Quantum Physics/Cosmology books

Can someone reccomend any other good books on quantum physics, cosmology, superstring theory, etc..?

I've read Brief History of Time, and Universe in a Nutshell (the essentials)

Also the Elegant Universe by Brian Green (my absolute FAVORITE book I have read so far on the subject)

I've looked at Borders at a few other ones but they're either not advanced enough, just repeating stuff I already understand in different words, or are so equasion-heavy that it's beyond me..

Can anyone advise me where to go next?

-An

read QED by Dr Richard Feynman

I've seen that author's named mentioned in other books I've read.

I just looked it up on Amazon, and they have a bunch of excerps...

I will definitely check this one out...

gracias...
-An

was a theory physicist considered to be one of the original thinkers in modern day Physics.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

Feynman's biography. Extremely well-written.

two more recommedation:

-The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

-Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

I'm definitely a Gleick fan!

I was disappointed. Though 'Genius' seemed so thoroughly researched, 'Chaos' seemed to give up and speculate.

Not sure, though, about how much it speculated. It was the first book on Chaos I'd read.

the man just had all the answers :7

QED is a masterful explanation, for laypeople, of a great theory.

Also, The Character of Physical Law, by Feynmann

Check out his autobiographies, as well:

Surely, You're Joking, Mr. Feynmann
What Do You Care What Other People Think

If you want something with more teeth, I'd recommend the 3-volume set of Feynmann's lectures.

The Physics of Immortality is an excellent read.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385467990/qid=1062012135/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-5958724-2128153?v=glance&s=books


Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I recommend it highly.

And then, of course, there's always Einstein's 'Relativity'

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0517884410/qid=1062012242/sr=1-18/ref=sr_1_18/102-5958724-2128153?v=glance&s=books

I can suggest MANY books, but what are you looking for? Books written for a lay audience only? Textbooks?

by Eric Lerner, if you're interested in something a little different. This book is very readable. It explores the problems and contradictions in the Big Bang theory, including the theological bias involved in promoting it as the dominant cosmological model.

This is exactly the problem I've had with the theory! I've never yet seen anyone question the basic assumption: that there had to have been a "beginning."

it's all hypothesis. Big bang is the best we've got right now to explaing a range of stuff. Things gets downplayed all the time especially in theoritical astrophysics. Recent findings suggested:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/02/09/wspace09.xml

that the Universe is going to expand forever unlike the popular expansion/contraction

http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/IUP/Big_Bang_Primer.html(big bang/big crunch) cycle in Big Bang theory.

However, in the "popular" media, the BB and evolution are cited as aboslute fact (another indication of the ignorance of our 4th estate). It has always bothered me that no one seemed to question the assumption about beginnings; i.e., science (in its infancy) started with the same unquestioned assumption as Genesis.

And since religion (i.e., Roman Catholic Church) WAS society in the beginnings of modern Western physics (oh, since just after the Dark Ages), science started with the same assumption. I think science MUST be about the business of questioning assumptions.

media is incredibly misinformed and it spreads misinformation....quite an irony eh?

:mad:

and the Big Bangers. (Steady state meaning the universe has always been here). The Big Bang was attractive to religious cosmologists because it meshed well with creation mythology.

Incidentally, the Big Bang's explanations only hold up if you assume that velocity is the ONLY possible cause of red-shifted light. This assumption has many detractors. There are references in 'Never Happened'.

Incidentally, the Big Bang's explanations only hold up if you assume that velocity is the ONLY possible cause of red-shifted light. This assumption has many detractors.

Well, it has "many detractors" in the same sense that "many" climatologists don't believe in global warming. In other words, there are a handful of holdouts.

But the expansion/redshift connection gets stronger and stronger with every new observational result in astrophysics, so the detractors don't have much to hang their hats on anymore.

--Peter

Incidentally, the Big Bang's explanations only hold up if you assume that velocity is the ONLY possible cause of red-shifted light. This assumption has many detractors. There are references in 'Never Happened'.

Seeing Red, by Halton Arp is a good one in this area.

Also "The New Physics" by Paul Davies

QUOTE
>>I can suggest MANY books, but what are you looking for? Books >>written for a lay audience only? Textbooks?

Not textbooks, (well, maybe.. depends)...

I guess the "lay audience" for quantum physics is still pretty advance.. so I'd say maybe the stuff for the more advanced lay audence..

I have a pretty decent handle on the basics, gravity & the warping of spacetime, time dilation at substatial fractions of light speed, Lorentz contraction, black holes, quarks/elemental particles,etc...

Got a decent grip on string theory thanks to the absolutely wonderful explanations in The Elegant Universe

I'd say I get the gist of the uncertainty principle, vacuum energy, quantum fluctuations, but I have a lot to learn there, still...

Just to give you an idea of where I'm at..

I don't/can't get into all of the advanced mathematical equasions, I can just grasp the practical concepts of it all...I do unserstand the basic graphs that are used/spacetime diagrams/light cone, etc...

If you're advanced in the subect, there's something Hawking said in a few books that to me doesn't seem right to me.. throws me for a loop, has to do with evaporation of black holes.. It's a long thing so I wont bore everyone, unless someone volunteers to try and give me and answer I will try and explain it...in my mind it just seems like it would happen the opposite of what Hawking said.

cheers all,

-An

The vaccuum is anything but, at the quantum level. Virtual particle/antiparticle pairs are created all the time, and then annihilate and vanish.

Near the event horizon of a black hole, gravitational interactions give the virtual pair enough energy to become real. In the magnetic field around the hole, the positively-charged particle spins off in one direction, and the negatively-charged one in the other.

Really close to the event horizon, some of these pairs will be angled so that one virtual-become-real particle shoots into the event horizon, never again to reappear, and its antiparticle just barely escapes.

So, there's a slow but steady stream of mass coming from just beyond the event horizon. The energy that created it had to come from the black hole, so the black hole is slowly evaporating.

This is a gross simplification, so if any other physicists out there are offended, feel free to correct!

There are MUCH better books out than that one.

...DWLM is still a good place to begin!

and some that's outright wrong.

Not a good place to start.

...I guess I've got a soft spot in my heart for it, though. And Zukav's description of the double-slit experiment is wonderful! Maybe I should say it's got its moments?

but it must be read with a caveat.

Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension

Great book and a great writer.

In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribben

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

Is a good book if you are interested in the history of Quantum Mechanics and the people who were involved, but don't want to get too deep into the equations. It presents the subject more at the level of an Advanced High School or Undergraduate College level class.

While it is not the most advanced book on the subject, it is an interesting read.

I've read about 50 of them; some are quite old and may be out of print. Some of the following books are alternatively trashed by some physicists and lauded by others. Nevertheless, here they are:


Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes (history of the whole science, as well as the Manhattan project; one of the best books I've ever read!)

Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, Gary Zukav (old but tried and true introduction to the science)

At Home in the Universe, Stuart Kauffman

Taking the Quantum Leap, Fred Alan Wolf

Star Wave, Fred Alan Wolf

Seeing in the Dark, Timothy Ferris

Hyperspace, Michio Kaku

Chaos, James Gleick

Superforce, Paul Davies (one of my favorite physicists!)

The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory, David Lindley (guess you have to read all sides of the story)

In Search of Schroedinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality, John Gribbin

Shcroedinger's Kittens: John Gribbin

Faster: The acceleration of Just About Everything, James Gleick

Physics as Metaphor, Roger S. Jones (out-of-print, but very worth it if you can find a copy)

Does God Play Dice: The Mathematics of Chaos, Ian Stewart

The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World, Amit Goswami, Richard E. Reed, Maggie Goswami

The Cosmic Dancers, Amit Goswami, Maggie Goswami

The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence M. Krauss

Beyond Star Trek, Lawrence M. Krauss

Physics and Beyond, Werner Heisenberg (a wonderful memoir)

About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, Paul Davies

E=MC^2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation, David Bodanis (wonderful)

The Secret Melody: And Man Created the Universe, Trinh Xuan Thuan

The Edges of Science: Crossing The Boundary from Physics to Metaphysics, Richard Morris

The Image of Eternity: Roots of Time in the Physical World, David Park

The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, John Horgan (of Scientific American)

Parallel Universes, Fred Alan Wolf

The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra (again, a classic)

The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, Fritjof Capra

The Conscious Universe: Part and Whole in Modern Physical Theory, Menas Kafatos, Robert Nadeau

God and the New Physics, Paul Davies

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (new book; interesting exploration of scientific ideas by a non-scientist)

Would-Be Worlds: How Simulation is Changing the Frontiers of Science, John L. Casti

Physics for the Rest of Us, Roger S. Jones

Black Holes and Baby Universes: And Other Essays, Stephen Hawking

Science Observed, Jeremy Bernstein

Time's Arrow: Scientific Attitudes Toward Time, Richard Morris

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, James Gleick

God's Laughter: Man and His Cosmos, Gerhard Staguhn

almost anything by Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel C. Dennet, James Gleick, Paul Davies, Richard Feynman!!!

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There are SO, SO, SO many more! This list is only a beginning one; search at Amazon on your topic, and especially check out peoples' lists. You'll find many more.

It takes an historical approach to the development of nuclear physics and gives accounts of the people who made the discoveries, the settings, and what questions were being asked at that time. It goes into the mathmatics just enough to give a sense of how physicists use equation to try to prove or expand a theory. Really good popular science writing.





http://search.barnesandnoble.com/textbooks/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2UG2N8FCWN&isbn=0813521777&TXT=Y&itm=113

Unveiling the Edge of Time: Black Holes, White Holes, Wormholes, by John Gribbin

The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe, by John Gribbin

Stardust: Supernovae and Life --- The Cosmic Connection, by John Gribbin

The Book of Nothing, by John D. Barrow

The Constants of Nature: From Alpha to Omega: The Numbers That Encode the Deepest Secrets of the Universe, by John D. Barrow

The Universe That Discovered Itself, by John D. Barrow

Extreme Stars, by James B. Kaler

Cosmic Clouds: Birth, Death, and Recycling in the Galaxy, by James B. Kaler

Our Cosmic Habitat, by Martin J. Rees

Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others, by Martin J. Rees

Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe, by Martin J. Rees

The Life of the Cosmos, by Lee Smolin

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, by Lee Smolin

Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science, by Halton Arp

The Five Ages of the Universe, by Fred Adams, Greg Laughlin

The Runaway Universe, by Donald Goldsmith

The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos, by Robert P. Kirshner

Flash!: The Hunt for the Biggest Explosions in the Universe, by Govert Schilling

The Biggest Bangs: The Mystery of Gamma-Ray Bursts, the Most Violent Explosions in the Universe, by Jonathan I. Katz

The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, by Stephen W. Hawking

A Short History of the Universe, by Joseph Silk

Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos, by Alan W. Hirshfeld

The Supernova Story, by Laurence Marschall

The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins, by Alan H. Guth, Alan P. Lightman

The Accelerating Universe : Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos, by Mario Livio

Measuring the Universe: Our Historic Quest to Chart the Horizons of Space and Time, by Kitty Ferguson

Journey into Gravity and Spacetime, by John Archibald Wheeler

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If you go to www.amazon.com and start searching for these books, and adding them to your wish list, amazon will recommend many more similar books. You can get a feel for them by reading the blurb and reviews, and check them out at your local bookstore, if you like.

Required reading on big bang cosmology, I think. Very well-written and extremely informative. And authored by the man behind the inflation paradigm himself.

--Peter

...not ONE duplication in your list and mine! Thanks for the NEW reading list!

I'm browsing your list on amazon.com now...

My head exploded trying to understand everything (as I was expecting fairly light reading) but it was worth it.

Right.. you just described exactly what I was going to ask...

However...

to me it seems like this would INCREASE the mass of the black hole, being that one of the pair of virtual particles falls in...

Actually, more specifically... I see it this way

If the pair appear just outside the even horizon, and one partner falls in...chances are 50/50 that it will be either the particle or anti-particle... so half of them will add to the mass (presumably).. the other half will actually be anti-matter so will annihilate with a bit of matter inside the black hole, so on average the mass would stay the same....

This is where I am confused... The steady stream of radiation doesnt seem to be coming from the black hole or singularity, it seems to be coming from just around it.. but it's not the same..

I guess I'm not quite grasping this.. because I doubt that I am right and Steven Hawking is wrong.. I just need it explained differently I guess.... :shrug: lost sleep over this one. (in a good way)

-An

First, imagine a black hole in a region of space with no other matter, so no mass is accreting to it.

There's a region at the event horizon in which particle/antiparticle pairs are being created; sometimes, one member of the pair gets swallowed, while the other just escapes.

There is a "spray" of particles emanating from the event horizon; they were given energy by the black hole.

Since their mass-energy must come from the black hole, simple accounting tells us the black hole's mass must be decreasing.

Tell me if I'm onto something...

It was given energy by the quantum fluctuations in the space the is occupied by the immediate area of the black hole.. an area which will have a given mass/energy value...

so when a particle escapes, it is removing mass/energy from the area... lowering the average energy/mass content of the area of space the black hole occupies, and thusly, the black hole itself

The part that I get confused it.. it seems like the energy is coming from the vacuum near the black hole as opposed to the singularity itself... having a hard time making the connection that the energy is coming from the black hole and not the space immediate outside the event horizon..

still seems like the energy is being sapped from outside the horizon

I do understand what you're saying however.. it's just gonna take some pondering...

I appreciate your explanation.. thanks.. :)

-An

The gravitational field around the BH has an energy density, which is what powers this process. That energy ultimately comes from the mass inside the BH.

It's a "cousin" to chaos theory, and there are some really good books on it, also. If you're intersted, begin with "Complexity," by M. Mitchell Waldrom. It's the history of the Santa Fe Institute.

The Turning Point
The Tao of Physics

I would call these cosmology/social theory.

D

by Evan Harris Walker

Superstring theory at http://superstringtheory.com/

If you really want to get some insight into the physics world when it comes to Quantum Theory, The Singularity and String theory and how the physicists fights and not even manage to understand each others work, a good place to start is by Reading the Bogdanov Singularity over at http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/bogdanov1.htm. As a teaser I quote:

"The story is that there are two brothers - twins, apparently - who are very popular on French television. Not only are they popular, they are working diligently to popularize Science. Their point of view is that people should be better educated in science, that science is fantastic, that the study of mathematics enables a person to frame their ideas with precision. The Bogdanov Brothers - for so they are called - are advocates of bridging science and mysticism. Like the work on this website, they are promoting the idea that science can be very mystical indeed, and without science, mysticism is merely superstition.

We couldn't agree more.

The Bogdanov Affaire started with a rumor that two brothers published at least 4 bogus papers in physics journals as a hoax. On or around October 22nd, a physicist named Max Niedermaier - previously affiliated with the Max Planck Institute For Gravitational Physics, Potsdam, Germany - sent an email around to a number of people - including another physicist named Ted Newman. Ted Newman - Ezra T. Newman - professor of physics and astronomy, has been awarded the distinction of fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Newman, whose research area is Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, is known for his New Solutions to the Einstein Equations and the theoretical discovery of what is now known as the "Kerr-Newman Black Hole."

This is high level physics and math at it's best. It's much more interesting than any fiction novel :)