Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics

Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics PDF Author: John Archibald Wheeler
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079481
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Winner of the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award "This delightful account is packed with insights…[Wheeler] is a consummately American physicist whose wide-ranging career spans much of a disturbing century." —Michael Riordan, New York Times Book Review He studied with Niels Bohr, taught Richard Feynman, and boned up on relativity with his friend and colleague Albert Einstein. John Archibald Wheeler's fascinating life brings us face to face with the central characters and discoveries of modern physics. He was the first American to learn of the discovery of nuclear fission, later coined the term "black hole," led a renaissance in gravitation physics, and helped to build Princeton University into a mecca for physicists. From nuclear physics, to quantum theory, to relativity and gravitation, Wheeler's work has set the trajectory of research for half a century. His career has brought him into contact with the most brilliant minds of his field; Fermi, Bethe, Rabi, Teller, Oppenheimer, and Wigner are among those he called colleagues and friends. In this rich autobiography, Wheeler reveals in fascinating detail the excitement of each discovery, the character of each colleague, and the underlying passion for knowledge that drives him still.

Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics

Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics PDF Author: John Archibald Wheeler
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079481
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Winner of the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award "This delightful account is packed with insights…[Wheeler] is a consummately American physicist whose wide-ranging career spans much of a disturbing century." —Michael Riordan, New York Times Book Review He studied with Niels Bohr, taught Richard Feynman, and boned up on relativity with his friend and colleague Albert Einstein. John Archibald Wheeler's fascinating life brings us face to face with the central characters and discoveries of modern physics. He was the first American to learn of the discovery of nuclear fission, later coined the term "black hole," led a renaissance in gravitation physics, and helped to build Princeton University into a mecca for physicists. From nuclear physics, to quantum theory, to relativity and gravitation, Wheeler's work has set the trajectory of research for half a century. His career has brought him into contact with the most brilliant minds of his field; Fermi, Bethe, Rabi, Teller, Oppenheimer, and Wigner are among those he called colleagues and friends. In this rich autobiography, Wheeler reveals in fascinating detail the excitement of each discovery, the character of each colleague, and the underlying passion for knowledge that drives him still.

Spacetime Physics

Spacetime Physics PDF Author: Edwin F. Taylor
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780716723271
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This thoroughly up-to-date, highly accessible overview covers microgravity, collider accelerators, satellite probes, neutron detectors, radioastronomy, and pulsars.

Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn

Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn PDF Author: Amanda Gefter
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 034553963X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS In a memoir of family bonding and cutting-edge physics for readers of Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality and Jim Holt’s Why Does the World Exist?, Amanda Gefter tells the story of how she conned her way into a career as a science journalist—and wound up hanging out, talking shop, and butting heads with the world’s most brilliant minds. At a Chinese restaurant outside of Philadelphia, a father asks his fifteen-year-old daughter a deceptively simple question: “How would you define nothing?” With that, the girl who once tried to fail geometry as a conscientious objector starts reading up on general relativity and quantum mechanics, as she and her dad embark on a life-altering quest for the answers to the universe’s greatest mysteries. Before Amanda Gefter became an accomplished science writer, she was a twenty-one-year-old magazine assistant willing to sneak her and her father, Warren, into a conference devoted to their physics hero, John Wheeler. Posing as journalists, Amanda and Warren met Wheeler, who offered them cryptic clues to the nature of reality: The universe is a self-excited circuit, he said. And, The boundary of a boundary is zero. Baffled, Amanda and Warren vowed to decode the phrases—and with them, the enigmas of existence. When we solve all that, they agreed, we’ll write a book. Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn is that book, a memoir of the impassioned hunt that takes Amanda and her father from New York to London to Los Alamos. Along the way, they bump up against quirky science and even quirkier personalities, including Leonard Susskind, the former Bronx plumber who invented string theory; Ed Witten, the soft-spoken genius who coined the enigmatic M-theory; even Stephen Hawking. What they discover is extraordinary: the beginnings of a monumental paradigm shift in cosmology, from a single universe we all share to a splintered reality in which each observer has her own. Reality, the Gefters learn, is radically observer-dependent, far beyond anything of which Einstein or the founders of quantum mechanics ever dreamed—with shattering consequences for our understanding of the universe’s origin. And somehow it all ties back to that conversation, to that Chinese restaurant, and to the true meaning of nothing. Throughout their journey, Amanda struggles to make sense of her own life—as her journalism career transforms from illusion to reality, as she searches for her voice as a writer, as she steps from a universe shared with her father to at last carve out one of her own. It’s a paradigm shift you might call growing up. By turns hilarious, moving, irreverent, and profound, Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn weaves together story and science in remarkable ways. By the end, you will never look at the universe the same way again. Praise for Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn “Nothing quite prepared me for this book. Wow. Reading it, I alternated between depression—how could the rest of us science writers ever match this?—and exhilaration.”—Scientific American “To Do: Read Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn. Reality doesn’t have to bite.”—New York “A zany superposition of genres . . . It’s at once a coming-of-age chronicle and a father-daughter road trip to the far reaches of this universe and 10,500 others.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Gravitation

Gravitation PDF Author: Charles W. Misner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691177791
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1332

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Book Description
Spacetime physics -- Physics in flat spacetime -- The mathematics of curved spacetime -- Einstein's geometric theory of gravity -- Relativistic stars -- The universe -- Gravitational collapse and black holes -- Gravitational waves -- Experimental tests of general relativity -- Frontiers

Letters on Wave Mechanics

Letters on Wave Mechanics PDF Author: Albert Einstein
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453265759
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
A lively collection of Einstein’s groundbreaking scientific correspondence on modern physics Imagine getting four of the greatest minds of modern physics in a room together to explain and debate the theories and innovations of their day. This is the fascinating experience of reading Letters on Wave Mechanics, the correspondence between H. A. Lorentz, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein. These remarkable letters illuminate not only the basis of Schrödinger’s work in wave mechanics, but also how great scientific minds debated and challenged the ever-changing theories of the day and ultimately embraced an elegant solution to the riddles of quantum theory. Their collected correspondence offers insight into both the personalities and professional aspirations that played a part in this theoretical breakthrough. This authorized ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Uncommon Sense

Uncommon Sense PDF Author: J. Robert Oppenheimer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1468467352
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
J. Robert Oppenheimer, a leading physicist in the Manhattan Project, recognized that scientific inquiry and discovery could no longer be separated from their effect on political decision-making, social responsibility, and human endeavor in general. He openly addressed issues of common concern and as a scientist accepted the responsibility brought about by nuclear physics and the atom bomb. In this collection of essays and speeches, Oppenheimer discusses the shift in scientific awareness and its impact on education, the question of openness in a society forced to keep secrets, the conflict between individual concerns and public and political necessity, the future of science and its effects on future politics---in short, the common and uncommon sense we find in our modern day reality.

Exploring Black Holes

Exploring Black Holes PDF Author: Edwin F. Taylor
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780321512864
Category : Black holes (Astronomy)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene

Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene PDF Author: Maria F. G. Wallace
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030796221
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
This open access edited volume invites transdisciplinary scholars to re-vision science education in the era of the Anthropocene. The collection assembles the works of educators from many walks of life and areas of practice together to help reorient science education toward the problems and peculiarities associated with the geologic times many call the Anthropocene. It has become evident that science education—the way it is currently institutionalized in various forms of school science, government policy, classroom practice, educational research, and public/private research laboratories—is ill-equipped and ill-conceived to deal with the expansive and urgent contexts of the Anthropocene. Paying homage to myopic knowledge systems, rigid state education directives, and academic-professional communities intent on reproducing the same practices, knowledges, and relationships that have endangered our shared world and shared presents/presence is misdirected. This volume brings together diverse scholars to reimagine the field in times of precarity.

The Bit and the Pendulum

The Bit and the Pendulum PDF Author: Tom Siegfried
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 0470354232
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
"Funny, clear, deep, and right on target. [Siegfried] lets us get a handle on ideas that are essential for understanding the evolving world." -K. C. Cole, author of The Universe and the Teacup "An eager, ambitious book. A stimulating, accessible introduction to scientific theory." -Dallas Morning News An award-winning journalist surveys the horizon of a new revolution in science Everything in the universe, from the molecules in our bodies to the heart of a black hole, is made up of bits of information. This is the radical idea at the center of the new physics of information, and it is leading to exciting breakthroughs in a vast range of science, including the invention of a new kind of quantum computer, millions of times faster than any computer today. Acclaimed science writer Tom Siegfried offers a lively introduction to the leading scientists and ideas responsible for this exciting new scientific paradigm.

101 Quantum Questions

101 Quantum Questions PDF Author: Kenneth William Ford
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060938
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This reader-friendly, richly illustrated book provides an engaging overview of quantum physics, from “big ideas” like probability and uncertainty and conservation laws to the behavior of quarks and photons and neutrinos, and on to explanations of how a laser works and why black holes evaporate.