Author: John M Charap
Publisher: Universities Press
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 226
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8173714673
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 an 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 form 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 super string theory my finally unite quantum mechanics with general relativity of produce a consistent quantum theory of gravity.
In this book's pages, the nonphysicist will accept as commonsensical Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and physicists can met 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 ultra-violet 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.
REVIEWS
In this book, a distinguished scientist gives an inside view of the advances of the last century and those that will happen in the next, it is a joy to read. The story is interesting, and John Charap knows how to tell it.
-Mark Kidger,
Author of Star of Bethlehem: An Astronomer's View
John Charap introduces the reader to the wonderfully broad range of topics of active research in physics. This book will be inspiring and instructive for students who might be persuaded to look more deeply into physics, Charap enlivens his text with charming anecdotal illustrations.
-P J E Peebles,
Author of Principles of Physical Cosmology and Quantum Mechanics
Contents
Preface
A Note on Numbers
Introduction
Physics 1900
Heavens Above
Chance and Certainty
Order out of Chaos
Your Place or Mine
Many Histories, Many Futures
Microcosm
Weighty Matters
Strings
In the Beginning
Down To Earth
Epilogue
Notes
Glossary
Suggestions for Further Reading
Index of Names
General Index