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Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe
The instant New York Times bestseller
Quanta and Fields, the second book of Sean Carroll’s already internationally acclaimed series The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, is an adventure into the bare stuff of reality.
Sean Carroll is creating a profoundly new approach to sharing physics with a broad audience, one that goes beyond analogies to show how physicists really think. He cuts to the bare mathematical essence of our most profound theories, explaining every step in a uniquely accessible way.
Quantum field theory is how modern physics describes nature at its most profound level. Starting with the basics of quantum mechanics itself, Sean Carroll explains measurement and entanglement before explaining how the world is really made of fields. You will finally understand why matter is solid, why there is antimatter, where the sizes of atoms come from, and why the predictions of quantum field theory are so spectacularly successful. Fundamental ideas like spin, symmetry, Feynman diagrams, and the Higgs mechanism are explained for real, not just through amusing stories. Beyond Newton, beyond Einstein, and all the intuitive notions that have guided homo sapiens for millennia, this book is a journey to a once unimaginable truth about what our universe is.
Quanta and Fields, the second book of Sean Carroll’s already internationally acclaimed series The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, is an adventure into the bare stuff of reality.
Sean Carroll is creating a profoundly new approach to sharing physics with a broad audience, one that goes beyond analogies to show how physicists really think. He cuts to the bare mathematical essence of our most profound theories, explaining every step in a uniquely accessible way.
Quantum field theory is how modern physics describes nature at its most profound level. Starting with the basics of quantum mechanics itself, Sean Carroll explains measurement and entanglement before explaining how the world is really made of fields. You will finally understand why matter is solid, why there is antimatter, where the sizes of atoms come from, and why the predictions of quantum field theory are so spectacularly successful. Fundamental ideas like spin, symmetry, Feynman diagrams, and the Higgs mechanism are explained for real, not just through amusing stories. Beyond Newton, beyond Einstein, and all the intuitive notions that have guided homo sapiens for millennia, this book is a journey to a once unimaginable truth about what our universe is.
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Community Reviews
An excellent educated non-physicist’s introduction to quantum field theory. Sean is an excellent writer as well as a good physicist and manages to create something beyond the standard analogies, but not requiring graduate level physics to make any headway. He offers some equations to give the reader a sense of what’s going on without having to solve them.
HIghly recommended if you’re really curious about one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the past 100 years. I’d recommend having taken a year of college physics and at least some exposure to differential equations (although you won’t; have to solve anything). You might want to read his earlier title Space, Time and Motion before this one.
If you're curious and took non-STEM physics, go with Matt Strassler's new book. It's also excellent, but assumes no physics background.
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