Download or read book The Quantum Labyrinth written by Paul Halpern and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the unlikely friendship between the two physicists who fundamentally recast the notion of time and history In 1939, Richard Feynman, a brilliant graduate of MIT, arrived in John Wheeler's Princeton office to report for duty as his teaching assistant. A lifelong friendship and enormously productive collaboration was born, despite sharp differences in personality. The soft-spoken Wheeler, though conservative in appearance, was a raging nonconformist full of wild ideas about the universe. The boisterous Feynman was a cautious physicist who believed only what could be tested. Yet they were complementary spirits. Their collaboration led to a complete rethinking of the nature of time and reality. It enabled Feynman to show how quantum reality is a combination of alternative, contradictory possibilities, and inspired Wheeler to develop his landmark concept of wormholes, portals to the future and past. Together, Feynman and Wheeler made sure that quantum physics would never be the same again.
Download or read book Synchronicity written by Paul Halpern and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Aristotle's Physics to quantum teleportation, learn about the scientific pursuit of instantaneous connections in this insightful examination of our world. For millennia, scientists have puzzled over a simple question: Does the universe have a speed limit? If not, some effects could happen at the same instant as the actions that caused them -- and some effects, ludicrously, might even happen before their causes. By one hundred years ago, it seemed clear that the speed of light was the fastest possible speed. Causality was safe. And then quantum mechanics happened, introducing spooky connections that seemed to circumvent the law of cause and effect. Inspired by the new physics, psychologist Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli explored a concept called synchronicity, a weird phenomenon they thought could link events without causes. Synchronicity tells that sprawling tale of insight and creativity, and asks where these ideas -- some plain crazy, and others crazy powerful -- are taking the human story next.
Download or read book Flashes of Creation written by Paul Halpern and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A respected physics professor and author breaks down the great debate over the Big Bang and the continuing quest to understand the fate of the universe. Today, the Big Bang is so entrenched in our understanding of the cosmos that to doubt it would seem crazy. But as Paul Halpern shows in Flashes of Creation, just decades ago its mere mention caused sparks to fly. At the center of the debate were Russian American physicist George Gamow and British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. Gamow insisted that a fiery explosion explained how the elements of the universe were created. Attacking the idea as half-baked, Hoyle countered that the universe was engaged in a never-ending process of creation. The battle was fierce. In the end, Gamow turned out to be right -- mostly -- and Hoyle, along with his many achievements, is remembered for giving the theory the silliest possible name: "The Big Bang." Halpern captures the brilliance of both thinkers and reminds us that even those proved wrong have much to teach us about boldness, imagination, and the universe itself.
Download or read book Einstein s Dice and Schr dinger s Cat written by Paul Halpern and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A fascinating and thought-provoking story, one that sheds light on the origins of . . . the current challenging situation in physics." -- Wall Street Journal When the fuzzy indeterminacy of quantum mechanics overthrew the orderly world of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schröger were at the forefront of the revolution. Neither man was ever satisfied with the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, however, and both rebelled against what they considered the most preposterous aspect of quantum mechanics: its randomness. Einstein famously quipped that God does not play dice with the universe, and Schröger constructed his famous fable of a cat that was neither alive nor dead not to explain quantum mechanics but to highlight the apparent absurdity of a theory gone wrong. But these two giants did more than just criticize: they fought back, seeking a Theory of Everything that would make the universe seem sensible again. In Einstein's Dice and Schröger's Cat, physicist Paul Halpern tells the little-known story of how Einstein and Schröger searched, first as collaborators and then as competitors, for a theory that transcended quantum weirdness. This story of their quest-which ultimately failed-provides readers with new insights into the history of physics and the lives and work of two scientists whose obsessions drove its progress. Today, much of modern physics remains focused on the search for a Theory of Everything. As Halpern explains, the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson makes the Standard Model-the closest thing we have to a unified theory- nearly complete. And while Einstein and Schröger failed in their attempt to explain everything in the cosmos through pure geometry, the development of string theory has, in its own quantum way, brought this idea back into vogue. As in so many things, even when they were wrong, Einstein and Schröger couldn't help but get a great deal right.
Download or read book What Is Real written by Adam Becker and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A thorough, illuminating exploration of the most consequential controversy raging in modern science." --New York Times Book Review An Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review Longlisted for PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Longlisted for Goodreads Choice Award Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's solipsistic and poorly reasoned Copenhagen interpretation. Indeed, questioning it has long meant professional ruin, yet some daring physicists, such as John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett, persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth. "An excellent, accessible account." --Wall Street Journal "Splendid. . . . Deeply detailed research, accompanied by charming anecdotes about the scientists." --Washington Post
Download or read book Einstein and the Quantum written by A. Douglas Stone and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of Albert Einstein's role as the father of quantum theory Einstein and the Quantum reveals for the first time the full significance of Albert Einstein's contributions to quantum theory. Einstein famously rejected quantum mechanics, observing that God does not play dice. But, in fact, he thought more about the nature of atoms, molecules, and the emission and absorption of light—the core of what we now know as quantum theory—than he did about relativity. A compelling blend of physics, biography, and the history of science, Einstein and the Quantum shares the untold story of how Einstein—not Max Planck or Niels Bohr—was the driving force behind early quantum theory. It paints a vivid portrait of the iconic physicist as he grappled with the apparently contradictory nature of the atomic world, in which its invisible constituents defy the categories of classical physics, behaving simultaneously as both particle and wave. And it demonstrates how Einstein's later work on the emission and absorption of light, and on atomic gases, led directly to Erwin Schrödinger's breakthrough to the modern form of quantum mechanics. The book sheds light on why Einstein ultimately renounced his own brilliant work on quantum theory, due to his deep belief in science as something objective and eternal.
Download or read book Through Two Doors at Once written by Anil Ananthaswamy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intellectual adventure story of the "double-slit" experiment, showing how a sunbeam split into two paths first challenged our understanding of light and then the nature of reality itself--and continues to almost two hundred years later. Many of science's greatest minds have grappled with the simple yet elusive "double-slit" experiment. Thomas Young devised it in the early 1800s to show that light behaves like a wave, and in doing so opposed Isaac Newton. Nearly a century later, Albert Einstein showed that light comes in quanta, or particles, and the experiment became key to a fierce debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr over the nature of reality. Richard Feynman held that the double slit embodies the central mystery of the quantum world. Decade after decade, hypothesis after hypothesis, scientists have returned to this ingenious experiment to help them answer deeper and deeper questions about the fabric of the universe. How can a single particle behave both like a particle and a wave? Does a particle exist before we look at it, or does the very act of looking create reality? Are there hidden aspects to reality missing from the orthodox view of quantum physics? Is there a place where the quantum world ends and the familiar classical world of our daily lives begins, and if so, can we find it? And if there's no such place, then does the universe split into two each time a particle goes through the double slit? With his extraordinarily gifted eloquence, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world and through history, down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed. Through Two Doors at Once is the most fantastic voyage you can take.
Download or read book Fear of Physics written by Lawrence M. Krauss and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-07-30 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Assume the cow is a sphere." So begins this lively, irreverent, and informative look at everything from the physics of boiling water to cutting-edge research at the observable limits of the universe. Rich with anecdotes and accessible examples, Fear of Physics nimbly ranges over the tools and thought behind the world of modern physics, taking the mystery out of what is essentially a very human intellectual endeavour.
Download or read book Out of the Labyrinth written by J.Donald Walters and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 2003 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last hundred years of scientific and philosophical thought have created dramatic upheavals in how we view our universe, our spiritual beliefs and ourselves. Commonly accepted theories of evolution and relativity and the precepts of existentialism, have shaken the foundations of traditional religious practices. Many people now wonder if enduring spiritual and moral truths even exist.
Download or read book Quantum Man Richard Feynman s Life in Science Great Discoveries written by Lawrence M. Krauss and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-03-21 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A worthy addition to the Feynman shelf and a welcome follow-up to the standard-bearer, James Gleick's Genius." —Kirkus Reviews Perhaps the greatest physicist of the second half of the twentieth century, Richard Feynman changed the way we think about quantum mechanics, the most perplexing of all physical theories. Here Lawrence M. Krauss, himself a theoretical physicist and a best-selling author, offers a unique scientific biography: a rollicking narrative coupled with clear and novel expositions of science at the limits. From the death of Feynman’s childhood sweetheart during the Manhattan Project to his reluctant rise as a scientific icon, we see Feynman’s life through his science, providing a new understanding of the legacy of a man who has fascinated millions.
Download or read book Six Not So Easy Pieces written by Richard P. Feynman and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn about Einstein's theory of relativity from a physics Nobel laureate and "one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century" (New York Review of Books) in six memorable lessons It was Richard Feynman's outrageous and scintillating method of teaching that earned him legendary status among students and professors of physics. From 1961 to 1963, Feynman delivered a series of lectures at the California Institute of Technology that revolutionized the teaching of physics. In Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, taken from these famous Lectures on Physics, Feynman delves into one of the most revolutionary discoveries in twentieth-century physics: Einstein's theory of relativity. The idea that the flow of time is not a constant, that the mass of an object depends on its velocity, and that the speed of light is a constant no matter what the motion of the observer, at first seemed shocking to scientists and laymen alike. But as Feynman shows, these tricky ideas are not merely dry principles of physics, but things of beauty and elegance. No one — not even Einstein himself — explained these difficult, anti-intuitive concepts more clearly, or with more verve and gusto, than Feynman. Filled with wonderful examples and clever illustrations, Six Not-So-Easy Pieces is the ideal introduction to the fundamentals of physics by one of the most admired and accessible physicists of all time. “There is no better explanation for the scientifically literate layman.” –Washington Post Book World
Download or read book The Labyrinth of Time written by Michael Lockwood and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-07-26 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern physics has revealed the universe as a much stranger place than we could have imagined. The puzzle at the centre of our knowledge of the universe is time. Michael Lockwood takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the nature of things. He investigates philosophical questions about past, present, and future, our experience of time, and the possibility of time travel. And he provides the most careful, lively, and up-to-date introduction to the physics of time and the structure of the universe.He guides us step by step through relativity theory and quantum physics, introducing and explaining the ground-breaking ideas of Newton and Boltzmann, Einstein and Schroedinger, Penrose and Hawking. We zoom in on the behaviour of molecules and atoms, and pull back to survey the expansion of the universe. We learn about entropy and gravity, black holes and wormholes, about how it all began and where we are all headed. Lockwood's aim is not just to boggle the mind but to lead us towards an understanding of the science and philosophy. Things will never seem the same again after a voyage through The Labyrinth of Time.
Download or read book Uncommon Paths in Quantum Physics written by Konstantin V. Kazakov and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-26 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum mechanics is one of the most fascinating, and at the same time most controversial, branches of contemporary science. Disputes have accompanied this science since its birth and have not ceased to this day. Uncommon Paths in Quantum Physics allows the reader to contemplate deeply some ideas and methods that are seldom met in the contemporary literature. Instead of widespread recipes of mathematical physics, based on the solutions of integro-differential equations, the book follows logical and partly intuitional derivations of non-commutative algebra. Readers can directly penetrate the abstract world of quantum mechanics. First book in the market that treats this newly developed area of theoretical physics; the book will thus provide a fascinating overview of the prospective applications of this area, strongly founded on the theories and methods that it describes. Provides a solid foundation for the application of quantum theory to current physical problems arising in the interpretation of molecular spectra and important effects in quantum field theory. New insight into the physics of anharmonic vibrations, more feasible calculations with improved precision.
Download or read book The God Con written by Lee Moller and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2017-06-24 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crucifix is in! You can fool most of the people most of the time. In The God Con, Lee Moller, a life-long atheist and skeptic, looks at organized religion through the lens of the con. Organized religion has been selling an invisible product, that it never has to deliver, for thousands of years. It has given us bigotry, rampant pedophilia, terrorism, and bloodshed beyond imagining. And its acolytes have, in turn, given organized religion power over their bank accounts, their reproduction, and their very “souls”.
Download or read book Quest for the Quantum Computer written by Julian Brown and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-08-14 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Science journalist reveals the existence of the world's first quantum computer--created by a team of Silicon Valley researchers and able to simultaneously compute all possible solutions to a problem, making it the most powerful computer in the world.
Download or read book The Labyrinth of Time written by Anthony Peake and published by Arcturus Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time is one of life's great mysteries. From sand passing through an hourglass to 'time's winged chariot hurrying near', we often perceive it as an unrelenting force which exists outside of ourselves. And yet anyone who remembers the long summers of childhood or has sat watching an agonisingly slow ticking clock feels that time is elastic. So which is it? Anthony Peake puts forward an incredible hypothesis about the relationship between time and consciousness. His theory explains many enigmatic phenomena, including déjà vu, precognition, near-death experience and altered states. Building upon the ideas of his groundbreaking Is There Life After Death? and drawing upon a remarkable breadth of science, philosophy and literature, his utterly compelling theory may change the way you view your life forever. Praise for Anthony Peake "Peake has the gift to explain complex theories in simple words" - Evelyn Elsaesser-Valarino, author of Lessons from the Light. "I found Peak's theory to be as thought-provoking an exhilarating as a great film" - Colin Wilson, author of The Outsider.
Download or read book Out of the Labyrinth written by Robert Kaplan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In this sparkling narrative, mathematics is indeed set free.” -Michael Shermer, author of The Believing Brain In classrooms around the world, Robert and Ellen Kaplan's pioneering Math Circle program, begun at Harvard, has introduced students ages six to sixty to the pleasures of mathematics, exploring topics that range from Roman numerals to quantum mechanics. In Out of the Labyrinth, the Kaplans reveal the secrets of their highly successful approach, which embraces the exhilarating joy of math's “accessible mysteries.” Stocked with puzzles, colorful anecdotes, and insights from the authors' own teaching experience, Out of the Labyrinth is both an engaging and practical guide for parents and educators, and a treasure chest of mathematical discoveries. For any reader who has felt the excitement of mathematical discovery-or tried to convey it to someone else-this volume will be a delightful and valued companion.
