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Cargando... Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat: How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physicspor Paul Halpern
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Lorsque la mécanique quantique a bouleversé le monde ordonné d'Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein et Erwin Schrödinger étaient à l'avant-garde de cette révolution. Cependant, aucun des deux hommes ne s'est jamais satisfait de l'interprétation standard de la mécanique quantique et l'ont critiquée à leur manière : Einstein par son célèbre aphorisme Dieu ne joue pas aux dés, Schrödinger avec sa tout aussi célèbre fable du chat ni mort, ni vivant, démonstration flagrante de l'absurdité d'une théorie qui aurait mal tourné. Ce livre raconte la quête des deux savants, tout d'abord alliés puis concurrents, pour parvenir à une théorie du tout qui transcende les bizarreries du monde quantique. Good introduction to two of the most prominent figures in 20th century physics. Overall it has a nice balance of personal history and the actual physics concepts these two developed. The discussion of physics theory is moderately technical, which might put off some readers who have a limited scientific background. A true tale of two famous physicists -- the somewhat entangled careers of Albert E and Erwin S. Its climactic event is, I think, not familiar to most people: In 1947 S ill-advisedly promulgated an attempt at a unified field theory rather similar to what E had been seeking for decades. Basically a double biography, with alternating popular-level explanations of the two protagonists' lives and scientific work. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrodinger were friends and comrades-in-arms against what they considered the most preposterous aspects of quantum physics: its indeterminacy. Einstein famously quipped that God does not play dice with the universe, and Schrodinger is equally well known for his thought experiment about the cat in the box who ends up spread out in a probabilistic state, neither wholly alive nor wholly dead. Both of these famous images arose from these two men's dissatisfaction with quantum weirdness and with their assertion that underneath it all, there must be some essentially deterministic world. Even though it was Einstein's own theories that made quantum mechanics possible, both he and Schrodinger could not bear the idea that the universe was, at its most fundamental level, random. As the Second World War raged, both men struggled to produce a theory that would describe in full the universe's ultimate design, first as collaborators, then as competitors. They both ultimately failed in their search for a Grand Unified Theory--not only because quantum mechanics is true, but because Einstein and Schrodinger were also missing a key component: of the four forces we recognize today (gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force), only gravity and electromagnetism were known at the time. Despite their failures, though, much of modern physics remains focused on the search for a Grand Unified Theory. As Halpern explains, the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson makes the Standard Model--the closest thing we have to a unified theory--nearly complete. And while Einstein and Schrodinger tried and failed to explain everything in the cosmos through pure geometry, the development of string theory has, in its own quantum way, brought this idea back into vogue. As in so many things, even when he was wrong, Einstein couldn't help but be right. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)530.13Natural sciences and mathematics Physics Physics Theoretical Physics Statistical PhysicsClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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In terms of the actual science, I still mostly don’t get it. I think the coverage of Schrödinger’s cat and Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is presented well, but I was already comfortable with those subjects. A lot of the other science is hard to follow. Now, that’s not the prime purpose of this book, and it’s a hard subject, so to some extent that’s reasonable, but it seems weird to me to carry the science well past their deaths when I don’t think it’s covered with sufficient depth to be truly educational to most.
That said, it’s not a bad book. The primary subject of Einstein and Schrodinger is presented in an interesting way with enough of the big picture timeline of the science to follow. But I wouldn’t expect to learn that much of the science even if it’s presented through the book in a way implying you can. ( )