Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
up:: Books
- Type:nonfiction
- Author:: Carlo Rovelli
- Year published:: 2014
Summary/Reflection
A beautiful little book in which the author, an Italian theoretical physicists, presents the seven most intriguing recent discoveries and theories in physics.
Reading this book has been mind-bending. I can only slightly grasp what he means when talking about time being “relative”, different in different places. For a layman like me, this was a fascinating peek into Physics’ greatest puzzles. It leaves me astonished by how loose what we feel as “real” is – time, matter, those things seem to just be loosely sketched.
For me this gives words to the seemingly mystical presence of God outside our physical understanding. Actually, something existing outside of time and outside of space isn’t ludacris. It might actually be likely at the frontier of physics.
Notes
- Einstein’s theory of general relativity: gravity bends time
- Quantum theory: things only appear when they are watched or interacted with
- The universe is huge: “There are therefore in the universe thousands of billions of billions of billions of planets such as Earth”
- There are no more than 10 elementary particles out of which all reality is constructed (like a Lego set)
- Dark Matter: a large cloud that does existence by gravitational pull and light reflecting. But can’t be seen and it’s of unknown material.
- The author suggest we are part of nature and that makes us home. There is no difference between “I” and the billions of neurons firing in my brain.