Series of books "Pop Science"
Hello! We have opened a new series of books "Pop Science" with the following innovations:
1. Fear of physics. Spherical horse in a vacuum : the legendary book of Lawrence Krauss has been translated into 12 languages ​​of the world and written for people who have little or no knowledge of physics so that they can overcome their fear of this science. “The Fear of Physics” is a lively, immediate, nondescript and fascinating story about everything, from boiling water to the foundations of the existence of the Universe. The book is filled with funny stories and illustrative examples, allowing to understand the most complex intricacies of modern scientific theories.
2. Paradox. Nine great mysteries of physics : what is a paradox? This is a phenomenon that, at first glance, seems to be incomprehensible from a scientific or logical point of view. For centuries science has been confronted with paradoxes, many of which have greatly advanced it. The paradoxes described by the author, Professor Al-Khalili, relate to physics and astronomy. They baffled many of the greatest thinkers and scientists.
Can a cat be both alive and dead at the same time? Is it true that Achilles will never pass the tortoise, no matter how fast he runs? How can a person be ten years older than his own twin brother? After reading this book, you will get true intellectual pleasure and even gain enlightenment!
')
Fear of physics. Spherical horse in a vacuum
By: Lawrence Krauss
When someone at a party finds out that I am a physicist, he either immediately changes the subject of conversation, or starts asking me about the Big Bang, other universes, superlight engines, quarks, superconductors, superstrings or supercolliders. Even those who honestly admitted that they disliked physics at school and never regretted it often listened to stories about mystical phenomena occurring at the forefront of science, as if spellbound. Modern physics deals with the solution of many cosmic problems that any person reflects on in one way or another. However, physics is often presented to people as complex, inaccessible to magic, open only to initiates, since many studies lie in areas terribly far from their everyday experience.
But there is a more serious obstacle that hinders many people from understanding what modern physics is doing. The physical approach to problem solving and the language used by physicists are not used by most people in everyday life. For observers who lack a special view of the world inherent in physicists, the motley zoo of physical phenomena looks incomprehensible, and often frightening.
In order to present the reader with modern physics in my understanding, I decided not to focus on the description of specific physical theories, but to talk about the tools used by physicists in their work. If someone wants to evaluate the current state of physical science both from the point of view of human intellectual activity and from the point of view of its role in shaping our modern picture of the world, it is much easier to do with some initial background that gives an understanding of how All this science works. This book is not so much a textbook on survival in the jungle, but a guide on what to take with you on a camping trip, how to get around dangerous rocks, where to admire a beautiful view and how to safely go home.
Physicists themselves are able to continue modern research only because they are mainly guided by the same several fundamental principles that we use to study everyday life. Physical theory currently deals with phenomena occurring on space-time scales differing by more than six to ten orders of magnitude - this means that the size ratio of the largest objects studied by physicists to the smallest is expressed by a number consisting of one and 60 zeros. Experimental studies, however, extend to a somewhat smaller range of scales. Nevertheless, against the background of this whole zoo, the description of any phenomenon made by one physicist is usually understandable to another, because it uses no more than a dozen basic concepts. No other area of ​​human knowledge is so extensive and at the same time so easily formalized.
Partly for this reason my book is so thin. The tools used by physicists are few, and although an advanced degree is needed to master them, in order to simply understand how they work, a weighty volume is not needed. In each of the six chapters (of course, if you buy this book) you will find a discussion of one of the key ideas that guide the physicists in their scientifically-oriented search. To illustrate these ideas, I picked up examples, in each of which I, like a musician playing a scale, rise from the basics to the peaks. The selection of examples may seem eclectic, but, concentrating at the beginning of the chapter on where we are, I try to lead the reader to an understanding of where we are going at the end.
In addition, for this reason I took the liberty to introduce the most modern concepts. Some readers will have a sigh of relief when they come across familiar ideas, although they may seem incomprehensible to someone. Some of the concepts presented, being fundamental, at the same time, have never before been presented in popular literature. But it is not important. I am not going to test new didactic methods for you. I would like to give the reader a taste of physical rather than its content. I think that for non-scientists understanding of physics is more important than knowing some of its specific applications.
The most important thing is that in physics there are remarkable connections between individual fragments of the picture of the world, which lie under the surface of the pictorial canvas. It is these connections that form the fabric of physics. There is no greater joy for a scientist than to discover another such connection and test it experimentally. In the end, this makes physics a science, and, if you are seriously interested in it, you will have truly unlimited prospects.
Finally, I want to emphasize that physics is the same creative human intellectual activity as art and music. Physics forms our cultural experience. I don’t presume to judge what of the current cultural heritage will be most in demand by future generations, but I’m sure that ignoring the cultural aspect of our scientific tradition would be a serious mistake. In the end, it is science that forms our understanding of the world around us and our place in it. Scientific illiteracy today is identical with lack of culture. And the main virtue of cultural activities - be it art, music, literature or science - is the enrichment of our life. Through culture, we experience joy, excitement, perceive beauty, embrace the secrets of the universe. The only thing that, in my opinion, really distinguishes science from other things on this list, is a higher level of education necessary to enjoy it. For most physicists, the main personal justification for their activities is precisely to receive pleasure, the joy of discovering new laws and a sense of beauty, manifested in the combination of the diversity of phenomena of the physical world and the simplicity of the laws underlying it. So, with the permission of Erica Yong, this book is devoted to the question: can an ordinary person, having overcome prejudices, get real pleasure from physics? Hope so.
More information about the book can be found on the publisher's website.
Table of contents
Excerpt
The book is available only in paper form.
Paradox. Nine great physics puzzles
By Jim Al Khalili
Paradoxes appear before us in all their diversity. While some of them are straightforward logical tasks with little potential for research, another paradox can only be the tip of the iceberg of an entire scientific industry. Many can be solved by carefully analyzing the underlying assumptions (one or even several can be false). Strictly speaking, such paradoxes should not be called that at all, since the task for which the solution was found cannot be considered a paradox anymore.
A real paradox is a statement that leads to a vicious circle (a circular argument that contradicts itself) or describes a situation that is impossible from the point of view of logic. But there is a tendency to use the word “paradox” in a wider context, including what I prefer to call an imaginary paradox. Such puzzles have a solution. Sometimes these paradoxes contain a trick or a cunning move that should specifically lead the reader or listener off the right path. It is worth discovering this trick - and the contradiction or logical absurdity disappears. Another kind of imaginary paradox is a statement and conclusions from it, which, although initially look absurd or at least contradict intuition, upon closer scrutiny, they no longer seem so, even if the consequences of them still look somewhat nevrozhidno.
In addition, there is a category of paradoxes in physics. All (or almost all) such paradoxes can be solved with the help of fundamental scientific knowledge. It is about this kind of paradoxes that I want to talk about in the book.
So let's first take a brief look at what a real logical paradox is, just to figure out what I'm not going to tell you here. The real paradox is a statement formulated in such a way that a vicious circle is formed, from which there really is no way out.
Here, for example, is a simple statement: "This statement is false." I think at the first reading these words look pretty unconvincing. But think about the meaning of this phrase, as soon as you delve into the consequences of it - a logical paradox will become apparent. Can three simple words cause a real headache? If so, I would argue that this is a fun kind of pain, paradoxical in itself, which you will no doubt share with your family and friends with sadistic pleasure.
As you can see, the statement stating that “This statement is false”, declaring itself to be a lie, must itself be a lie, and therefore, it is not false - in this case it is true, which means that it is in fact false, which means that it is not false - and so on in an endless circle.
There are many such paradoxes, but this book is not about them.
Instead, I will tell you about my favorite riddles and puzzles in science, each of which is known as a paradox, but with a close look at the problem from the right angle can no longer be called a paradox. Although at first they contradict common sense, each time it turns out that their argument does not take into account some elusive aspect of physics, taking into account that we knock out one of the pillars on which the paradox stands, and his entire majestic building collapses . Despite the solutions found, many of them continue to be called paradoxes. Partly because of the sad fame they acquired when they were first formulated (before we found out where the error lies). In addition, by presenting them in this way, we obtain useful tools by which scientists comprehend some rather complex ideas. Another thing is that their solving delivers a lot of fun.
Many puzzles that we will talk about at first glance really give the impression of real, not imaginary, para-doxes. The point is this. Take, for example, a simplified version of the famous time traveler paradox: what if you went back in time to the past and killed a younger version of yourself? What will happen to you - the killer? You jump out of reality because you didn’t allow yourself to grow? In this case, you have not yet reached the age at which you became a murderer, traveling in time; who then killed the younger version of you? Senior you have a flawless alibi: you have never been a wali! So, if you did not live to travel back in time and kill the younger yourself, then you did not kill the younger yourself, which means you lived to the age when you went back in time and killed yourself, which means you did it, it means that you survived - and so on. Looks like a perfect logical paradox. Physicists have not yet completely ruled out the possibility of time travel, of course, only in theory. So how do we get out of the vicious circle of this paradox? I will discuss this particular case in Chapter 7.
Not all imaginary paradoxes require scientific knowledge for their solution. To demonstrate this, I devoted Chapter 1 to several imaginary paradoxes that can be solved using only common sense and logic. What I mean? Imagine a simple statistical paradox, in which it is quite easy to make a wrong conclusion, based on the basic correlation: it is known that crime rates are usually higher in cities with a large number of churches. It sounds rather paradoxical, unless you consider that the church encourages crime and lawlessness, which sounds rather doubtful regardless of your attitude to religion and morality. But the solution is very simple. For cities with a large population, both more churches and higher absolute crime rates are naturally characteristic.
The fact that B follows from A and C follows from A does not mean that C follows from B and vice versa.
Here is another example of a simple puzzle that, when first read, seems paradoxical, but the explanation eliminates this paradox. It was presented to me several years ago by my colleague and close friend of a professor of physics from Scotland. He stated that "every Scotsman who comes south to England raises the average IQ of both countries." The bottom line is this: since all the Scots say they are smarter than the British, every Scot who lives in England will raise the average IQ of its inhabitants, but leaving Scotland is such a stupid idea that only the stupidest Scots will go to such most slightly increasing the average IQ score for Scotland. As you can see, at first glance, this statement sounds rather paradoxical, but thanks to a simple logical argument, there is an excellent solution - albeit unconvincing from the point of view of the English, of course.
After we have a little fun in Chapter 1, after examining a few well-known paradoxes that can be solved without in-treatment of science, we move on to the nine paradoxes of physics that I have selected for you. Having formulated another paradox, I will reveal its true nature. I will show how the paradoxes dissipate like smoke, one has only to expose the underlying logic, which is wrong, or to explain why, in fact, they do not constitute a problem. All these paradoxes are quite interesting, because they provide food for the mind, and also because they have a solution. In order for the paradox to cease to be a parade-som, you need to know where to look, where to look for the Achilles' heel, which can be carefully probed, armed with an in-depth understanding of science.
The names of some of the paradoxes are familiar to you. For example, the paradox of the Schrödinger cat, which is that the unfortunate animal was closed in a sealed box, and until we open it, the cat will be both dead and alive. The less well-known, but still familiar to many demon Maxwell - a mythical creature sitting in another sealed box; it seems to be able to violate the second law of thermodynamics, organizing the contents of this box. To understand these paradoxes and their solutions, you need some scientific training. So I set myself the task to present these scientific ideas as clearly as possible and without too much fuss, so that you can appreciate the conclusions from them without diving into the depths of mathematical analysis, thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.
In this book, I also collected a few paradoxes from a university course in the theory of relativity, which I have been teaching for 14 years now. For example, Einstein's ideas about space and time have become fertile ground for such logical puzzles as the pole and shed paradox (also known as the barn and pole paradox), the twin paradox and the dead grandfather paradox. In other parades, for example, in those that relate to a cat and a demon, according to some, it’s time to put an end to it with a sense of accomplishment.
When I selected applicants to my list of the greatest mysteries of physics, I did not set out to state the most important unsolved problems of science (what is the nature of dark matter and energy, of which 95% of the Universe consists, or what was (if any) before the Big Bang). These are extremely difficult and deep questions - scientists have yet to find their solution. - (, , ), , - , , . , , , , .
, . , , , . , , -, , . - , , , , .
Table of contents
25% — Pop Science
1. Fear of physics. Spherical horse in a vacuum : the legendary book of Lawrence Krauss has been translated into 12 languages ​​of the world and written for people who have little or no knowledge of physics so that they can overcome their fear of this science. “The Fear of Physics” is a lively, immediate, nondescript and fascinating story about everything, from boiling water to the foundations of the existence of the Universe. The book is filled with funny stories and illustrative examples, allowing to understand the most complex intricacies of modern scientific theories.2. Paradox. Nine great mysteries of physics : what is a paradox? This is a phenomenon that, at first glance, seems to be incomprehensible from a scientific or logical point of view. For centuries science has been confronted with paradoxes, many of which have greatly advanced it. The paradoxes described by the author, Professor Al-Khalili, relate to physics and astronomy. They baffled many of the greatest thinkers and scientists.
Can a cat be both alive and dead at the same time? Is it true that Achilles will never pass the tortoise, no matter how fast he runs? How can a person be ten years older than his own twin brother? After reading this book, you will get true intellectual pleasure and even gain enlightenment!
')
Fear of physics. Spherical horse in a vacuum
By: Lawrence Krauss
When someone at a party finds out that I am a physicist, he either immediately changes the subject of conversation, or starts asking me about the Big Bang, other universes, superlight engines, quarks, superconductors, superstrings or supercolliders. Even those who honestly admitted that they disliked physics at school and never regretted it often listened to stories about mystical phenomena occurring at the forefront of science, as if spellbound. Modern physics deals with the solution of many cosmic problems that any person reflects on in one way or another. However, physics is often presented to people as complex, inaccessible to magic, open only to initiates, since many studies lie in areas terribly far from their everyday experience.
But there is a more serious obstacle that hinders many people from understanding what modern physics is doing. The physical approach to problem solving and the language used by physicists are not used by most people in everyday life. For observers who lack a special view of the world inherent in physicists, the motley zoo of physical phenomena looks incomprehensible, and often frightening.
In order to present the reader with modern physics in my understanding, I decided not to focus on the description of specific physical theories, but to talk about the tools used by physicists in their work. If someone wants to evaluate the current state of physical science both from the point of view of human intellectual activity and from the point of view of its role in shaping our modern picture of the world, it is much easier to do with some initial background that gives an understanding of how All this science works. This book is not so much a textbook on survival in the jungle, but a guide on what to take with you on a camping trip, how to get around dangerous rocks, where to admire a beautiful view and how to safely go home.
Physicists themselves are able to continue modern research only because they are mainly guided by the same several fundamental principles that we use to study everyday life. Physical theory currently deals with phenomena occurring on space-time scales differing by more than six to ten orders of magnitude - this means that the size ratio of the largest objects studied by physicists to the smallest is expressed by a number consisting of one and 60 zeros. Experimental studies, however, extend to a somewhat smaller range of scales. Nevertheless, against the background of this whole zoo, the description of any phenomenon made by one physicist is usually understandable to another, because it uses no more than a dozen basic concepts. No other area of ​​human knowledge is so extensive and at the same time so easily formalized.
Partly for this reason my book is so thin. The tools used by physicists are few, and although an advanced degree is needed to master them, in order to simply understand how they work, a weighty volume is not needed. In each of the six chapters (of course, if you buy this book) you will find a discussion of one of the key ideas that guide the physicists in their scientifically-oriented search. To illustrate these ideas, I picked up examples, in each of which I, like a musician playing a scale, rise from the basics to the peaks. The selection of examples may seem eclectic, but, concentrating at the beginning of the chapter on where we are, I try to lead the reader to an understanding of where we are going at the end.
In addition, for this reason I took the liberty to introduce the most modern concepts. Some readers will have a sigh of relief when they come across familiar ideas, although they may seem incomprehensible to someone. Some of the concepts presented, being fundamental, at the same time, have never before been presented in popular literature. But it is not important. I am not going to test new didactic methods for you. I would like to give the reader a taste of physical rather than its content. I think that for non-scientists understanding of physics is more important than knowing some of its specific applications.
The most important thing is that in physics there are remarkable connections between individual fragments of the picture of the world, which lie under the surface of the pictorial canvas. It is these connections that form the fabric of physics. There is no greater joy for a scientist than to discover another such connection and test it experimentally. In the end, this makes physics a science, and, if you are seriously interested in it, you will have truly unlimited prospects.
Finally, I want to emphasize that physics is the same creative human intellectual activity as art and music. Physics forms our cultural experience. I don’t presume to judge what of the current cultural heritage will be most in demand by future generations, but I’m sure that ignoring the cultural aspect of our scientific tradition would be a serious mistake. In the end, it is science that forms our understanding of the world around us and our place in it. Scientific illiteracy today is identical with lack of culture. And the main virtue of cultural activities - be it art, music, literature or science - is the enrichment of our life. Through culture, we experience joy, excitement, perceive beauty, embrace the secrets of the universe. The only thing that, in my opinion, really distinguishes science from other things on this list, is a higher level of education necessary to enjoy it. For most physicists, the main personal justification for their activities is precisely to receive pleasure, the joy of discovering new laws and a sense of beauty, manifested in the combination of the diversity of phenomena of the physical world and the simplicity of the laws underlying it. So, with the permission of Erica Yong, this book is devoted to the question: can an ordinary person, having overcome prejudices, get real pleasure from physics? Hope so.
More information about the book can be found on the publisher's website.
Table of contents
Excerpt
The book is available only in paper form.
Paradox. Nine great physics puzzles
By Jim Al Khalili
Paradoxes appear before us in all their diversity. While some of them are straightforward logical tasks with little potential for research, another paradox can only be the tip of the iceberg of an entire scientific industry. Many can be solved by carefully analyzing the underlying assumptions (one or even several can be false). Strictly speaking, such paradoxes should not be called that at all, since the task for which the solution was found cannot be considered a paradox anymore.
A real paradox is a statement that leads to a vicious circle (a circular argument that contradicts itself) or describes a situation that is impossible from the point of view of logic. But there is a tendency to use the word “paradox” in a wider context, including what I prefer to call an imaginary paradox. Such puzzles have a solution. Sometimes these paradoxes contain a trick or a cunning move that should specifically lead the reader or listener off the right path. It is worth discovering this trick - and the contradiction or logical absurdity disappears. Another kind of imaginary paradox is a statement and conclusions from it, which, although initially look absurd or at least contradict intuition, upon closer scrutiny, they no longer seem so, even if the consequences of them still look somewhat nevrozhidno.
In addition, there is a category of paradoxes in physics. All (or almost all) such paradoxes can be solved with the help of fundamental scientific knowledge. It is about this kind of paradoxes that I want to talk about in the book.
So let's first take a brief look at what a real logical paradox is, just to figure out what I'm not going to tell you here. The real paradox is a statement formulated in such a way that a vicious circle is formed, from which there really is no way out.
Here, for example, is a simple statement: "This statement is false." I think at the first reading these words look pretty unconvincing. But think about the meaning of this phrase, as soon as you delve into the consequences of it - a logical paradox will become apparent. Can three simple words cause a real headache? If so, I would argue that this is a fun kind of pain, paradoxical in itself, which you will no doubt share with your family and friends with sadistic pleasure.
As you can see, the statement stating that “This statement is false”, declaring itself to be a lie, must itself be a lie, and therefore, it is not false - in this case it is true, which means that it is in fact false, which means that it is not false - and so on in an endless circle.
There are many such paradoxes, but this book is not about them.
Instead, I will tell you about my favorite riddles and puzzles in science, each of which is known as a paradox, but with a close look at the problem from the right angle can no longer be called a paradox. Although at first they contradict common sense, each time it turns out that their argument does not take into account some elusive aspect of physics, taking into account that we knock out one of the pillars on which the paradox stands, and his entire majestic building collapses . Despite the solutions found, many of them continue to be called paradoxes. Partly because of the sad fame they acquired when they were first formulated (before we found out where the error lies). In addition, by presenting them in this way, we obtain useful tools by which scientists comprehend some rather complex ideas. Another thing is that their solving delivers a lot of fun.
Many puzzles that we will talk about at first glance really give the impression of real, not imaginary, para-doxes. The point is this. Take, for example, a simplified version of the famous time traveler paradox: what if you went back in time to the past and killed a younger version of yourself? What will happen to you - the killer? You jump out of reality because you didn’t allow yourself to grow? In this case, you have not yet reached the age at which you became a murderer, traveling in time; who then killed the younger version of you? Senior you have a flawless alibi: you have never been a wali! So, if you did not live to travel back in time and kill the younger yourself, then you did not kill the younger yourself, which means you lived to the age when you went back in time and killed yourself, which means you did it, it means that you survived - and so on. Looks like a perfect logical paradox. Physicists have not yet completely ruled out the possibility of time travel, of course, only in theory. So how do we get out of the vicious circle of this paradox? I will discuss this particular case in Chapter 7.
Not all imaginary paradoxes require scientific knowledge for their solution. To demonstrate this, I devoted Chapter 1 to several imaginary paradoxes that can be solved using only common sense and logic. What I mean? Imagine a simple statistical paradox, in which it is quite easy to make a wrong conclusion, based on the basic correlation: it is known that crime rates are usually higher in cities with a large number of churches. It sounds rather paradoxical, unless you consider that the church encourages crime and lawlessness, which sounds rather doubtful regardless of your attitude to religion and morality. But the solution is very simple. For cities with a large population, both more churches and higher absolute crime rates are naturally characteristic.
The fact that B follows from A and C follows from A does not mean that C follows from B and vice versa.
Here is another example of a simple puzzle that, when first read, seems paradoxical, but the explanation eliminates this paradox. It was presented to me several years ago by my colleague and close friend of a professor of physics from Scotland. He stated that "every Scotsman who comes south to England raises the average IQ of both countries." The bottom line is this: since all the Scots say they are smarter than the British, every Scot who lives in England will raise the average IQ of its inhabitants, but leaving Scotland is such a stupid idea that only the stupidest Scots will go to such most slightly increasing the average IQ score for Scotland. As you can see, at first glance, this statement sounds rather paradoxical, but thanks to a simple logical argument, there is an excellent solution - albeit unconvincing from the point of view of the English, of course.
After we have a little fun in Chapter 1, after examining a few well-known paradoxes that can be solved without in-treatment of science, we move on to the nine paradoxes of physics that I have selected for you. Having formulated another paradox, I will reveal its true nature. I will show how the paradoxes dissipate like smoke, one has only to expose the underlying logic, which is wrong, or to explain why, in fact, they do not constitute a problem. All these paradoxes are quite interesting, because they provide food for the mind, and also because they have a solution. In order for the paradox to cease to be a parade-som, you need to know where to look, where to look for the Achilles' heel, which can be carefully probed, armed with an in-depth understanding of science.
The names of some of the paradoxes are familiar to you. For example, the paradox of the Schrödinger cat, which is that the unfortunate animal was closed in a sealed box, and until we open it, the cat will be both dead and alive. The less well-known, but still familiar to many demon Maxwell - a mythical creature sitting in another sealed box; it seems to be able to violate the second law of thermodynamics, organizing the contents of this box. To understand these paradoxes and their solutions, you need some scientific training. So I set myself the task to present these scientific ideas as clearly as possible and without too much fuss, so that you can appreciate the conclusions from them without diving into the depths of mathematical analysis, thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.
In this book, I also collected a few paradoxes from a university course in the theory of relativity, which I have been teaching for 14 years now. For example, Einstein's ideas about space and time have become fertile ground for such logical puzzles as the pole and shed paradox (also known as the barn and pole paradox), the twin paradox and the dead grandfather paradox. In other parades, for example, in those that relate to a cat and a demon, according to some, it’s time to put an end to it with a sense of accomplishment.
When I selected applicants to my list of the greatest mysteries of physics, I did not set out to state the most important unsolved problems of science (what is the nature of dark matter and energy, of which 95% of the Universe consists, or what was (if any) before the Big Bang). These are extremely difficult and deep questions - scientists have yet to find their solution. - (, , ), , - , , . , , , , .
, . , , , . , , -, , . - , , , , .
Table of contents
25% — Pop Science
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/391023/
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