Three Roads To Quantum Gravity
Published on 18. March 2008
256 pages
978-0-465-01324-1 (ISBN)
Description
"It would be hard to imagine a better guide to this difficult subject." -- Scientific American
In 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, epiphanies, and intrigues he witnessed firsthand.
"Provocative, original, and unsettling." -- The New York Review of Books
"An excellent writer, a creative thinker." -- Nature
In 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, epiphanies, and intrigues he witnessed firsthand.
"Provocative, original, and unsettling." -- The New York Review of Books
"An excellent writer, a creative thinker." -- Nature
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Lee Smolin
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
Book
07/2001
Basic Books (AZ)
€42.24
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Person
Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist who has been since 2001 a founding and senior faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Royal Society of Canada, Smolin was awarded the Klopsteg Memorial Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers and in 2008 was voted 21st on a list of the 100 most influential public intellectuals by Prospect and Foreign Policy Magazines. He was again on that list in 2015. He andMarina Cortes were also awarded the Inaugural Buchalter Cosmology Prize. He is the author of more than 150 scientific papers and numerous essays and writings for the public on science, as well as four books.
Content
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue: The quest for quantum gravity
- Part I Points of Departure
- 1 There is nothing outside the universe
- 2 In the future we shall know more
- 3 Many observers, not many worlds
- 4 The universe is made of processes, not things
- Part II What We Have Learned
- 5 Black holes and hidden regions
- 6 Acceleration and heat
- 7 Black holes are hot
- 8 Area and information
- 9 How to count space
- 10 Knots, links and kinks
- 11 The sound of space is a string
- Part III The Present Frontiers
- 12 The holographic principle
- 13 How to weave a string
- 14 What chooses the laws of nature?
- Epilogue: A possible future
- Postscript
- Postscript to the 2017 edition
- Glossary
- Suggestions for further reading
- Index
- About the author
- Also by Lee Smolin
- Praise for "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
