The Complete Idiot's Guide to Theories of the Universe

by Moring, Gary F.

• ISBN13: 9780028642420
• ISBN10: 0028642422
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: DK Publishing, Inc.

Summary

Yours"re no idiot, of course. You know Heisenburgrs"s uncertainty principle has nothing to do with where you put your car keys. But modern cosmology is relatively complicated. The mystery of the universe definitely isnrs"t one we can flip to the end to see whodunit. That hasnrs"t stopped physicists, astronomers, and philosophers from searching for clues! The topic is infinite (literally), but once yours"ve read this book, yours"ll have a solid idea of our place in the universe-and even where the cosmos itself might be headed. In this Complete Idiotrs"s Guidereg;, yours"ll explore ... Major religions, philosophical, and scientific theories concerning the nature and origin of the universe. "The theory of everything"-one coherent model that would explain how all the forces and particles of nature work. The fascinating and even sometimes bizarre implications of the latest theories.

Author Biography

Gary Moring is the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Einstein and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Theories of the Universe. He teaches physics and the history and philosophy of science at the University of Phoenix in Northern California. He has received numerous awards for teaching excellence. He has also been a curriculum consultant for the University.

Table of Contents

In the Beginning	p. 1
Once Upon a Time	p. 3
Cosmology, Cosmogony, and the Cosmos	p. 4
Mesopotamia, or Where It All Began	p. 5
So You Want to Be a Hero!	p. 5
Family Feud	p. 6
The Magnificent Seven	p. 7
Genesis	p. 7
Ancient Hebrew Cosmology	p. 8
The Chicken or the Egg	p. 9
Compass Headings and Complementary Opposites	p. 10
The Four Directions	p. 11
Heaven and Earth	p. 12
The Music of the Spheres	p. 15
The Essence of All Things	p. 16
Numbers with Feelings	p. 17
Harmonies of Heaven and Earth	p. 18
Back to Babylon	p. 20
The Seven Sacred Planets	p. 20
Music Therapy	p. 21
The Rhythm of the Universe	p. 22
The World Soul	p. 24
The First Cause	p. 24
You Gotta Have Soul	p. 25
A Brief History of Esoteric Philosophy	p. 27
What Is Esoteric Philosophy?	p. 27
Hermes and the Hermits	p. 29
The Emerald Tablet	p. 30
The Perennial Philosophy	p. 32
Fruits of Knowledge	p. 33
Rosicrucianism	p. 33
Freemasonry	p. 34
The Cabalah	p. 36
Why All of This Is So Important	p. 37
Transitions in Thinking	p. 39
Simple Minds, Simple Pleasures	p. 40
Life in the Fast Lane	p. 42
The Birth of the Renaissance Ideal	p. 43
The Good Life	p. 44
Perfection Is the Key	p. 44
The Hermetic Revival	p. 45
Marsilio Ficino	p. 46
Pico della Mirandola	p. 46
Giordano Bruno	p. 47
Science Comes of Age, but Isn't 21 Yet	p. 49
You Mean We're Not at the Center of the Universe?	p. 51
What You See Is What You Get	p. 52
Walk Like an Egyptian	p. 53
The Copernican Revolution	p. 55
The Problem with Easter	p. 56
Displaced Humanity	p. 58
Galileo Scopes It Out	p. 58
Kepler's Contributions	p. 60
The Scientific Revolution	p. 63
What You See Isn't Necessarily What You Get	p. 64
Systems of Science	p. 65
Three Different Styles	p. 66
It's All in the Mind	p. 67
Pass the Bacon, Francis	p. 69
Descartes's Dualism	p. 69
"I Think, Therefore I Am"	p. 70
The Mind/Body Problem	p. 71
Lost Along the Way	p. 73
Cosmology in the Age of Enlightenment	p. 75
What Is Enlightenment?	p. 75
Whose Science Is Whose?	p. 77
Science Is King	p. 79
The Word of God	p. 80
Half and Half	p. 81
The Science of Alchemy	p. 83
Lead into Gold	p. 83
It All Boils Down to Boyle	p. 84
Newton's Alchemical Apple	p. 85
Physics 101	p. 89
Honey, I Shrunk the Universe!	p. 90
Can't Forget About Math	p. 92
You're Getting Warmer	p. 94
The Dynamics of Electromagnetism	p. 96
Light, Lenses, and Optics	p. 98
Just a Little Bit of Chemistry	p. 99
The Attraction of Gravity	p. 100
And in This Corner...	p. 103
Evolution vs. Creationism	p. 105
Is Truth in the Eye of the Beholder?	p. 106
It's a Matter of Opinion	p. 107
Degrees of Truth	p. 108
How Did We Get Here?	p. 109
You Have Been Selected	p. 110
The Ladder of Creation	p. 111
And God Said	p. 113
To Believe or Not To Believe, That Is the Question	p. 114
The Dual Nature of Light	p. 117
Waves of Light	p. 118
You Can't See It, but It Has to Be There	p. 119
Faraday's Fields	p. 120
Maxwell's Mathematics	p. 121
The Experiment That Failed	p. 122
Waves Come in All Shapes and Sizes	p. 124
A Little Bit of Quanta Goes a Long Way	p. 125
Our Journey So Far	p. 127
Cracks in a Newtonian World	p. 129
The Clock Breaks!	p. 130
Hot Things Glow	p. 131
Faster Than a Speeding Light Wave	p. 132
Unchanging Time and Space	p. 133
Passing Your Exams!	p. 134
It All Depends on Your Position	p. 135
Sometimes Relativity Is Absolute	p. 137
The Relative Nature of Space and Time	p. 141
It's About Time	p. 142
Atomic Time	p. 143
Geological Time	p. 144
Biological Time	p. 145
Astronomical Time	p. 146
How Can You Be in Two Places at Once?	p. 147
Keeping Track of Time	p. 149
The Faster You Go, the Shorter You Get	p. 150
From Here to Infinity	p. 153
Famous Equations and Pools of Jell-O	p. 155
The Conversion of Energy	p. 155
E = mc[superscript 2]	p. 156
Infinite Mass	p. 156
Recapping Relativity	p. 159
Thank God, the Ground Broke My Fall!	p. 161
Einstein's Happiest Thought	p. 162
Gravity Is Relative, Too	p. 163
Curved Space	p. 165
That Old Quantum Theory	p. 169
Founding Fathers	p. 170
Quantum Leaps	p. 171
Planck's Constant	p. 172
Photoelectric Effect Explained, the Quantum Strikes Again	p. 174
Bohr's Atomic Theory	p. 177
Chunks of Uncertainty	p. 181
Waves of Matter	p. 181
A French Prince Discovers Matter Waves	p. 182
Just a Little Math Won't Hurt	p. 184
More Wave Mechanics	p. 186
Born of Probability	p. 187
Probability Leads to Uncertainty	p. 189
They're Complementary After All	p. 190
Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen	p. 191
Forces, Particles, and Some Cosmological Glue	p. 195
An Atomic Review	p. 196
The Nucleus and the Proton	p. 197
Size in the Microcosm	p. 197
The Fundamental Forces of Nature	p. 198
The Neutron Decay	p. 199
Neutrinos and the Weak Force	p. 200
The Forces You Already Know	p. 202
Cosmic Rays, Greek Particles, and Accelerators	p. 203
Mu and Pi	p. 205
From Natural to Man-Made	p. 206
The Particle Zoo	p. 206
The Last Train to Quarkville	p. 208
Scientific Origins of the Universe	p. 211
The Cosmological Pendulum	p. 212
Bang That Drum	p. 215
Einstein's Closed Universe	p. 216
The Primeval Atom	p. 217
Another Bang	p. 218
A Big Bang Alternative	p. 219
Microwaves to the Rescue	p. 220
Supersymmetry, Superstrings, and Holograms	p. 223
The Accelerating Universe	p. 225
It's Bigger Than We Thought	p. 226
Plasma Cosmology	p. 227
The Standard Model	p. 230
The Alpha and the Omega	p. 231
The Need for Dark Matter	p. 233
Living in the Flatlands	p. 234
It's Out of Control	p. 235
Supersymmetry, Superpartners, and Superman	p. 237
The First Three Minutes	p. 238
Attempts at Unification	p. 239
Quantum Mechanics vs. General Relativity	p. 241
The Gravity of the Situation	p. 242
The Planck Scale	p. 243
Symmetry Breaking	p. 245
The Spin Doctors	p. 246
Introducing SUSY	p. 246
Interdimensional Travel	p. 247
No, I'm Sparticles!	p. 248
It's All Held Together with Strings	p. 251
A Brief History of String Theory	p. 252
The Cosmic Onion	p. 254
Musical Strings	p. 254
The Important Part	p. 255
The Second Requirement, Extra Dimensions	p. 257
The Kaluza-Klein Dimension	p. 258
Unification in Higher Dimensions	p. 260
How Many Dimensions Are There?	p. 261
The Short Version of the Second Superstring Revolution	p. 262
The Universe As a Hologram	p. 265
What's a Hologram?	p. 266
Action at a Distance	p. 267
A Remarkable Event	p. 269
Nonlocality	p. 270
Quantum Potential	p. 271
The Importance of Wholeness	p. 272
Ordered Reality	p. 274
The Holographic Universe	p. 275
Old Endings and New Beginnings	p. 279
Psychology, Cosmology, and Consciousness	p. 281
The Study of the Soul	p. 281
"With Our Thoughts We Make the World"	p. 285
Holographic Brains	p. 285
These Are Holograms, Too?	p. 286
Space and Time, in the Mind	p. 287
Categories of Space and Time	p. 288
The Implicate Mind	p. 289
Past, Present, and Future	p. 291
Eastern Cosmology and the Cyclic Universe	p. 293
What Goes Around, Comes Around	p. 294
Linear vs. Cyclic	p. 295
Right Brain or Left Brain?	p. 296
Unity in Diversity	p. 298
The Eternal Return	p. 299
A Day and Night of Brahma	p. 300
The Dance of Shiva	p. 302
It's All Energy	p. 303
Symbolic Systems and the Self-Aware Universe	p. 305
Multidimensional Symbols	p. 305
Change Is the Only Constant	p. 306
Energy Comes in Many Forms	p. 307
The Sages of China	p. 309
Cosmological Principles	p. 310
The Tree of Life	p. 313
Be Your Own Psychic and Save Some Money	p. 314
The Cabalah and Superstrings	p. 316
The Future of Humanity	p. 319
What Was It All For?	p. 320
It's All About Us	p. 320
Ethical Eschatology	p. 321
The Underworld	p. 322
Mummies, Mummies, and More Mummies	p. 322
Thus Spoke Zarathushtra	p. 324
The Sage and the Prophet	p. 324
A Prophecy Primer	p. 326
The Christian Outlook	p. 328
Appendixes
Cosmological Kernels	p. 331
Suggested Reading List	p. 339
Index	p. 343
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.