From the international bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible and Physics of the Future.

This is the story of a quest: to find a Theory of Everything. Einstein dedicated his life to seeking this elusive Holy Grail, a single, revolutionary 'god equation' which would tie all the forces in the universe together, yet never found it. Some of the greatest minds in physics took up the search, from Stephen Hawking to Brian Greene. None have yet succeeded.

In The God Equation, renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku takes the reader on a mind-bending ride through the twists and turns of this epic journey: a mystery that has fascinated him for most of his life. He guides us through the key debates in modern physics, from Newton's law of gravity via relativity and quantum mechanics to the latest developments in string theory. It is a tale of dazzling breakthroughs and crushing dead ends, illuminated by Kaku's clarity, storytelling flair and infectious enthusiasm.

The object of the quest is now within sight: we are closer than ever to achieving the most ambitious undertaking in the history of science. If successful, the Theory of Everything could simultaneously unlock the deepest mysteries of space and time, and fulfil that most ancient and basic of human desires - to understand the meaning of our lives.

'Quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory ever formulated. The only problem with it, argues Lee Smolin, is that it is wrong ... a fount of provocative ideas ... lucid, upbeat and, finally, optimistic' Graham Farmelo, Nature Human beings, says Lee Smolin, author of The Trouble With Physics, have always had a problem with the boundary between reality and fantasy, confusing our representations of the world with the world itself. Nowhere is this more evident than in quantum physics, which forms the basis for our understanding of everything from elementary particles to the behaviour of materials. While quantum mechanics is currently our best theory of nature at an atomic scale, it has many puzzling qualities - qualities that preclude realism and therefore give an incomplete description of nature. Rather than question this version of quantum mechanics, however, whole groups of physicists have embraced it as correct and rejected realism. Subscribing to a kind of magical thinking, they believe that what is real is far beyond the world we perceive: indeed, that the 'true' world is hidden from our perception. Back in the 1920s Einstein, both a realist and a physicist, believed that it was necessary to go beyond quantum mechanics to discover what was missing from a true theory of the atoms. This was Einstein's unfinished mission, and it is Lee Smolin's too. Not only will this new model of quantum physics form the basis of solutions to many of the outstanding problems of physics, but, crucially, it is a theory that is realist in nature. At a time when science is under attack, and with it the belief in a real world in which facts are either true or false, never has the importance of building science on the correct foundations been more urgent.

This volume presents Einstein's writings from the final period of his work in Switzerland. Most of the material in Volume 4 documents Einstein's search for a relativistic theory of gravitation, a search that ended in Berlin in the fall of 1915 with the completion of the general theory of relativity.

Three scientific manuscripts, printed here for the first time, provide insight into Einstein's efforts to generalize his original relativity theory into a theory of gravitation. The first is a review article on the special theory of relativity. The second consists of notes that document Einstein's research on gravitation. The third manuscript contains calculations on the problem of the motion of the perihelion of Mercury. The explanation of the observed anomaly of this motion was to become one of the classical tests of general relativity. The existence of such a manuscript has not been known before now. All three of these manuscripts, along with other material in this volume, add significantly to our understanding of the creation of general relativity.

This supplementary paperback volue presents only the English translations of non-English materials and is not intended for use without the original-language documentary edition.

E=mc2 is the world's most famous equation. Discover the thought process and physics behind general relativity and Einstein's contribution to science, in this authorized edition. In this collection of his seven most important essays on physics, Einstein guides his reader step-by-step through the many layers of scientific theory that formed a starting point for his discoveries. By both supporting and refuting the theories and scientific efforts of his predecessors, Einstein reveals in a clear voice the origins and meaning of such significant topics as physics and reality, the fundamentals of theoretical physics, the common language of science, the laws of science and of ethics, and an elementary derivation of the equivalence of mass and energy. This remarkable collection allows the general reader to understand not only the significance of Einstein's masterpiece, but also the brilliant mind behind it. This authorized book features a new introduction by Neil Berger and an illustrated biography of Albert Einstein, which includes rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Einstein's standard and battle-tested geometric theory of gravity--spacetime tells mass how to move and mass tells spacetime how to curve--is expounded in this book by Ignazio Ciufolini and John Wheeler. They give special attention to the theory's observational checks and to two of its consequences: the predicted existence of gravitomagnetism and the origin of inertia (local inertial frames) in Einstein's general relativity: inertia "here" arises from mass "there."

The authors explain the modern understanding of the link between gravitation and inertia in Einstein's theory, from the origin of inertia in some cosmological models of the universe, to the interpretation of the initial value formulation of Einstein's standard geometrodynamics; and from the devices and the methods used to determine the local inertial frames of reference, to the experiments used to detect and measure the "dragging of inertial frames of reference." In this book, Ciufolini and Wheeler emphasize present, past, and proposed tests of gravitational interaction, metric theories, and general relativity. They describe the numerous confirmations of the foundations of geometrodynamics and some proposed experiments, including space missions, to test some of its fundamental predictions--in particular gravitomagnetic field or "dragging of inertial frames" and gravitational waves.

Here a physicist and a professor of literature guide general readers through the ideas that revolutionized our conception of the physical universe.

Somewhere near the heart of existence, shimmers the ethereal beauty of the mystery of Time. Though seemingly familiar to us all, time harbours secrets that penetrate the very deepest levels of reality, and though we feel certain in our conviction that we're swept forth upon the crest of its never-ending flow, with Einstein's discovery of relativity came what is perhaps the most stunning realisation in the entire history of scientific thought - the wondrously breathtaking revelation that in reality, there's actually no such thing as the passage of time... How can this extraordinary truth be reconciled with the reality we so surely suppose to experience? What does it mean for the very human concerns of life and death, free will, identity, and self? What should it mean for our philosophy? And how should it inform our world view? The search for answers leads through the fantastical realm of quantum physics, and the strange parallel worlds it describes, as we discover that the answers which such questions provoke, are perhaps even more profound than the questions themselves. Buried deep within the riddle of time, lies the staggering beauty of the world. As we peel back the layers to try and sneak a glimpse into eternity, we find a light shining not only upon the nature of reality, but on the nature of ourselves...

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfangen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen fur die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfugung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden mussen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.

Motion is always relative to some thing. Is this thing a concrete body like the earth, is it an abstract space, or is it an imagined frame? Do the laws of physics depend on the choice of reference? It there a choice for which the laws are simplest? Is this choice unique? Is there a physical cause for the choice made? These questions traverse the history of modern physics from Galileo to Einstein. The answers involved Galilean relativity, Newton's absolute space, the purely relational concepts of Descartes, Leibniz, and Mach, and many forgotten uses of relativity principles in mechanics, optics, and electrodynamics - until the relativity theories of Poincare, Einstein, Minkowksi, and Laue radically redefined space and time to satisfy universal kinds of relativity. Accordingly, this book retraces the emergence of relativity principles in early modern mechanics, documents their constructive use in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mechanics, optics, and electrodynamics, and gives a well-rooted account of the genesis of special and general relativity in the early twentieth century. As an exercise in long-term history, it demonstrates the connectivity of issues and approaches across several centuries, despite enormous changes in context and culture. As an account of the genesis of relativity theories, it brings unprecedented clarity and fullness by broadening the spectrum of resources on which the principal actors drew.