In Waves in an Impossible Sea, physicist Matt Strassler tells a startling tale of elementary particles, human experience, and empty space. He begins with a simple mystery of motion. When we drive at highway speeds with the windows down, the wind beats against our faces. Yet our planet hurtles through the cosmos at 150 miles per second, and we feel nothing of it. How can our voyage be so tranquil when, as Einstein discovered, matter warps space, and space deflects matter?The answer, Strassler reveals, is that empty space is a sea, albeit a paradoxically strange one. Much like water and air, it ripples in various ways, and we ourselves, made from its ripples, can move through space as effortlessly as waves crossing an ocean. Deftly weaving together daily experience and fundamental physics-the musical universe, the enigmatic quantum, cosmic fields, and the Higgs boson-Strassler shows us how all things, familiar and unfamiliar, emerge from what seems like nothing at all.Accessible and profound, Waves in an Impossible Sea is the ultimate guide to our place in the universe.
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A theoretical physicist takes readers on an awe-inspiring journey-found in "no other book" (Science)-to discover how the universe generates everything from nothing at all: "If you want to know what's really going on in the realms of relativity and particle physics, read this book" (Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe).
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781541603295
Publisert
2024
Utgiver
Vendor
Basic Books
Vekt
600 gr
Høyde
238 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Dybde
36 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
384

Forfatter

Biographical note

Matthew Strassler is a theoretical physicist, blogger, and writer whose research often takes him to the Large Hadron Collider. An associate of the Harvard University Physics Department and a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study, he was previously a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, and Rutgers University. He lives in rural Massachusetts.