The Matter Myth: Dramatic Discoveries that Challenge Our Understanding of Physical Reality

Paul Davies, John Gribbin

Simon and Schuster, Oct 23, 2007 - Science - 320 pages

In this sweeping survey, acclaimed science writers Paul Davies and John Gribbin provide a complete overview of advances in the study of physics that have revolutionized modern science. From the weird world of quarks and the theory of relativity to the latest ideas about the birth of the cosmos, the authors find evidence for a massive paradigm shift. Developments in the studies of black holes, cosmic strings, solitons, and chaos theory challenge commonsense concepts of space, time, and matter, and demand a radically altered and more fully unified view of the universe.

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THE MATTER MYTH: Dramatic Discoveries that Challenge Our Understanding of Physical Reality

User Review  - Kirkus

English astrophysicist-cum-science writer Gribbin (co-author, Cosmic Coincidences, 1989, etc.) and mathematical physicist Davies (Univ. of Adelaide, Australia; The Cosmic Blueprint, 1988, etc.) have ...

The matter myth: dramatic discoveries that challenge our understanding of physical reality

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

Wormholes, cosmic strings, quarks, relativity, quantum mechanics--Davis and Gribbin explain all the basic elements of the universe in a comprehensive summary of modern physics written on the layperson ...

Contents

• Preface: 7
• Chaos and the Liberation of Matter: 30
• The Mysterious Present: 63
• Confessions of a Relativist: 99
• The Universe at Large: 112
• And the Last: 174
• Quantum Weirdness: 197
• The Cosmic Network: 235
• Beyond the Infinite Future: 261
• The Living Universe: 284
• Bibliography: 310

Popular passages

Page 152 - ... we must regard it rather as an accident that the earth (and presumably the whole solar system) contains a preponderance of negative electrons and positive protons. It is quite possible that for some of the stars it is the other way about, these stars being built up mainly of positrons and negative protons. In fact, there may be half the stars of each kind. The two kinds of stars would both show exactly the same spectra, and there would be no way of distinguishing them by present astronomical...‎

Page 70 - The effects by which absolute and relative motions are distinguished from one another, are centrifugal forces, or those forces in circular motion which produces a tendency of recession from the axis. For in a circular motion which is purely relative no such forces exist; but in a true and absolute circular motion they do exist, and are greater or less according to the quantity of the [absolute] motion. "For instance: If a bucket, suspended by a long cord, is so often turned about that finally the...‎

Page 26 - ... in the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But the atoms or the elementary particles are not as real ; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts'.‎

Page 47 - ... round the prow of the vessel in a state of violent agitation, then suddenly leaving it behind, rolled forward with great velocity, assuming the form of a large solitary elevation, a rounded, smooth and well-defined heap of water, which continued its course along the channel apparently without change of form or diminution of speed.‎

Page 45 - Figure 5. For a sponge that starts out dry and has water dripped steadily onto it, the relationship between the weight of the sponge and the number of drips is called linear because the graph relating the two is a straight line. When the sponge starts to saturate, the relationship becomes nonlinear. proceed by analysis, because the whole is now greater than the sum of its parts. Nonlinear systems can display a rich and complex repertoire of behavior, and do unexpected things— they can, for example,...‎

Page 41 - This conclusion is surely profound. It means that, even accepting a strictly deterministic account of nature, the future states of the Universe are in some sense 'open'. Some people have seized on this openness to argue for the reality of human free will. Others claim that it bestows upon nature an element of creativity, an ability to bring forth that which is genuinely new, something not already implicit in earlier states of the Universe, save in the idealized fiction of the real numbers.‎

Page 30 - Brussels, has eloquently expressed it, God is reduced to a mere archivist, turning the pages of a cosmic history book that is already written. Implicit in this somewhat bleak mechanistic picture was the belief that there are actually no truly chance processes in nature. Events may appear to us to be random but, it was reasoned, this could be attributed to human ignorance about the details of the processes concerned. Take, for example, Brownian motion. A tiny particle suspended in a fluid can be observed...‎

Page 29 - All science is founded on the assumption that the physical world is ordered. The most powerful expression of this order is found in the laws of physics. Nobody knows where these laws come from, nor why they apparently operate universally and unfailingly, but we see them at work all around us: in the rhythm of night and day, the pattern of planetary motions, the regular ticking of a clock. The ordered dependability of nature is not, however, ubiquitous. The vagaries of the weather, the devastation...‎

Page 40 - So a hundred-thousand-fold improvement in initial accuracy achieves a mere doubling of the predictability span. It is this "sensitivity to initial conditions" that leads to well-known statements about the flapping of butterflies' wings in the Amazonian jungle causing a tornado in Texas. Chaos evidently provides us with a bridge between the laws of physics and the laws of chance. In a sense, chance or random events can indeed always be traced to ignorance about details, but whereas Brownian motion...‎

Page 126 - All of this [decrease in entropy] is possible because the Earth is an open system, through which energy and entropy flow. The source of almost all the useful energy we use is the Sun, which is a classic example of a system in thermodynamic disequilibrium — a compact ball of hot gas in a relatively low entropy state is irreversibly pouring huge amounts of energy out into the cold vastness of space [Reversing the flow of entropy has its] origin in our proximity to this great source of energy in the...‎

About the author

PAUL DAVIES is Director of the Beyond Center at Arizona State University and the bestselling author of more than twenty books. He won the 1995 Templeton Prize for his work on the deeper meaning of science. His books include About Time, The Fifth Miracle, and The Mind of God.

JOHN GRIBBIN trained as an astrophysicist at Cambridge University before becoming a full-time science writer. He is now a Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex. His other books include the bestselling In Search of Schrödinger's Cat and In Search of the Big Bang.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Matter Myth: Dramatic Discoveries that Challenge Our Understanding of Physical Reality
• Authors: Paul Davies, John Gribbin
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, reissue
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2007
• ISBN: 0743290917, 9780743290913
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Science / General; Science / Physics / General; Science / Time