This book offers an informal, easy-to-understand account of topics in modern physics and mathematics. The focus is, in particular, on statistical mechanics, soft matter, probability, chaos, complexity, and models, as well as their interplay. The book features 28 key entries and it is carefully structured so as to allow readers to pursue different paths that reflect their interests and priorities, thereby avoiding an excessively systematic presentation that might stifle interest. While the ...

This book reviews the basic ideas of the Law of Large Numbers with its consequences to the deterministic world and the issue of ergodicity. Applications of Large Deviations and their outcomes to Physics are surveyed. The book covers topics encompassing ergodicity and its breaking and the modern applications of Large deviations to equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical physics, disordered and chaotic systems, and turbulence.

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 TimesFrom 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 d...

"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...

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...

Quantum physics is often perceived as a weird and abstract theory, which physicists must use in order to make correct predictions. But many recent experiments have shown that the weirdness of the theory simply mirrors the weirdness of phenomena: it is Nature itself, and not only our description of it, that behaves in an astonishing way. This book selects those, among these typical quantum phenomena, whose rigorous description requires neither the formalism, nor an importantbackground in ph...

This textbook is distinguished from other texts on the subject by the depth of the presentation and the discussion of the calculus of moving surfaces, which is an extension of tensor calculus to deforming manifolds.Designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, this text invites its audience to take a fresh look at previously learned material through the prism of tensor calculus. Once the framework is mastered, the student is introduced to new material which includes di...

Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity is an anthology of original essays by an international team of leading philosophers and physicists who have come together to reassess the contemporary paradigm of the relativistic concept of time. A great deal has changed since 1905 when Einstein proposed his Special Theory of Relativity, and this book offers a fresh reassessment of Special Relativity’s relativistic concept of time in terms of epistemology, metaphysics, and physics.

The idea of infinity plays a crucial role in our understanding of the universe, with the infinite spacetime continuum perhaps the best-known example - but is spacetime really continuous? Throughout the history of science, many have felt that the continuum model is an unphysical idealization, and that spacetime should be thought of as 'quantized' at the smallest of scales. Combining novel conceptual analysis, a fresh historical perspective, and concrete physical examples, this unique book t...

This textbook takes a broad yet thorough approach to mechanics, aimed at bridging the gap between classical analytic and modern differential geometric approaches to the subject. Developed by the author from 35 years of teaching experience, the presentation is designed to give students an overview of the many different models used through the history of the field—from Newton to Lagrange—while also painting a clear picture of the most modern developments. Throughout, it makes heavy use of th...

This book explains - in simple terms and with almost no mathematics - the physics behind recent and glamorous discoveries in Cosmology, Quantum Mechanics, Elementary Particles (e.g. Higgs bosons) and Complexity Theory. En route it delves into the historical landmarks and revolutions that brought about our current understanding of the universe.The book is written mainly for those with little scientific background, both college students and lay readers alike, who are curious about th...

This book aims to provide a quick pedagogical introduction to path integrals. It contains original material that never before has appeared in a book, for example the path integrals for the Wigner functions and for Classical Mechanics. This application to Classical Mechanics connects different fields like Hamiltonian mechanics and differential geometry, so the book is suitable for students and researchers from various disciplines.