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The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality
Paperback(Reprint)
Overview
The story of the unlikely friendship between the two physicists who fundamentally recast the notion of time and history
In 1939, Richard Feynman, a brilliant graduate of MIT, arrived in John Wheeler's Princeton office to report for duty as his teaching assistant. A lifelong friendship and enormously productive collaboration was born, despite sharp differences in personality. The soft-spoken Wheeler, though conservative in appearance, was a raging nonconformist full of wild ideas about the universe. The boisterous Feynman was a cautious physicist who believed only what could be tested. Yet they were complementary spirits. Their collaboration led to a complete rethinking of the nature of time and reality. It enabled Feynman to show how quantum reality is a combination of alternative, contradictory possibilities, and inspired Wheeler to develop his landmark concept of wormholes, portals to the future and past. Together, Feynman and Wheeler made sure that quantum physics would never be the same again.
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Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781541672987 |
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Publisher: | Basic Books |
Publication date: | 11/06/2018 |
Edition description: | Reprint |
Pages: | 336 |
Sales rank: | 95,526 |
Product dimensions: | 13.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 2.40(d) |
About the Author
Paul Halpern is a professor of physics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, and the author of fifteen popular science books, most recently Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Table of Contents
Introduction A Revolution in Time 1
Chapter 1 Wheeler's Watch 15
Chapter 2 The Only Particle in the Universe 43
Chapter 3 All the Roads Not to Paradise 81
Chapter 4 The Hidden Paths of Ghosts 113
Chapter 5 The Island and the Mountains: Mapping the Particle Landscape 133
Chapter 6 Life as an Amoeba in the Foamy Sea of Possibilities 167
Chapter 7 Time's Arrow and the Mysterious Mr. X 199
Chapter 8 Minds, Machines, and the Cosmos 229
Conclusion The Way of the Labyrinth 261
Epilogue Encounters with Wheeler 269
Acknowledgments 273
Notes 275
Further Reading 287
Index 291