Download or read book Sneaking a Look at God s Cards written by Giancarlo Ghirardi and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of subatomic particles, seems to challenge common sense. Waves behave like particles; particles behave like waves. You can tell where a particle is, but not how fast it is moving--or vice versa. An electron faced with two tiny holes will travel through both at the same time, rather than one or the other. And then there is the enigma of creation ex nihilo, in which small particles appear with their so-called antiparticles, only to disappear the next instant in a tiny puff of energy. Since its inception, physicists and philosophers have struggled to work out the meaning of quantum mechanics. Some, like Niels Bohr, have responded to quantum mechanics' mysteries by replacing notions of position and velocity with probabilities. Others, like Einstein and Penrose, have disagreed and think that the entire puzzle reflects not a fundamental principle of nature but our own ignorance of basic scientific processes. Sneaking a Look at God's Cards offers the general reader a deep and real understanding of the problems inherent to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, from its inception to the present. The book presents a balanced overview of current debates and explores how the theory of quantum mechanics plays itself out in the real world. Written from the perspective of a leading European physicist, it looks extensively at ideas from both sides of the Atlantic and also considers what philosophers have contributed to the scientific discussion of this field. Sneaking a Look at God's Cards sets out what we know about the endlessly fascinating quantum world, how we came to this understanding, where we disagree, and where we are heading in our quest to comprehend the seemingly incomprehensible.

Download or read book Quantum Buddhist Wonders of the Universe written by Graham Smetham and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-07-04 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the implications of the meeting of Quantum Physics and Buddhist metaphysics for our understanding of paranormal phenomenon. The quantum nature of telepathy. The quantum truth of rebirth. The holographic principle and enlightenment. Advanced states of consciousness in Buddhist jhana meditation and the psychology of Abraham Maslow. The misleading ideas of Brian Cox and Jim Al-Khalali. Michael Mensky's Quantum Concept of Consciousness.... and much more....

Download or read book The Technologisation of the Social written by Paul O'Connor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life.

Download or read book Tales of the Quantum written by Art Hobson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everybody has heard that we live in a world made of atoms. But far more fundamentally, we live in a universe made of quanta. Many things are not made of atoms: light, radio waves, electric current, magnetic fields, Earth's gravitational field, not to mention exotica such a neutron stars, black holes, dark energy, and dark matter. But everything, including atoms, is made of highly unified or "coherent" bundles of energy called "quanta" that (like everything else) obey certain rules. In the case of the quantum, these rules are called "quantum physics." This is a book about quanta and their unexpected, some would say peculiar, behavior--tales, if you will, of the quantum. The quantum has developed the reputation of being capricious, bewildering, even impossible to understand. The peculiar habits of quanta are certainly not what we would have expected to find at the foundation of physical reality, but these habits are not necessarily bewildering and not at all impossible or paradoxical. This book explains those habits--the quantum rules--in everyday language, without mathematics or unnecessary technicalities. While most popular books about quantum physics follow the topic's scientific history from 1900 to today, this book follows the phenomena: wave-particle duality, fundamental randomness, quantum states, superpositions (being in two places at once), entanglement, non-locality, Schrodinger's cat, and quantum jumps, and presents the history and the scientists only to the extent that they illuminate the phenomena.

Download or read book The Copenhagen Conspiracy written by David Ferry and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2019-01-02 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the close of the nineteenth century, we stood on the threshold of one of the greatest periods of science, in which the entire world and understanding of science would be shaken to the core and greatly modified. This explosion of knowledge led ultimately to that same information revolution that we live in today. Planck and Einstein showed that light was not continuous but made of small corpuscles that today we call photons. Einstein changed the understanding of mechanics with his theory of relativity: airplanes became conceivable; radio and television blossomed; and the microelectronics industry, which drives most of modern technology, came into being. New areas of science were greatly expanded and developed, and one of these was quantum mechanics, which is the story to be told here. Yet, the development of quantum mechanics and the leadership of Niels Bohr have distorted the understanding of quantum mechanics in a strange way. There are some who would say that Bohr set back the real understanding of quantum mechanics by half a century. I believe they underestimate his role, and it may be something more like a full century. Whether we call it the Copenhagen interpretation, or the Copenhagen orthodoxy, it is the how for the continuing mysticism provided by Mach that is still remaining in quantum mechanics. It is not the why. Why it perseveres and why it was forced on the field in the first place is an important perception to be studied. In this book, I want to trace the development of quantum mechanics and try to uncover the why.

Download or read book The Self Perceiving Universe written by Graham Smetham and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation into the materialist madness of Darwinian views of evolution. Further investigation of modern quantum and evolutionary-developmental discoveries shows the Darwinian evolutionary worldview is incorrect, and a non-theistic Intelligent Design operating from the quantum level is correct. This leads to the exploration of the view that the universe is a self-perceiving organism employing sentient beings as its perceiving agents.

Download or read book Inside Angels Demons written by Dan Burstein and published by Vanguard. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set against the backdrop of beautiful Baroque Rome, Inside Angels & Demons: The Unauthorized Guide to the International Bestseller takes you inside the Vatican to see how the process of conclave and papal selection really works. Readers explore the world of Bernini, master artist of the Baroque era, and the secret meanings behind his symbolism...what really happened in the trial of Galileo...the impact of the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and other secret societies on European and American history...the real state of the art anti-matter technology...the centuries-old debate between science and religion. Millions of readers want to separate fact from fiction. This book teases apart the real and the imagined within the historical labyrinth of conspiracies, cover-ups, messages encoded in famous artworks, secrets societies, and mystical knowledge. Inside Angels & Demons: The Unauthorized Guide to the International Bestseller is must reading for anyone fascinated with Dan Brown’s historical mysteries.

Download or read book A Theory of Everything That Matters written by Alister McGrath and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Light of Today’s Scientific Achievements, Do We Need God Anymore? Einstein’s revolutionary scientific ideas have transformed our world, ushering in the nuclear age. The current pace of scientific and technological progress is simply astounding. So is there any place for faith in such a world? Einstein himself gave careful thought to the deepest questions of life. His towering intellectual status means he is someone worth listening to when we think through the big questions of life: Can science answer all our questions? Why is religion so important in life? How can we hold together science and faith? In this book, McGrath examines the life and work of Einstein, explaining his scientific significance and considering what Einstein did and did not believe about science, religion, and the meaning of life. A Theory of Everything (That Matters) is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the role of faith in a world where science and technology govern our lives.

Download or read book Quantum Path to Enlightenment written by Graham Smetham and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-11-24 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Researches inspired by the quantum Buddhist psycho-metaphysics of Michael Mensky.

Download or read book Randomness And Realism Encounters With Randomness In The Scientific Search For Physical Reality written by John W Fowler and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Randomness is an active element relevant to all scientific activities. The book explores the way in which randomness suffuses the human experience, starting with everyday chance events, followed by developments into modern probability theory, statistical mechanics, scientific data analysis, quantum mechanics, and quantum gravity. An accessible introduction to these theories is provided as a basis for going into deeper topics.Fowler unveils the influence of randomness in the two pillars of science, measurement and theory. Some emphasis is placed on the need and methods for optimal characterization of uncertainty. An example of the cost of neglecting this is the St. Petersburg Paradox, a theoretical game of chance with an infinite expected payoff value. The role of randomness in quantum mechanics reveals another particularly interesting finding: that in order for the physical universe to function as it does and permit conscious beings within it to enjoy sanity, irreducible randomness is necessary at the quantum level.The book employs a certain level of mathematics to describe physical reality in a more precise way that avoids the tendency of nonmathematical descriptions to be occasionally misleading. Thus, it is most readily digested by young students who have taken at least a class in introductory calculus, or professional scientists and engineers curious about the book's topics as a result of hearing about them in popular media. Readers not inclined to savor equations should be able to skip certain technical sections without losing the general flow of ideas. Still, it is hoped that even readers who usually avoid equations will give those within these pages a chance, as they may be surprised at how potentially foreboding concepts fall into line when one makes a legitimate attempt to follow a succession of mathematical implications.

Download or read book Making Sense of Quantum Mechanics written by Jean Bricmont and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains, in simple terms, with a minimum of mathematics, why things can appear to be in two places at the same time, why correlations between simultaneous events occurring far apart cannot be explained by local mechanisms, and why, nevertheless, the quantum theory can be understood in terms of matter in motion. No need to worry, as some people do, whether a cat can be both dead and alive, whether the moon is there when nobody looks at it, or whether quantum systems need an observer to acquire definite properties. The author’s inimitable and even humorous style makes the book a pleasure to read while bringing a new clarity to many of the longstanding puzzles of quantum physics.

Download or read book Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics written by Franck Laloë and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Quantum mechanics is a ... theory that has impacted ... many areas of physics, from pure theory to applications. However, it is difficult to interpret, and philosophical contradictions and counter-intuitive results are apparent at a fundamental level. In this book, Laloèe presents our current understanding of the theory"--

Download or read book Quantum Sense and Nonsense written by Jean Bricmont and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Permeated by the author's delightful humor, this little book explains, with nearly no mathematics, the main conceptual issues associated with quantum mechanics: The issue of determinism. Does quantum mechanics signify the end of a deterministic word-view? The role of the human subject or of the "observer" in science. Since Copernicus, science has increasingly tended to dethrone Man from his formerly held special position in the Universe. But quantum mechanics, with its emphasis on the notion of observation, may once more have given a central role to the human subject. The issue of locality. Does quantum mechanics imply that instantaneous actions at a distance exist in Nature? In these pages the author offers a variety of views and answers - bad as well as good - to these questions. The reader will be both entertained and enlightened by Jean Bricmont's clear and incisive arguments.

Download or read book The Reality of Time and Einstein s Spider Web written by Rocco Vittorio Macri and published by Youcanprint. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The greatest mystery of all, the enigma of Time, shone like a blinding quasar upon the eyes of the creator of the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein. Indeed there has been no significant thinker, from antiquity down to the present day, who has not confronted the mystery of Time and made it an essential part of his own philosophy. Even in Plotinus’ days the problem of Time was considered to be “ancient” and “continually revived”. Thinking about Time is much like ploughing the ocean. Despite this, the Twentieth Century saw an unprecedented and new operational definition set forth by Einstein, who stripped the notion of Time of all metaphysical content, and made it ontologically eliminable. The verdict in our days is, "Time does not exist." Yet there have not been wanting thinkers who have attempted to swim against the current, to throw down the gauntlet to “the Murderer of Time”, to the Demolisher of the Absolute, showing that the Time is not an illusion, Time is real. These stirring moments in the history of intellectual endeavour are collected here, revivifying the philosophical face of every dissident. The subject is interesting not only to experts in the field, but also to every inquiring mind thirsting for historical truth. The reader who is fascinated by the fundamental ideas of physics and philosophy will find great satisfaction here. In addition he will find here the ultimate roots of our contemporary Weltanschaaung.

Download or read book Exploring the World with the Laser written by Dieter Meschede and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition contains carefully selected contributions by leading scientists in high-resolution laser spectroscopy, quantum optics and laser physics. Emphasis is given to ultrafast laser phenomena, implementations of frequency combs, precision spectroscopy and high resolution metrology. Furthermore, applications of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics are widely covered. This book is dedicated to Nobel prize winner Theodor W. Hänsch on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The contributions are reprinted from a topical collection published in Applied Physics B, 2016. Selected contributions are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com. Please see the copyright page for further details.

Download or read book Bell s Theorem and Quantum Realism written by Douglas L. Hemmick and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-10-02 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum theory presents a strange picture of the world, offering no real account of physical properties apart from observation. Neils Bohr felt that this reflected a core truth of nature: "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract mathematical description." Among the most significant developments since Bohr’s day has been the theorem of John S. Bell. It is important to consider whether Bell’s analysis supports such a denial of microrealism. In this book, we evaluate the situation in terms of an early work of Erwin Schrödinger. Doing so, we see how Bell’s theorem is conceptually related to the Conway and Kochen Free Will theorem and also to all the major anti-realism efforts. It is easy to show that none of these analyses imply the impossibility of objective realism. We find that Schrödinger’s work leads to the derivation of a new series of theoretical proofs and potential experiments, each involving “entanglement,” the link between particles in some quantum systems. .

Download or read book Foundations of Relational Realism written by Michael Epperson and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If there is a central conceptual framework that has reliably borne the weight of modern physics as it ascends into the twenty-first century, it is the framework of quantum mechanics. Because of its enduring stability in experimental application, physics has today reached heights that not only inspire wonder, but arguably exceed the limits of intuitive vision, if not intuitive comprehension. For many physicists and philosophers, however, the currently fashionable tendency toward exotic interpretation of the theoretical formalism is recognized not as a mark of ascent for the tower of physics, but rather an indicator of sway—one that must be dampened rather than encouraged if practical progress is to continue. In this unique two-part volume, designed to be comprehensible to both specialists and non-specialists, the authors chart out a pathway forward by identifying the central deficiency in most interpretations of quantum mechanics: That in its conventional, metrical depiction of extension, inherited from the Enlightenment, objects are characterized as fundamental to relations—i.e., such that relations presuppose objects but objects do not presuppose relations. The authors, by contrast, argue that quantum mechanics exemplifies the fact that physical extensiveness is fundamentally topological rather than metrical, with its proper logico-mathematical framework being category theoretic rather than set theoretic. By this thesis, extensiveness fundamentally entails not only relations of objects, but also relations of relations. Thus, the fundamental quanta of quantum physics are properly defined as units of logico-physical relation rather than merely units of physical relata as is the current convention. Objects are always understood as relata, and likewise relations are always understood objectively. In this way, objects and relations are coherently defined as mutually implicative. The conventional notion of a history as “a story about fundamental objects” is thereby reversed, such that the classical “objects” become the story by which we understand physical systems that are fundamentally histories of quantum events. These are just a few of the novel critical claims explored in this volume—claims whose exemplification in quantum mechanics will, the authors argue, serve more broadly as foundational principles for the philosophy of nature as it evolves through the twenty-first century and beyond.