A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down - Softcover

Laughlin, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465038298 ISBN 13: 9780465038299

Publisher: Basic Books, 2006

Synopsis

In this age of superstring theories and Big Bang cosmology, we're used to thinking of the unknown as impossibly distant from our everyday lives. But in A Different Universe, Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin argues that the scientific frontier is right under our fingers. Instead of looking for ultimate theories, Laughlin considers the world of emergent properties-meaning the properties, such as the hardness and shape of a crystal, that result from the organization of large numbers of atoms. Laughlin shows us how the most fundamental laws of physics are in fact emergent. A Different Universe is a truly mind-bending book that shows us why everything we think about fundamental physical laws needs to change.

About this title

Review

"I started reading, and cliche though it be I couldn't stop... A Different Universe should be required reading for physics researchers, teachers and students..."--New Scientist

"An important, brain-tickling new book."--New York Times

"Science buffs and young scientists will find this a worthwhile challenge to business as usual in physics."--Publishers Weekly

"This is an absolutely delightful book. It is charmingly written, bright, cheerful, funny, irreverent, and full of amusing stories. It also tells more about how the very strange world of quantum behavior blends into the very familiar world of everyday experience than any book I know...Laughlin really does know what he is talking about."--George Whitesides, professor of chemistry, Harvard University

Synopsis

Not since Richard Feynman has a Nobel Prize-winning physicist written with as much panache as Robert Laughlin does in this revelatory and essential book. Laughlin proposes nothing less than a new way of understanding fundamental laws of science. In this age of superstring theories and Big-Bang cosmology, we're used to thinking of the unknown as being impossibly distant from our everyday lives. But we haven't reached the end of science, Laughlin argues - only the end of reductionist thinking. If we consider the world of emergent properties instead, suddenly the deepest mysteries are as close as the nearest ice cube or grain of salt. And he goes farther: the most fundamental laws of physics - such as Newton's laws of motion and quantum mechanics - are in fact emergent. They are properties of large assemblages of matter, and when their exactness is examined too closely, it vanishes into nothing.

"A Different Universe" takes us into a universe where the vacuum of space has to be considered a kind of solid matter, where sound has quantized particles just like those of light, where there are many phases of matter, not just three, and where metal resembles a liquid while superfluid helium is more like a solid. It is a universe teeming with natural phenomena still to be discovered. This is a truly mind-altering book that shows readers a surprising, exquisitely beautiful and mysterious new world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0465038298
• ISBN 13: 9780465038299
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 274