Ebook: Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity

Grains ; Is there a limit to divisibility? ; The nature of things -- The classics ; Isaac and the little moon ; Michael: fields and light -- Albert ; The extended present ; The most beautiful of theories ; Mathematics or physics? ; The cosmos -- Quanta ; Albert again ; Niels, Werner, and Paul ; Fields and particles are the same thing ; Quanta 1: Information is finite ; Quanta 2: Indeterminacy ; Quanta 3: Reality is relation ; But do we really understand? -- Spacetime is quantum ; Matvei ; John ; The loop's first steps -- Quanta of space ; Spectra of volume and area ; Atoms of space ; Spin networks -- Time does not exist ; Time is not what we think it is ; The candle chandelier and the pulse ; Spacetime sushi spinfoam ; What is the world made of? -- Beyond the big bang ; The master ; Quantum cosmology -- Empirical confirmations? ; Signals from nature ; A window onto quantum gravity -- Quantum black holes -- The end of infinity -- Information ; Thermal time ; Reality and information -- Mystery.;Traces how the human image of the world has changed throughout history, demonstrating the evolution of the idea of reality while touching on subjects ranging from the Higgs boson to quantum gravity.;A--New York Times, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the universe. What are time and space made of? Where does matter come from? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. Here he explains how our image of the world has changed over the last few dozen centuries. In elegant and accessible prose, Rovelli takes us on a wondrous journey from Aristotle to Albert Einstein, from Michael Faraday to the Higgs boson, and from classical physics to his own work in quantum gravity. As he shows us how the idea of reality has evolved over time, Rovelli offers readers a deeper understanding of the theories he introduced so concisely in Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. His evocative explanations invite us to imagine, beyond our ever-changing idea of reality, a whole new world that has yet to be discovered.