Nebula in Orion. And we asked our questions. What was it, how did it get there, why did it exist? We read astronomy books and we had a star guide. One evening we found the Andromeda nebula. Here was a spiral nebula and we knew that the Milky Way with its zillions of stars was a spiral with our sun and earth situated within it. Now we had seen another world and we asked our questions. What was the meaning of this, what was the meaning of life, how did life come to be and was there life elsewhere?
We hungered for better resolution and so in my garage/lab I started to grind a 6-inch reflecting telescope mirror blank. I kept a notebook and the grinding to spherical shape with a four-foot focal length took 24 hours. That 24 hours was spread over a few months, perhaps a summer, but was finally done. The information to enable us to do this came from a three-volume set of books called Amateur Telescope Making. In it was described two methods for checking the focal length. One was called the Ronchi Test and the other the Focault Test. The Focault Test was easier to set up, though we gave the Ronchi a shot, and we ground (rather I ground) until a practical focal length was reached. The grinding required the 1-inch mirror blank and a grinding blank made of 1/2 inch Pyrex and various coarseness of grinding powder. When a reasonable mirror was formed the grinding blank, which now had a convex shape, was covered with about 1/8th inch of pitch. Into the cold pitch a network of groves was cut and the polishing with rouge began. There is another 24 hours of work to "figure" the mirror to a parabolic shape. We never quite reached parabolic curvature, but the mirror was quite good enough. Using a chemical process the mirror blank was cleaned with mixed acid (concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids), washed with distilled water and placed in a silvering solution. The silvering solution was made with silver nitrate as the source of silver. A reduction reaction deposited metallic silver on the cleaned mirror surface. Aluminizing would have been a more durable surface we read, but we did not have access to the necessary vacuum chamber and equipment. Silvering, a chemical process was just right for a couple of budding chemists.
The telescope housing was made of stovepipe and 2 inch galvanized pipe with bends became the mount. This was not the most stable telescope, but good enough for a vast increase in resolution. We continued our observations and treks to Mt. Tam. I remember looking at a lunar eclipse and taking notes with drawings. They are still in the Norton Star book that I bought. The moon light through that six-inch reflector was blinding until the eclipse started. There it was the moon with its features. We had no inkling that in over 24 years man would be standing on that surface. We trained that telescope on different constellations searching for more nebulas, other universes, and places in the vast reaches of space where there might be other lives. Again we wondered and we thought. What was the meaning of this universe, what was life? We found a globular cluster and a nebula in the Cassiopeia constellation. We spent many nights on Mt. Tam searching. These were important lessons for both of us. They wetted our interest in science and I am sure that we were not different from other kids, perhaps misfits of a sort not into dating girls. Too shy, too shy, but not without desire! Too shy.
From our innate curiosity we asked our three questions over and over. Why, how, what makes this be as it is? I think we both developed the goal to understand all that around us. First, nature and then things mechanical, and electronic, and even people. Curiosity is not limited to science. We both wanted a worldview, to understand everything. In later years when I learned that some physicists were working on GUTS, Grand Unified Theory, the theory of everything it was no suprise someone would do so. The theory of everything. That is the goal. An overview of the universe and all that is in it. Later I would also learn that certain descriptions are unstable, or chaotic. That small changes might have profound effects. That too is part of the theory of everything.
Sitting there on Mt. Tam in the star light night we wondered. What is real? Obviously, our imaginations did not produce "reality." I remember trying to imagine four dimensions in space–time, the rills and hummocks in general relativity and thinking I had it only to realize I was probably hallucinating! Such is the imagination–so untrustworthy. We have to probe the world experimentally. We have to make quantitative measurements in order to have consistency. Reality for us became tied up with both thoughts and observation. Today it is very difficult for me to understand those "subjective reality" people who say things like "the physical world depends on the human mind." I purchased a book for 50 cents by Bertrand Russell titled "Science and Religion." Tom and I read it and had our discussions. Basically, Russell says that science will always win arguments that depend on measurement, or empirical observation. Now, even the Big Bang bothers some of my religious friends, yet I say it has nothing to do with religion! As we proceed in our description of the universe we gain a more consistent picture. There is much behind this statement. We know, from Mt. Tam, that this is one view and that there may be others. If someone can come up with another consistent worldview so be it. I remember being at an American Physical Society meeting in New York City standing next to P.A.M. Dirac, the famous Nobel Prize winner and developer of quantum mechanics, who was talking to someone I knew named Yilmaz from Cambridge, Ma. Dirac said to Yilmaz "Yilmaz, your theory of relativity is as good as anyone’s." Must have made Yilmaz feel good, but the point is that Dirac, and most objective scientists, were willing to accept another view. Provided, of course, that it fit experiments repeatable by anyone. Paradigm busters are what scientists are supposed to be. Is there one reality? Mt. Tam says yes and no.
I think these questions and discussions of ours provided a motivation for school, for study, for precise understanding. The language of science seemed to be mathematics. It is funny the role that math plays in theoretical physics and chemistry. I loved math because of its fundamental role to physics and the fact that is was deduced from a few axioms. On the other hand, there can be an experimental side to math. Counting leads to natural numbers and addition and subtraction. Multiplication is simply addition over and over again and so math is built up from axioms step at a time. We can see functions in nature, logarithmic spirals in sunflowers come to mind. Math can have an experimental side! Is mathematics simply a function of the human mind, or is it a purely derived thing?