By Leonard Susskind
Initially of the twenty first century, physics is being pushed to very surprising territory--the area of the really small and the exceptionally heavy. the hot global is a global within which either quantum mechanics and gravity are both vital. yet mysteries stay. one of many greatest concerned black holes. Famed physicist Stephen Hawking claimed that whatever sucked in a black gap was once misplaced ceaselessly. for 3 a long time, Leonard Susskind and Hawking clashed over the reply to this challenge. eventually, in 2004, Hawking conceded.
The Black gap War will clarify the staggering technological know-how that eventually received out, and the emergence of a brand new paradigm that argues the world--this catalog, your place, your breakfast, you--is truly a hologram projected from the perimeters of space.
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Additional resources for The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics
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Is 8,000 Bq a lot? How much is “1 bequerel” anyway? Am I in danger? The bequerel is a very small unit that everyone should know about, given how much it’s used with regard to radioactivity, and given how simple it is to understand. Radioactive elements are unstable and undergo reactions described as “nuclear” because they involve the elements’ nuclei. During these reactions, which are spontaneous, the nuclei of “radioactive” atoms disintegrate to form other nuclei in a random manner and after a certain amount of time.
F. Kurie9 noticed that exposing nitrogen to a beam of neutrons could produce radioactive carbon, 14 C. Then, in 1946, Willard Franck Libby had the idea that 14C was constantly produced in the upper atmosphere of the Earth, where the nitrogen of the air is irradiated by the Sun. ” Flying too long at high altitudes, let alone traveling in a spaceship or spending time on the Moon, is therefore dangerous to one’s health. Life didn’t develop on land until the atmosphere contained enough oxygen, and therefore enough ozone (a molecule containing three oxygen atoms), to protect living beings from the Sun.
So Dirac wrote a generalization of Schrödinger’s equation in order to be able to describe the behavior of rapidly moving electrons. Among the solutions of his equation, Dirac found two that corresponded to what he was looking for at the outset. These were electrons whose magnetization—what is called their “spin” in quantum physics—was pointing either up or down. Then, Dirac found something else. His equation contained more than he had put into it at the outset. Another type of particle appeared in his solutions, which Dirac had trouble understanding.