The vacuum is central to physicists' best theories of subatomic particles, gravitation, and cosmology. Nothingness provides the reference point with which to compare new particle creation and annihilation. Cosmologists use empty universes to study the causal structure of spacetime. Paradoxically, our best physical theories of particles, gravity, and spacetime are theories of nothingness. Stranger still, the physicists' vacuum is a hive of activity. Quantum fluctuations fill empty space wit...

"A thorough, illuminating exploration of the most consequential controversy raging in modern science." --New York Times Book ReviewAn Editor's Choice, New York Times Book ReviewLonglisted for PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science WritingLonglisted for Goodreads Choice AwardEvery physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, ...

A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of our universe and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Why does time move forward?Time moves forward, not backward—everyone knows you can’t unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today’s hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll argues that ...

Long-listed for the 2016 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing AwardDelightfully readable, Spooky Action at a Distance is a mind-bending voyage to the frontiers of modern physics that will change the way we think about reality.What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past...

"It would be hard to imagine a better guide to this difficult subject." -- Scientific AmericanIn Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin provides an accessible overview of the attempts to build a final "theory of everything." He explains in simple terms what scientists are talking about when they say the world is made from exotic entities such as loops, strings, and black holes and tells the fascinating stories behind these discoveries: the rivalries, epiphanie...

The New York Times bestselling author of The Physics of Wall Street " deftly explains all you wanted to know about nothingness—a.k.a. the quantum vacuum" (Priyamvada Natarajan, author of Mapping the Heavens ).James Owen Weatherall's bestselling book, The Physics of Wall Street, was named one of Physics Today's five most intriguing books of 2013. In this work, he takes on...

One of Smithsonian's Favorite Books of 2018One of Forbes's 2018 Best Books About Astronomy, Physics and MathematicsOne of Kirkus's Best Books of 2018The intellectual adventure story of the "double-slit" experiment, showing how a sunbeam split into two paths first challenged our understanding of light and then the nature of reality itself--and continues to almost 200 years later.

Quantum Theory is the most revolutionary discovery in physics since Newton. This book gives a lucid, exciting, and accessible account of the surprising and counterintuitive ideas that shape our understanding of the sub-atomic world. It does not disguise the problems of interpretation that still remain unsettled 75 years after the initial discoveries. The main text makes no use of equations, but there is a Mathematical Appendix for those desiring stronger fare. Uncertainty, probabilistic ph...

Nobel Prize–winning physicist Roger Penrose questions some of the most fashionable ideas in physics today, including string theoryWhat 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 extrem...

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist and bestselling author of The First Three Minutes describes the grand quest for a unifying theory of nature--one that can explain forces as different as the cohesion inside the atom and the gravitational tug between the sun and Earth. Wirting with dazzling elegance and clarity, he retraces the steps that have led modern scientists from relativity and quantum mechanics to the notion of super-strings and the idea that our universe may coexist with o...

String theory says we live in a ten-dimensional universe, but that only four are accessible to our everyday senses. According to theorists, the missing six are curled up in bizarre structures known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. In The Shape of Inner Space, Shing-Tung Yau, the man who mathematically proved that these manifolds exist, argues that not only is geometry fundamental to string theory, it is also fundamental to the very nature of our universe.Time and again, where Yau ...

A lively collection of Einstein's groundbreaking scientific correspondence on modern physicsImagine 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 ba...