Physics And Beyond

"Exhaustively detailed yet eminently readable, this is an important book."Publishers Weekly, starred review "Cassidy does not so much exculpate Heisenberg as explain him, with a transparency that makes this biography a pleasure to read."Los Angeles Times "Well crafted and readable . . . [Cassidy] provides a nuanced and compelling account of Heisenberg's life."The Harvard Book Review In 1992, David C. Cassidy’s groundbreaking biography of Werner Heisenberg, Uncertainty, was published to resounding acclaim from scholars and critics. Michael Frayn, in the Playbill of the Broadway production of Copenhagen, referred to it as one of his main sources and “the standard work in English.” Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atom Bomb) called it “the definitive biography of a great and tragic physicist,” and the Los Angeles Times praised it as “an important book. Cassidy has sifted the record and brilliantly detailed Heisenberg’s actions.” No book that has appeared since has rivaled Uncertainty, now out of print, for its depth and rich detail of the life, times, and science of this brilliant and controversial figure of twentieth-century physics. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime. David C. Cassidy is the author of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century, Einstein and Our World, and Uncertainty.

This book deals with a selection of research topics in theoretical physics that have (almost) been proven to be a dead-end or continue at least to be highly controversial. Nevertheless, small but dedicated research communities continue to work on these issues. In a series of essays this book describes their work and struggle as well as the chances of any breakthrough in these areas. It is written as both an entertainment and serious study.

This clearly explained layman's introduction to quantum physics is an accessible excursion into metaphysics and the meaning of reality. Herbert exposes the quantum world and the scientific and philosophical controversy about its interpretation.

Theoretical physics and foundations of physics have not made much progress in the last few decades. Whether we are talking about unifying general relativity and quantum field theory (quantum gravity), explaining so-called dark energy and dark matter (cosmology), or the interpretation and implications of quantum mechanics and relativity, there is no consensus in sight. In addition, both enterprises are deeply puzzled about various facets of time including above all, time as experienced. The authors argue that, across the board, this impasse is the result of the "dynamical universe paradigm," the idea that reality is fundamentally made up of physical entities that evolve in time from some initial state according to dynamical laws. Thus, in the dynamical universe, the initial conditions plus the dynamical laws explain everything else going exclusively forward in time. In cosmology, for example, the initial conditions reside in the Big Bang and the dynamical law is supplied by general relativity. Accordingly, the present state of the universe is explained exclusively by its past. This book offers a completely new paradigm (called Relational Blockworld), whereby the past, present and future co-determine each other via "adynamical global constraints," such as the least action principle. Accordingly, the future is just as important for explaining the present as is the past. Most of the book is devoted to showing how Relational Blockworld resolves many of the current conundrums of both theoretical physics and foundations of physics, including the mystery of time as experienced and how that experience relates to the block universe.

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.

This new edition of The Standard Model and Beyond presents an advanced introduction to the physics and formalism of the standard model and other non-abelian gauge theories. It provides a solid background for understanding supersymmetry, string theory, extra dimensions, dynamical symmetry breaking, and cosmology. In addition to updating all of the experimental and phenomenological results from the first edition, it contains a new chapter on collider physics; expanded discussions of Higgs, neutrino, and dark matter physics; and many new problems. The book first reviews calculational techniques in field theory and the status of quantum electrodynamics. It then focuses on global and local symmetries and the construction of non-abelian gauge theories. The structure and tests of quantum chromodynamics, collider physics, the electroweak interactions and theory, and the physics of neutrino mass and mixing are thoroughly explored. The final chapter discusses the motivations for extending the standard model and examines supersymmetry, extended gauge groups, and grand unification. Thoroughly covering gauge field theories, symmetries, and topics beyond the standard model, this text equips readers with the tools to understand the structure and phenomenological consequences of the standard model, to construct extensions, and to perform calculations at tree level. It establishes the necessary background for readers to carry out more advanced research in particle physics. Supplementary materials are provided on the author’s website and a solutions manual is available for qualifying instructors.