Just beginning to read Steven Hawking's book The Grand Design.
Will I understand these concepts better by the time I complete the book, likely? Or do I need a primer to 'get it'?
Jeff
Anyone here truly understand Quantum Physics and M-Theory?
by AK - Jeff 18 Replies latest social current
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jay88
Not sure if this helps, and I am still trying to wrap my mind around what is being said. I am a fan of David Bohm. Here is an interview with one of Bohm's colleagues:
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AK - Jeff
Thanx - I will watch it.
Jeff
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foodalls
Jeff...The BEST site to understand "Quantum Science" in "Lay-mans" terms is at David Wilcock's website at: http://www.divinecosmos.com
just go there and click in their search; Quantum Science...You can also get a complete "Kit" on the subject there to...I'll be back with more later OK?
Bless you!
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bohm
well, i havent read the book in question, but from what i have read by Steven Hawking he does an excellent job at making things accessible while not simplifying to much. i would definately not read a primer if it was me.
if you want some advice, it would be to be carefull not to impose your own intuition on the physics as to make it less "strange".
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AK - Jeff
Yes - this seems the base problem doesn't it? That we tend to condition our 'model' on a previous paradigm, Newtonian in nature. Seems as if Einstien too had problems with quantum mechanics/physics. Thanx bohm. But with this headache, what sort of pain killer will you ingest in my behalf? lol
I will check out the site you mention also, foodalls. Thanx.
I am part way through the Basil Hiley interviews, above suggested. Fascinating stuff.
Jeff
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foodalls
VERY WISE MOVE JEFF...YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED...IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS CONTACT ME AT" [email protected] NAME IS KENNETH .
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Razziel
To agree with bohm, I had an Iranian quantum mechanics professor who said in his experience, Westerners have a more difficult time grasping QM because our culture biases us towards causality and concrete ideas, whereas Eastern thought is based more on abstract ideas.
QM is very counter-intuitive and has few classical analogues to make it easier to learn without dumbing it down so much you lose what is really going on. Re-reading difficult to understand passages several times, and looking to a little outside research may help you as it helped me when taking the course.
Another thing to keep in mind in your reading is to keep your ideas of QM and M-theory seperate. As far as new theory, the core of QM hasn't been an emerging field in a long time, though many of it's practical applications have just come into use in the last 2 decades and many are still waiting to be invented or become feasible. QM could be superceded someday as just a special case of another, more encompassing theory, but the important thing to remember is that QM is very refined, and it works.
M-theory, on the other hand, has a lot of support in the scientific community as eventually leading to the best understanding of the nature and structure of the Universe, but it's going to be some time into the future before enough testable evidence is obtained to see if they're on the right track or if this is a dead end.
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bohm
AK - Jeff: BEER! :-). Einsteins 'problem' with quantum mechanics had much to do with the copenhagen interpretation and that Einstein preferred a hidden-variable like theory (which, by the way, was only finally disproven in the past 20 years)... its really something that i feel is being blown out of proportions. Einstein was far more influential in the development and discovery of quantum mechanics than eg. Niels Bohr.
no, seriously, i havent read the book but here are some things i would hope to get his view upon:
- Are the "laws of nature" really laws, or rather the lack of laws. Let me explain, laws such as conservation of energy, momentum and angular momentum follow from the assumption that there is no special point in time, no special point in space and no special direction in space. (this follows entirely from classical physics and was calculated in 1916, IIRC). Similar you can get much of physics by assuming the universe is gauge-invariant and complex stuff like that, but there seem to be a lesson: you get really solid physics by precisely assuming no design. I wonder what his view on that is, im sure he will mention it, but im not sure how someone like him look upon the matter.
- one universe or many universes? what is his view on the theories of inflation?
- Will he bitchslap niels bohr and the copenhagen interpretation? one can hope :-)
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Spade
Quantum Physics studies the behavior and interactions of energy and matter. M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are allegedly identified. The subject matter in itself is arbitrary with no definitive proof to back the theories (string theory).