One of the world's leading physicists questions some of the most fashionable ideas in physics today, including string theory
What can fashionable ideas, blind faith, or pure fantasy possibly have to do with the scientific quest to understand the universe? Surely, theoretical physicists are immune to mere trends, dogmatic beliefs, or flights of fancy? In fact, acclaimed physicist and bestselling author Roger Penrose argues that researchers working at the extreme frontiers of physics are just as susceptible to these forces as anyone else. In this provocative book, he argues that fashion, faith, and fantasy, while sometimes productive and even essential in physics, may be leading today's researchers astray in three of the field's most important areas--string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology.
Arguing that string theory has veered away from physical reality by positing six extra hidden dimensions, Penrose cautions that the fashionable nature of a theory can cloud our judgment of its plausibility. In the case of quantum mechanics, its stunning success in explaining the atomic universe has led to an uncritical faith that it must also apply to reasonably massive objects, and Penrose responds by suggesting possible changes in quantum theory. Turning to cosmology, he argues that most of the current fantastical ideas about the origins of the universe cannot be true, but that an even wilder reality may lie behind them. Finally, Penrose describes how fashion, faith, and fantasy have ironically also shaped his own work, from twistor theory, a possible alternative to string theory that is beginning to acquire a fashionable status, to conformal cyclic cosmology, an idea so fantastic that it could be called conformal crazy cosmology.
The result is an important critique of some of the most significant developments in physics today from one of its most eminent figures.
Описание: A history of Johnstown, published in 1890, from the colonial period to the 1889 flood, when the South Fork Dam on the Conemaugh River failed. Features a journalistic account of the flood.
Описание: First published in 1934, this book was originally intended to help the interested reader develop their understanding of the natural sciences as they stood in the period leading up to the Second World War.
Описание: First published in 1934, this book was originally intended to help the interested reader develop their understanding of the natural sciences as they stood in the period leading up to the Second World War.
Описание: Edward T. O`Donnell`s exploration of Henry George`s life and times merges labor, ethnic, intellectual, and political history to illuminate the early labor movement in New York during the Gilded Age. George`s accessible, forward-thinking ideas on democracy, equality, and freedom have tremendous value for contemporary debates.
Описание: This first biography of Sir Raymond Priestley is well overdue, and its absence can only be explained by the scale of research necessary to cover the breadth and variety of his achievements over a very long and active life. It will be of interest across a wide range of disciplines, especially to those for whom the ""Heroic Age"" of Antarctic Exploration has a particular fascination.
Описание: City on Fire is a chronicle of progress and danger, that integrates urban environmental history with histories of technology, science, and medicine to reveal how Mexico City changed in response to the growing threat of fire in the urban center.
Автор: Burdett Название: Olive Schreiner and the Progress of Feminism ISBN: 0333615328 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780333615324 Издательство: Springer Рейтинг: Цена: 20962.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: Focusing on the key late-19th-century discourses of feminism, prostitution, colonialism, science and evolution, this study explores, in depth, Olive Schreiner`s achievement as a writer.
Описание: Richard Pulteney (1730-1801) was a botanist and physician, influential in promoting the Linnaean system of classification in England. This 1790 two-volume examination of the development of botanical studies in Britain is still of great interest to botanists and garden historians.
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