Showing posts with label Stephen Hawking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Hawking. Show all posts

07 May, 2013

Teaser Tuesday (112)

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted for Teaser Tuesday. Between recovering from surgery and the A to Z Challenge, I haven't blogged about what I'm reading since March 12. Time to get back into the swing of things, I think!

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Rules for participating:
  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week, my teaser is from The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of : The Most Astounding Papers on Quantum Physics and How They Shook the Scientific World edited by Stephen Hawking. I am excited to finally be able to read this book, since it includes some really landmark articles by Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger, Richard Feynman, and other physicists.
 
Before proceeding to discuss the explicit significance of quantum mechanics it is perhaps right for me to deal briefly with this question as to the existence of matter waves in three-dimensional space, since the solution to this problem was only achieved by combining wave and quantum mechanics.
     A long time before quantum mechanics was developed Pauli had inferred from the laws in the Periodic System of the elements the well-known principle that a particular quantum state can at all times be occupied by only a single electron.
-p. 243, "The Development of Quantum Mechanics", by Werner Heisenberg

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What was the last book you were excited to read? What are you reading now?


-----The Golden Eagle

24 April, 2013

A To Z Challenge: Unified Theory And Unraveling The Universe's Mysteries

Unified theory, also known as Grand Unified Theory (GUT) or the Theory of Everything (TOE), is the name for an as-yet undiscovered theory that would unite all the known physical forces into one complete theory. Since Albert Einstein physicists have been attempting to combine gravitation, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism, and by so doing discover a fundamental equation or system that governs the universe.

One theory that holds promise toward producing a unified theory is M-theory. Gathering the attention of physicists like Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene, M-theory is the unification of five separate string theories, which it can combine by adding an additional 11th dimension. It's still being hashed out--but string theory has potential to successfully combine all known forces into one.

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Sources:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/614522/unified-field-theory
http://physics.about.com/od/physicsmtop/g/M-Theory.htm
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/research/gr/public/qg_ss.html
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/M-theory
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-stephen-hawking-cedars-sinai-20130410,0,7704203.story
http://phys.org/news/2011-03-elegant-multiverse-professor-brian-greene.html

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Do you think scientists will develop a unified theory/GUT/TOE within the next few decades? Do you think it will have a effect on society, or that we haven't achieved enough to really take advantage of a fundamental theory?


-----The Golden Eagle