Longing for the Harmonies Themes and Variations From Modern Physi


Book Description

"Occasionally, there comes along a popular science book that both scientists and non-scientist can read with pleasure and profit, and this is one."—The New Yorker Devoted to sharing their own delight and awe before the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos, Frank Wilczek (winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics) and science writer Betsy Devine also have a serious purpose: to reveal to the lay reader how a heightened perception can respond to timeless themes of the physical universe. For example, they show that even the most exotic theories always confirm that physical laws are precisely the same throughout the universe, and they explain how we have learned that the most massive molten stars and the tiniest frozen particles are in physical harmony. In their descriptions of the workings of the half-known universe, Wilczek and Devine bring all of us face to face with the beauty of eternal order and the inevitability of rational ends and beginnings.




Fantastic Realities


Book Description

The fantastic reality that is modern physics is open for your exploration, guided by one of its primary architects and interpreters, Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek. Some jokes, some poems, and extracts from wife Betsy Devine's sparkling chronicle of what it's like to live through a Nobel Prize provide easy entertainment. There's also some history, some philosophy, some exposition of frontier science, and some frontier science, for your lasting edification. 49 pieces, including many from Wilczek's award-winning Reference Frame columns in Physics Today, and some never before published, are gathered by style and subject into a dozen chapters, each with a revealing, witty introduction. Profound ideas, presented with style: What could be better? Enjoy.




Music and the Making of Modern Science


Book Description

A wide-ranging exploration of how music has influenced science through the ages, from fifteenth-century cosmology to twentieth-century string theory. In the natural science of ancient Greece, music formed the meeting place between numbers and perception; for the next two millennia, Pesic tells us in Music and the Making of Modern Science, “liberal education” connected music with arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy within a fourfold study, the quadrivium. Peter Pesic argues provocatively that music has had a formative effect on the development of modern science—that music has been not just a charming accompaniment to thought but a conceptual force in its own right. Pesic explores a series of episodes in which music influenced science, moments in which prior developments in music arguably affected subsequent aspects of natural science. He describes encounters between harmony and fifteenth-century cosmological controversies, between musical initiatives and irrational numbers, between vibrating bodies and the emergent electromagnetism. He offers lively accounts of how Newton applied the musical scale to define the colors in the spectrum; how Euler and others applied musical ideas to develop the wave theory of light; and how a harmonium prepared Max Planck to find a quantum theory that reengaged the mathematics of vibration. Taken together, these cases document the peculiar power of music—its autonomous force as a stream of experience, capable of stimulating insights different from those mediated by the verbal and the visual. An innovative e-book edition available for iOS devices will allow sound examples to be played by a touch and shows the score in a moving line.




Strange Beauty


Book Description

With a New Afterword "Our knowledge of fundamental physics contains not one fruitful idea that does not carry the name of Murray Gell-Mann."--Richard Feynman Acclaimed science writer George Johnson brings his formidable reporting skills to the first biography of Nobel Prize-winner Murray Gell-Mann, the brilliant, irascible man who revolutionized modern particle physics with his models of the quark and the Eightfold Way. Born into a Jewish immigrant family on New York's East 14th Street, Gell-Mann's prodigious talent was evident from an early age--he entered Yale at 15, completed his Ph.D. at 21, and was soon identifying the structures of the world's smallest components and illuminating the elegant symmetries of the universe. Beautifully balanced in its portrayal of an extraordinary and difficult man, interpreting the concepts of advanced physics with scrupulous clarity and simplicity, Strange Beauty is a tour-de-force of both science writing and biography.




The 4D Spiral Spacetimes Toryx & Helyx - Prime Elements of the Multiverse


Book Description

This book describes abstract and applied mathematics of the unique properties of 4D spiral spacetimes called toryx and helyx. There is a good reason for studying the mathematics of these two spacetimes. Their unique properties provide them with a capability to be the prime elements of nature. In that capacity their potential role in nature would be comparable with a role of the DNA double helyces discovered by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. The DNA double helyces contain genetic codes defining the properties of both organic entities and living organisms, whereas both toryx and helyx contain generic codes defining the properties of matter and radiation entities of the Universe. Also similar are the locations of these codes. The genetic codes of DNA are located inside of cells of all organic entities and living organisms, whereas the generic codes of toryces and helyces reside inside of all elementary matter and radiation particles, the building blocks of the Universe.




The Unique Properties of 4D Spiral Spacetime: Toryx


Book Description

According to the title of this book, the toryx is a four-dimensional (4D) spiral spacetime. It means its properties are described by three space plus one time parameters. Part 1 of this book presents properties of toryces in abstract mathematical terms. Part 2 shows several applications of toryces for mathematical modeling of properties of entities of both micro- and macro-worlds. This book further confirms a main proposition of the author's Universal Space Theory (UST) that the toryx has all attributes required to be a prime element of nature.




The Spacetime Origin Of the Universe With Visible Dark Matter & Energy


Book Description

The Universal Spacetime Theory (UST) is the main subject of this book. It attempts to answer some very interesting questions related to the science and philosophy: * What is the origin of the Universe? * How was the Universe created out of nothing? * What are the structure and properties of ordinary matter that makes up less than 5%%%% of the Universe? * What are the structure and properties of dark matter that occupies about 27%%%% of the Universe? * What are the structure and properties of the dark energy that occupies roughly 68%%%% of the Universe? * Is the communication possible with superluminal velocity




I Married You for Happiness


Book Description

A “captivating” portrait of a long marriage and a meditation on how chance can affect life from the National Book Award winner (The Washington Post). “His hand is growing cold, still she holds it” is how this novel that contemplates love, after a husband’s sudden death, begins. This riveting and deeply moving story unfolds over a single night, as Nina, numb with grief, sits at the bedside of her husband, Philip, whose unexpected death is the reason for her lonely vigil. There, she recalls the defining moments of their forty-three-year-long union, beginning with their meeting in Paris. She is an artist, he a mathematician—a collision of two different worlds that merged to form an intricate and passionate love. As Nina revisits select memories—real and imagined—Lily Tuck reveals the intimacies, dark secrets, and overwhelming joys that shaped the couple’s life together.




Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics: An Historic-Axiomatic Approach


Book Description

This unique textbook presents a novel, axiomatic pedagogical path from classical to quantum physics. Readers are introduced to the description of classical mechanics, which rests on Euler’s and Helmholtz’s rather than Newton’s or Hamilton’s representations. Special attention is given to the common attributes rather than to the differences between classical and quantum mechanics. Readers will also learn about Schrödinger’s forgotten demands on quantization, his equation, Einstein’s idea of ‘quantization as selection problem’. The Schrödinger equation is derived without any assumptions about the nature of quantum systems, such as interference and superposition, or the existence of a quantum of action, h. The use of the classical expressions for the potential and kinetic energies within quantum physics is justified. Key features: · Presents extensive reference to original texts. · Includes many details that do not enter contemporary representations of classical mechanics, although these details are essential for understanding quantum physics. · Contains a simple level of mathematics which is seldom higher than that of the common (Riemannian) integral. · Brings information about important scientists · Carefully introduces basic equations, notations and quantities in simple steps This book addresses the needs of physics students, teachers and historians with its simple easy to understand presentation and comprehensive approach to both classical and quantum mechanics..




Chronoschisms


Book Description

An analysis of the way postmodern novels respond to changes in the experience of time.




Recent Books