Front cover image for Explaining the universe : the new age of physics

Explaining the universe : the new age of physics

Publisher's description: John Charap offers a panoramic view of the physicist's world as the twenty-first century opens. The view 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
eBook, English, ©2002
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., ©2002
1 online resource (xii, 226 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color))
9780691187006, 0691187002
1034674016
Preface vii A Note on Numbers xi 1. INTRODUCTION 1 2. PHYSICS 1900 13 3. HEAVENS ABOVE 24 4. CHANCE AND CERTAINTY 43 5. ORDER OUT OF CHAOS 64 6. YOUR PLACE OR MINE 77 7. MANY HISTORIES, MANY FUTURES 86 8. MICROCOSM 100 9. WEIGHTY MATTERS 119 10. STRINGS 136 11. IN THE BEGINNING 151 12. DOWN TO EARTH 172 13. EPILOGUE 188 Notes 195 Glossary 209 Suggestions for Further Reading 215 Index of Names 219 General Index 223