Explaining the Universe: The New Age of PhysicsPrinceton University Press, 2002 - 226 Seiten In this fascinating book, John Charap offers a panoramic view of the physicist's world as the twenty-first century opens--a view that is entirely different from the one that greeted the twentieth century. We have learned that the universe is billions of galaxies larger than we imagined--and billions of years older. We know more about how it came to be and what it is. Because of physics, we live in a world of greater danger and more convenience, smaller particles and bigger ideas. Charap introduces these ideas but spares us the math behind them. After a review of the twentieth century's thorough transformation of physics, he checks in on the latest findings from particle physics, astrophysics, chaos theory, and cosmology. His tour includes ongoing efforts to find the universe's missing matter and to account for the first moments after the big bang. Taking readers right to the field's speculative edge, he explains how superstring theory may finally unite quantum mechanics with general relativity to produce a consistent quantum theory of gravity. Along the way, Charap poses the questions that continue to inspire research. Why is the universe flat? Why can't we forecast weather better? Can Schrodinger's cat really be simultaneously dead and alive? Why does fractal geometry keep showing up in strange places? Might spacetime have eleven dimensions? What does quantum mechanics mean about the nature of our world? In this book's pages, the nonphysicist will accept as commonsensical Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and physicists can meet across specialties. Students can access physics' critical concepts, and poets can learn a new language to describe the universe's many wonders. Taking us from the ultraviolet catastrophe that undid the Newtonian world to tomorrow's Theory of Everything, Charap brings today's most fascinating science down to Earth, where we can all enjoy it. |
Im Buch
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... discovery than those preceding it . A century ago it was estimated that the universe was around 100 million years old . We now believe it to be more like 13 billion years old . In 1900 the smallest entities discussed by physicists were ...
... discovery and its exploitation is exhilarating and relentless . For all the dangers which sometimes cloud these advances , I find them over- whelmingly positive and enriching . Think of an expectant mother , attending a hospital clinic ...
... discovery was of profound im- portance . 1 As the nineteenth century ended , other seminal discoveries — of the electron and of radioactivity , for example — were made that were also to mark the end of what we now call classical physics ...
... discovery of x rays was already making possible a whole new approach to medicine , an approach that has been extended by subsequent advances in physics to give CT scan- ners , MRI scanners , ultrasound , and other noninvasive 6 CHAPTER 1.
... discovery and driven forward by the ingenuity of the researchers in science laboratories . Whole industries have been spawned by the application of techniques and processes learned from research that was itself motivated by the pursuit ...
Inhalt
PHYSICS 1900 | xiv |
HEAVENS ABOVE | 22 |
CHANCE AND CERTAINTY | 41 |
ORDER OUT OF CHAOS | 62 |
YOUR PLACE OR MINE | 75 |
MANY HISTORIES MANY FUTURES | 84 |
MICROCOSM | 98 |
WEIGHTY MATTERS | 117 |
IN THE BEGINNING | 149 |
DOWN TO EARTH | 170 |
EPILOGUE | 186 |
Notes | 193 |
Glossary | 207 |
Suggestions for Further Reading | 213 |
Index of Names | 217 |
221 | |