Theories of Everything: Ideas in Profile
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.29 (992 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1781257515 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-07-15 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Frank Close is the author of 15 popular books about physics, including the award winning Half-Life, a biography of Bruno Pontecorvo, Antimatter, The Infinity Puzzle , and Very Short Introductions to Nothing and Particle Physics. In 2014 he was awarded the Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society for science communication,
Science News A wonderfully written book that is valuable for all readers. New Scientist A masterpiece essential reading. We discover the motivations and achievements of a rich cast of brilliant individuals, and get enough of the science to grasp what they were trying to do. Nature The reader witnesses scientific progress in all its real-world messiness. BBC Focus Mr Close's magisterial work is sure to become the definitive account of the story. It's a comedy of errors at times, full of dead ends, missed opportunities and ideas that lie dormant
He looks at what has been meant by theories of everything, explores the scientific breakthroughs they have allowed, and shows the far-reaching effects they have had on crucial aspects of life and belief. The cycle in which one theory of everything is first challenged and then replaced by another is continuing right now.. Such accounts may reign supreme for centuries. A new theory is needed which inspiration, sometimes, supplies.Moving from Isaac Newton's work on gravity and motion in the seventeenth century to thermodynamics and James Clerk Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism in the nineteenth to Max Planck's and Paul Dirac's quantum physics in the twentieth, Professor Close turns finally to contemporary physics and the power and limitations of the current theory of everything. Then, often as a result of the advances they themselves have enabled, a new discovery is made which the current theory cannot explain. Ideas in Profile: Small Introductions to Big TopicsPhysicist Frank Close takes the reader to the frontiers of science in a vividly told investigation of revolutionary science and enterprise from the seventeenth century to the present. Theories of everything, he argues, can be d