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The Conference on the Role of Gravitation in Physics, also known as the Chapel Hill Conference, was an invitation-only scientific conference held at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States from January 18 to January 23, 1957. It discussed topics in general relativity, including the possible existence of gravitational waves and ways to find a theory of quantum gravity. It was also one of the first large conferences to discuss the many-worlds interpretation.

Organization

The conference was organized by the Institute of Field Physics established a year before the conference in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by physicists Cécile DeWitt-Morette and Bryce DeWitt.[1] The institute was financed by bussinessmen Agnew Bahson and Roger Babson.[1] The later had founded the Gravity Research Foundation for looking into anti-gravity research.[1]

Aside from the DeWitts, in the steering comittee there was also Frederik Belinfante, Peter Bergmann, Freeman Dyson and John Archibald Wheeler.[1]

The conference was divided into 4 sessions on unquantized general relativity, 1 session on cosmology, and 3 sessions on quantum gravity.[1]

Energy of gravitational waves

During the conference, the nature of gravitational waves and their ability to transfer energy was discussed. Richard Feynman remembers [2]

I was surprised to find a whole day at the conference devoted to this question, and that ‘experts’ were confused. That is what comes from looking for conserved energy tensors, etc. instead of asking ‘can the waves do work?

Feynman suggested during the conference the sticky bead argument which intuitively demonstrated that gravitational waves must carry energy.[2][3] This argument was published by Hermann Bondi right after the conference.[2]

Many-worlds interpretation

The relative state formulation, better known today as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, was being developed by Hugh Everett III, a student of Wheeler, who submitted a paper for the conference but did not attend.[4] The paper was well received by Bryce DeWitt.[4] Wheeler and Charles W. Misner presented some of Everett's ideas near the end of the conference.[4] Feynman publicly criticized the idea of an universal wavefunction, suggested by Wheeler.[4] Everett's paper was published in the proceedings of the conference.[4]

Wormholes

During the conference, Wheeler coined the term wormhole.[5]

List of participants

The list of participants according to DeWitt-Morette report is:[1]

Nathan Rosen was invited but did not participate.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f DeWitt, Cécile M.; Dicke, Dean, eds. (2017). The Role of Gravitation in Physics: Report from 1957 Chapel Hill Conference. Edition Open Access.
  2. ^ a b c Preskill, John and Kip S. Thorne. Foreword to Feynman Lectures On Gravitation. Feynman et al. (Westview Press; 1st ed. (June 20, 2002) p. xxv–xxvi.Link PDF (page 17-18)
  3. ^ Feynman, Richard (2018-05-04). Feynman Lectures On Gravitation. CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-429-98248-4.
  4. ^ a b c d e Byrne, Peter (2012-12-13). The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-165522-7.
  5. ^ "Section III". Department of Physics and Astronomy. Retrieved 2024-12-16.
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