Weaving the Universe

by Wesson, Paul S.

• ISBN13: 9789814313940
• ISBN10: 9814313947
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-10-01
• Publisher: World Scientific Pub Co Inc

Summary

This new book is a thorough but short review of the history and present status of ideas in cosmology. It is aimed at a broad audience, but will contain a few equations where needed to make the argument exact. The coverage of cosmological ideas will focus mainly on the period from the early 1900s when Einstein formulated relativity and when his colleague Sir Arthur Eddington was creating relativistic models of the universe. It ends with the completion of the Large Hadron Collider in late 2008, having surveyed modern ideas of particle physics and astrophysics. to organize the large body of information involved, the book uses the life of Eddington and the weaving together of ideas in cosmology as themes. This should provide a clear and entertaining account presented in a historical context that leads up to the present day.

Author Biography

Paul S. Wesson is a Cambridge-educated cosmologist who spends most of his time in Canada and California. He has published about 250 scientific papers and a dozen books. Astrophysics (both observational and theoretical) has been his main subject, and he is particularly known for his work on the big bang.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Weaving The Warp	p. 1
Puzzles of Physics	p. 30
Introduction	p. 30
Olbers' Paradox	p. 30
Zero-Point Fields and the Cosmological 'Constant'	p. 36
The Hierarchy Problem	p. 41
Supersymmetry and Dark WIMPs	p. 43
The Fermi-Hart Paradox: Where are the Aliens?	p. 46
Conclusion	p. 53
The Meaning of Dimensions	p. 57
Introduction	p. 57
Dimensions and Fundamental Constants	p. 59
Eddington and His Legacy	p. 65
Campbell and His Theorem	p. 69
Conclusion	p. 73
Time as an Illusion	p. 76
Introduction	p. 76
Physics and the Flow of Time	p. 79
Time as a Subjective Ordering Device	p. 84
Mathematics and Reality	p. 89
Conclusion	p. 91
The Nature of Matter	p. 97
Introduction	p. 97
Properties of Matter	p. 99
Creating Matter	p. 106
Negative Mass?	p. 120
Manipulating Matter	p. 121
Conclusion	p. 132
Science and Religion: Immiscible?	p. 137
Introduction	p. 137
Newton	p. 138
Einstein	p. 140
Eddington	p. 141
Milne	p. 144
Laplace	p. 149
Conclusion	p. 154
Weaving the Weft	p. 158
Index	p. 203
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