Engineering Physics

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman, from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles. A sweeping, wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science - a life like no other. From his ruminations on science in our culture to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, this book will delight anyone interested in the world of ideas.

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were - and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book.

Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927.

Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?

The fascinating science and history of the air we breathe. It's invisible. It's ever present. Without it, you would die in minutes. And it has an epic story to tell. In Caesar's Last Breath, New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean takes us on a journey through the periodic table, around the globe, and across time to tell the story of the air we breathe, which, it turns out, is also the story of earth and our existence on it.

Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy, and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist.

In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku - the New York Times best-selling author of Physics of the Impossible - gives us a stunning, provocative, and exhilarating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over 300 of the world’s top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs. The result is the most authoritative and scientifically accurate description of revolutionary developments taking place....

A daring new vision of quantum theory from one of the leading minds of contemporary physics. In Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, theoretical physicist Lee Smolin provocatively argues that the problems that have bedeviled quantum physics since its inception are unsolved and unsolvable, for the simple reason that the theory is incomplete.

In physicist Stephen Hawking's brilliant opus, A Brief History of Time, he presented us with a bold new look at our universe, how it began, and how our old views of physics and tired theories about the creation of the universe were no longer relevant. In other words, Hawking gave us a new look at our world, our universe, and ourselves. Now, Hawking presents an even more comprehensive look at our universe, its creation, and how we see ourselves within it.

Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.

In 1965, the great American physicist Richard Feynman famously proclaimed, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics." Is there any wonder why? Particles that pop in and out of existence... Spooky action at a distance that travels faster than light... Infinite universes and branching realities? In this book, we will break through the confusion and reveal to you the most important ideas of Quantum Physics, told through the amazing true story of just 4 bizarre discoveries.

During the last 50 years, numerous physicists have tried to unravel the secrets of string theory. Yet why do these scientists work on a theory lacking experimental confirmation? Why String Theory? provides the answer, offering an easily understood and accessible panorama of the who, what, and why of this large aspect of modern theoretical physics.

Is the world around us real—or is it a construct, a mirage generated by a powerful and incomprehensibly advanced intelligence? This question, once confined to the pages of science fiction novels and speculative late-night discussions, has in recent years migrated into the heart of contemporary philosophical and scientific inquiry. The idea that our universe might be an elaborate simulation, running on an immense computational substrate, is no longer dismissed as a fringe hypothesis. Instead, it is now taken seriously by physicists, cosmologists, computer scientists, and philosophers alike.

When Newton discovered the law of gravity, he unified the rules governing the heavens and the Earth. Since then, physicists have been placing new forces into ever-grander theories. But perhaps the ultimate challenge is achieving a monumental synthesis of the two remaining theories—relativity and the quantum theory. This would be the crowning achievement of science, a profound merging of all the forces of nature into one beautiful, magnificent equation to unlock the deepest mysteries in science: What happened before the Big Bang?

We know the universe had a beginning. With the Big Bang, it expanded from a state of unimaginable density to an all-encompassing cosmic fireball to a simmering fluid of matter and energy, laying down the seeds for everything from black holes to one rocky planet orbiting a star near the edge of a spiral galaxy that happened to develop life as we know it. But what happens to the universe at the end of the story? And what does it mean for us now?

In Neil deGrasse Tyson’s delightful journey through the cosmos, his fictional character Merlin responds to popular questions asked by adults and children alike. Merlin, a timeless visitor from Planet Omniscia in the Andromeda Galaxy, has observed firsthand many of the major scientific events of Earth’s history.

In The Quantum Universe, Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw approach the world of quantum mechanics in the same way they did in Why Does E=mc2? and make fundamental scientific principles accessible - and fascinating - to everyone.The subatomic realm has a reputation for weirdness, spawning any number of profound misunderstandings, journeys into Eastern mysticism, and woolly pronouncements on the interconnectedness of all things. Cox and Forshaw's contention? There is no need for quantum mechanics to be viewed this way.

Are human beings immortal? Are apples conscious? Do our legal systems make assumptions about free will that are just plain wrong? Of all the terrific books on quantum physics—from Stephen Hawking to Brian Greene—the questions they never seem to satisfy are the implications of the science. We know that quantum physics is real—our phones and computers wouldn’t work if the science wasn’t right. But what does it all mean?

Are there other dimensions beyond our own? Is time travel possible? Can we change the past? Are there gateways to parallel universes? All of us have pondered such questions, but there was a time when scientists dismissed these notions as outlandish speculations. Not any more. Today, they are the focus of the most intense scientific activity in recent memory. In Hyperspace, Michio Kaku offers the first book-length tour of the most exciting (and perhaps most bizarre) work in modern physics.

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real Artificial Intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. Part II focuses on the 20th and 21st centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerge alongside rapid developments in AI technology.