Throughout human history, thoughts, values and
behaviours have been coloured by language and the prevailing view of
the universe. With the advent of Quantum Mechanics, relativity,
non-Euclidean geometries, non-Aristotelian logic and General Semantics,
the scientific view of the world has changed dramatically from just a
few decades ago. Nonetheless, human thinking is still deeply rooted in
the cosmology of the middle ages. This is the book to change your way
of perceiving yourself - and the universe. Some say it's materialistic,
others call it scientific and still others insist it's mystical. It is
all of these - and none. The book for the 21st Century, complete with
exercises. Picks up where "Prometheus Rising" left off. Some say it's
materialistic, others call it scientific and still others insist it's
mystical. It is all of these - and none.
The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe is actually transcribed from Stephen Hawking's Lectures, the slim volume may not present a single theory unifying gravity with the other fundamental forces, but it does carefully explain the state of late 20th-century physics with the great scientist's characteristic humility and charm.
The essays in this book are based on researches the author has
undertaken on a wide range of topics, some using equipment no more
elaborate than what one can find in an ordinary kitchen, others making
elegant use of sophisticated experimental apparatus. Presenting a
personal odyssey in physics, Silverman investigates processes for which
no visualizable mechanism can be given, or that seem to violate
fundamental physical laws (but do not), or that appear to be well
understood but turn out to be subtly devious. Written in an engagingly
personal style, the essays will be of interest to students of physics
and related disciplines as well as professional physicists. Though they
deal with subtle concepts, the discussions use little mathematics, and
anyone with a little college physics will be able to read the book with
pleasure. Silverman's researches deal with in quantum mechanics, atomic
and nuclear physics, electromagnetism and optics, gravity,
thermodynamics, and the physics of fluids, and these essays address
.such questions as: How does one know that atomic electrons move? Would
an "anti-atom" fall upward? How is it possible for randomly emitted
particles to arrive at a detector preferentially in pairs? Can one
influence electrons in London by not watching them in New York? Can a
particle be influenced by a magnetic field through which it does not
pass? A basketball is not changed by turning it once around its axis,
but what about an electron? Can more light reflect from a surface than
is incident upon it? "A Universe of Atoms" is the second edition of
Silverman's "And Yet It Moves"; each essay in the earlier collection
has been revised and updated, and some new essays on the uncommon
physics of common objects have been added.
Scientific American is a popular-science magazine, published (first weekly and later monthly) since August 28, 1845, making it the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. It brings articles about new and innovative research to the amateur and lay audience.
The transcendentalist, while voicing his ecstasy over life, has put himself on record as not wishing to do anything more than once. For him God has enough new experiences, so that repetition is unnecessary. He dislikes routine. "Everything," Emerson says, "admonishes us how needlessly long life is," that is, if we walk with heroes and do not repeat. Let a machine add figures while the soul moves on. He dislikes seeing any part of a universe that he does not use. Shakespeare seemed to him to have lived a thousand years as the guest of a great universe in which most of us never pass beyond the antechamber.
