The cosmic code
Written for general readers, The Cosmic Code goes on a fantastic journey into the microcosmos. Without complicated mathematics, physicist Heinz Pagels presents an understanding of scientific discoveries that have extended human consciousness to the far readches of space & time. Anecdotes from the personal documents of Einstein, Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr & Max Planck provide an intimate glimpse into brilliant persons who've shaped civilzation & changed the world. Elegantly written, this is an opportunity to celebrate the physicist's vision of reality...& how physics is moving toward an understanding of the cosmos. Acknowledgments Foreword The last classical physicist Inventing general relativity The first quantum physicists Heisenberg on Helgoland Uncertainty and complementarity Randomness The invisible hand Statistical mechanics Making waves Schrödinger's cat A quantum mechanical fairy tale Bell's inequality The reality marketplace The matter microscopes Beginning the voyage: molecules, atoms and nuclei The riddle of the hadrons Quarks Leptons Gluons Fields, particles and reality Being and nothingness Identity and difference The gauge field theory revolution Proton decay The quantum and the cosmos Laying down the law The cosmic code Bibliography Index.