Are Quanta Real?

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253205452
Total Pages : 140 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (54 download)

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Book Synopsis Are Quanta Real? by : J.M. Jauch

Download or read book Are Quanta Real? written by J.M. Jauch and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **** A reprint of the 1974 Indiana edition with a new foreword by Douglas R. Hofstadter. It is a non-mathematical book, engagingly written, and intended to lead the lay reader to an understanding of quantum theory. Also available in paper binding at $7.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

What Is Real?

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Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465096069
Total Pages : 389 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis What Is Real? by : Adam Becker

Download or read book What Is Real? written by Adam Becker and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A thorough, illuminating exploration of the most consequential controversy raging in modern science." --New York Times Book Review An Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review Longlisted for PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Longlisted for Goodreads Choice Award Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's solipsistic and poorly reasoned Copenhagen interpretation. Indeed, questioning it has long meant professional ruin, yet some daring physicists, such as John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett, persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth. "An excellent, accessible account." --Wall Street Journal "Splendid. . . . Deeply detailed research, accompanied by charming anecdotes about the scientists." --Washington Post

Something Deeply Hidden

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1524743038
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (247 download)

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Book Synopsis Something Deeply Hidden by : Sean Carroll

Download or read book Something Deeply Hidden written by Sean Carroll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As you read these words, copies of you are being created. Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of twentieth-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927. Quantum mechanics has always had obvious gaps—which have come to be simply ignored. Science popularizers keep telling us how weird it is, how impossible it is to understand. Academics discourage students from working on the "dead end" of quantum foundations. Putting his professional reputation on the line with this audacious yet entirely reasonable book, Carroll says that the crisis can now come to an end. We just have to accept that there is more than one of us in the universe. There are many, many Sean Carrolls. Many of every one of us. Copies of you are generated thousands of times per second. The Many-Worlds theory of quantum behavior says that every time there is a quantum event, a world splits off with everything in it the same, except in that other world the quantum event didn't happen. Step-by-step in Carroll's uniquely lucid way, he tackles the major objections to this otherworldly revelation until his case is inescapably established. Rarely does a book so fully reorganize how we think about our place in the universe. We are on the threshold of a new understanding—of where we are in the cosmos, and what we are made of.

Beyond Weird

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022655838X
Total Pages : 382 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Weird by : Philip Ball

Download or read book Beyond Weird written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.

From Data to Quanta

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Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022679833X
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis From Data to Quanta by : Slobodan Perovic

Download or read book From Data to Quanta written by Slobodan Perovic and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-10 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Niels Bohr was a central figure in quantum physics, well-known for his work on atomic structure and his contributions to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. In this book, philosopher Slobodan Perović explores the way Bohr practiced and understood physics, and the implications of this for our understanding of modern science, especially contemporary quantum experimental physics. Perović's method of studying Bohr is philosophical-historical, and his aim is to make sense of both Bohr's understanding of physics and his method of inquiry. He argues that in several important respects, Bohr's vision of physics was driven by his desire to develop a comprehensive perspective on key features of experimental observation as well as emerging experimental work. Perović uncovers how Bohr's distinctive breakthrough contributions are characterized by a multi-layered, phased approach of building on basic experimental insights inductively to develop intermediary and overarching hypotheses. The strengths and limitations of this approach, in contrast to the mathematically or metaphysically driven approaches of other physicists at the time, made him a thoroughly distinctive kind of theorist and scientific leader. Once we see that Bohr played the typical role of a laboratory mediator, and excelled in the inductive process this required, we can fully understand the way his work was generated, the role it played in developing novel quantum concepts, and its true limitations, as well as current adherence to and use of Bohr's complementarity approach among contemporary experimentalists"--

Einstein and the Quantum

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691168563
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Einstein and the Quantum by : A. Douglas Stone

Download or read book Einstein and the Quantum written by A. Douglas Stone and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of Albert Einstein's role as the father of quantum theory Einstein and the Quantum reveals for the first time the full significance of Albert Einstein's contributions to quantum theory. Einstein famously rejected quantum mechanics, observing that God does not play dice. But, in fact, he thought more about the nature of atoms, molecules, and the emission and absorption of light—the core of what we now know as quantum theory—than he did about relativity. A compelling blend of physics, biography, and the history of science, Einstein and the Quantum shares the untold story of how Einstein—not Max Planck or Niels Bohr—was the driving force behind early quantum theory. It paints a vivid portrait of the iconic physicist as he grappled with the apparently contradictory nature of the atomic world, in which its invisible constituents defy the categories of classical physics, behaving simultaneously as both particle and wave. And it demonstrates how Einstein's later work on the emission and absorption of light, and on atomic gases, led directly to Erwin Schrödinger's breakthrough to the modern form of quantum mechanics. The book sheds light on why Einstein ultimately renounced his own brilliant work on quantum theory, due to his deep belief in science as something objective and eternal.

Quantum Reality

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198830157
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis Quantum Reality by : Jim Baggott

Download or read book Quantum Reality written by Jim Baggott and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory. It is also completely mad. Although the theory quite obviously works, it leaves us chasing ghosts and phantoms; particles that are waves and waves that are particles; cats that are at once both alive and dead; and lots of seemingly spooky goings-on. But if we're prepared to be a little more specific about what we mean when we talk about 'reality' and a little more circumspect in the way we think a scientific theory might represent such a reality, then all the mystery goes away. This shows that the choice we face is actually a philosophical one. Here, Jim Baggott provides a quick but comprehensive introduction to quantum mechanics for the general reader, and explains what makes this theory so very different from the rest. He also explores the processes involved in developing scientific theories and explains how these lead to different philosophical positions, essential if we are to understand the nature of the great debate between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. Moving forwards, Baggott then provides a comprehensive guide to attempts to determine what the theory actually means, from the Copenhagen interpretation to many worlds and the multiverse. Richard Feynman once declared that 'nobody understands quantum mechanics'. This book will tell you why.

Not Even Wrong

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Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 046500363X
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis Not Even Wrong by : Peter Woit

Download or read book Not Even Wrong written by Peter Woit and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-03-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At what point does theory depart the realm of testable hypothesis and come to resemble something like aesthetic speculation, or even theology? The legendary physicist Wolfgang Pauli had a phrase for such ideas: He would describe them as "not even wrong," meaning that they were so incomplete that they could not even be used to make predictions to compare with observations to see whether they were wrong or not. In Peter Woit's view, superstring theory is just such an idea. In Not Even Wrong , he shows that what many physicists call superstring "theory" is not a theory at all. It makes no predictions, even wrong ones, and this very lack of falsifiability is what has allowed the subject to survive and flourish. Not Even Wrong explains why the mathematical conditions for progress in physics are entirely absent from superstring theory today and shows that judgments about scientific statements, which should be based on the logical consistency of argument and experimental evidence, are instead based on the eminence of those claiming to know the truth. In the face of many books from enthusiasts for string theory, this book presents the other side of the story.

Exploring the Quantum

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Author :
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191523240
Total Pages : 616 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (915 download)

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Book Synopsis Exploring the Quantum by : Serge Haroche

Download or read book Exploring the Quantum written by Serge Haroche and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-08-11 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The counter-intuitive aspects of quantum physics have been long illustrated by thought experiments, from Einstein's photon box to Schrödinger's cat. These experiments have now become real, with single particles - electrons, atoms, or photons - directly unveiling the strange features of the quantum. State superpositions, entanglement and complementarity define a novel quantum logic which can be harnessed for information processing, raising great hopes for applications. This book describes a class of such thought experiments made real. Juggling with atoms and photons confined in cavities, ions or cold atoms in traps, is here an incentive to shed a new light on the basic concepts of quantum physics. Measurement processes and decoherence at the quantum-classical boundary are highlighted. This volume, which combines theory and experiments, will be of interest to students in quantum physics, teachers seeking illustrations for their lectures and new problem sets, researchers in quantum optics and quantum information.

The Order of Time

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735216118
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis The Order of Time by : Carlo Rovelli

Download or read book The Order of Time written by Carlo Rovelli and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of TIME’s Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade "Meet the new Stephen Hawking . . . The Order of Time is a dazzling book." --The Sunday Times From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander comes a concise, elegant exploration of time. Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.

The Strange World of Quantum Mechanics

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316101878
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (161 download)

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Book Synopsis The Strange World of Quantum Mechanics by : Daniel F. Styer

Download or read book The Strange World of Quantum Mechanics written by Daniel F. Styer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-02-24 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an exceptionally accessible, accurate, and non-technical introduction to quantum mechanics. After briefly summarizing the differences between classical and quantum behaviour, this engaging account considers the Stern-Gerlach experiment and its implications, treats the concepts of probability, and then discusses the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox and Bell's theorem. Quantal interference and the concept of amplitudes are introduced and the link revealed between probabilities and the interference of amplitudes. Quantal amplitude is employed to describe interference effects. Final chapters explore exciting new developments in quantum computation and cryptography, discover the unexpected behaviour of a quantal bouncing-ball, and tackle the challenge of describing a particle with no position. Thought-provoking problems and suggestions for further reading are included. Suitable for use as a course text, The Strange World of Quantum Mechanics enables students to develop a genuine understanding of the domain of the very small. It will also appeal to general readers seeking intellectual adventure.

Physical Reality and Mathematical Description

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Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9401022747
Total Pages : 568 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Physical Reality and Mathematical Description by : C.P. Enz

Download or read book Physical Reality and Mathematical Description written by C.P. Enz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays is intended as a tribute to Josef Maria Jauch on his sixtieth birthd~. Through his scientific work Jauch has justly earned an honored name in the community of theo retical physicists. Through his teaching and a long line of dis tinguished collaborators he has put an imprint on modern mathema tical physics. A number of Jauch's scientific collaborators, friends and admirers have contributed to this collection, and these essays reflect to some extent Jauch's own wide interests in the vast do main of theoretical physics. Josef Maria Jauch was born on 20 September 1914, the son of Josef Alois and Emma (nee Conti) Jauch, in Lucerne, Switzerland. Love of science was aroused in him early in his youth. At the age of twelve he came upon a popular book on astronomy, and an exam ple treated in this book mystified him. It was stated that if a planet travels around a centre of Newtonian attraction with a pe riod T, and if that planet were stopped and left to fall into the centre from any point of the circular orbit, it would arrive at the centre in the time T/I32. Young Josef puzzled about this for several months until he made his first scientific discovery : that this result could be derived from Kepler's third law in a quite elementary way.

Quantum Relativity

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Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 3642609368
Total Pages : 584 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (426 download)

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Book Synopsis Quantum Relativity by : David R. Finkelstein

Download or read book Quantum Relativity written by David R. Finkelstein and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past years the author has developed a quantum language going beyond the concepts used by Bohr and Heisenberg. The simple formal algebraic language is designed to be consistent with quantum theory. It differs from natural languages in its epistemology, modal structure, logical connections, and copulatives. Starting from ideas of John von Neumann and in part also as a response to his fundamental work, the author bases his approach on what one really observes when studying quantum processes. This way the new language can be seen as a clue to a deeper understanding of the concepts of quantum physics, at the same time avoiding those paradoxes which arise when using natural languages. The work is organized didactically: The reader learns in fairly concrete form about the language and its structure as well as about its use for physics.

The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 140086805X
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics by : Bryce Seligman Dewitt

Download or read book The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics written by Bryce Seligman Dewitt and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed in brief form by Hugh Everett in 1957, forms the nucleus around which this book has developed. In his interpretation, Dr. Everett denies the existence of a separate classical realm and asserts the propriety of considering a state vector for the whole universe. Because this state vector never collapses, reality as a whole is rigorously deterministic. This reality, which is described jointly by the dynamical variables and the state vector, is not the reality customarily perceived; rather, it is a reality composed of many worlds. By virtue of the temporal development of the dynamical variables, the state vector decomposes naturally into orthogonal vectors, reflecting a continual splitting of the universe into a multitude of mutually unobservable but equally real worlds, in each of which every good measurement has yielded a definite result, and in most of which the familiar statistical quantum laws hold. The volume contains Dr. Everett's short paper from 1957, "'Relative State' Formulation of Quantum Mechanics," and a far longer exposition of his interpretation, entitled "The Theory of the Universal Wave Function," never before published. In addition, other papers by Wheeler, DeWitt, Graham, and Cooper and Van Vechten provide further discussion of the same theme. Together, they constitute virtually the entire world output of scholarly commentary on the Everett interpretation. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Einstein's Unfinished Revolution

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Author :
Publisher : Knopf Canada
ISBN 13 : 0345809122
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (458 download)

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Book Synopsis Einstein's Unfinished Revolution by : Lee Smolin

Download or read book Einstein's Unfinished Revolution written by Lee Smolin and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A daring new vision of the quantum universe, and the scandals controversies, and questions that may illuminate our future--from Canada's leading mind on contemporary physics. Quantum physics is the golden child of modern science. It is the basis of our understanding of atoms, radiation, and so much else, from elementary particles and basic forces to the behaviour of materials. But for a century it has also been the problem child of science, plagued by intense disagreements between its intellectual giants, from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking, over the strange paradoxes and implications that seem like the stuff of fantasy. Whether it's Schrödinger's cat--a creature that is simultaneously dead and alive--or a belief that the world does not exist independently of our observations of it, quantum theory is what challenges our fundamental assumptions about our reality. In Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, globally renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin provocatively argues that the problems which have bedeviled quantum physics since its inception are unsolved for the simple reason that the theory is incomplete. There is more, waiting to be discovered. Our task--if we are to have simple answers to our simple questions about the universe we live in--must be to go beyond it to a description of the world on an atomic scale that makes sense. In this vibrant and accessible book, Smolin takes us on a journey through the basics of quantum physics, introducing the stories of the experiments and figures that have transformed the field, before wrestling with the puzzles and conundrums that they present. Along the way, he illuminates the existing theories about the quantum world that might solve these problems, guiding us toward his own vision that embraces common sense realism. If we are to have any hope of completing the revolution that Einstein began nearly a century ago, we must go beyond quantum mechanics as we know it to find a theory that will give us a complete description of nature. In Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, Lee Smolin brings us a step closer to resolving one of the greatest scientific controversies of our age.

Lectures On Quantum Theory Mathematical And Structural Foundations

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Author :
Publisher : Allied Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9788177641905
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis Lectures On Quantum Theory Mathematical And Structural Foundations by : Chris J. Isham

Download or read book Lectures On Quantum Theory Mathematical And Structural Foundations written by Chris J. Isham and published by Allied Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Quantum

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Author :
Publisher : Icon Books Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1848311036
Total Pages : 447 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (483 download)

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Book Synopsis Quantum by : Manjit Kumar

Download or read book Quantum written by Manjit Kumar and published by Icon Books Ltd. This book was released on 2008-10-02 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This is about gob-smacking science at the far end of reason ... Take it nice and easy and savour the experience of your mind being blown without recourse to hallucinogens' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian For most people, quantum theory is a byword for mysterious, impenetrable science. And yet for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. In this magisterial book, Manjit Kumar gives a dramatic and superbly-written history of this fundamental scientific revolution, and the divisive debate at its core. Quantum theory looks at the very building blocks of our world, the particles and processes without which it could not exist. Yet for 60 years most physicists believed that quantum theory denied the very existence of reality itself. In this tour de force of science history, Manjit Kumar shows how the golden age of physics ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century. Quantum theory is weird. In 1905, Albert Einstein suggested that light was a particle, not a wave, defying a century of experiments. Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Erwin Schrodinger's famous dead-and-alive cat are similarly strange. As Niels Bohr said, if you weren't shocked by quantum theory, you didn't really understand it. While "Quantum" sets the science in the context of the great upheavals of the modern age, Kumar's centrepiece is the conflict between Einstein and Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science. 'Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem had been solved', lamented the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann. But in "Quantum", Kumar brings Einstein back to the centre of the quantum debate. "Quantum" is the essential read for anyone fascinated by this complex and thrilling story and by the band of brilliant men at its heart.