Explaining the Universe: The New Age of Physics

by John M. Charap

In this fascinating book, John Charap offers a panoramic view of the physicist's world as the twenty-first century opens--a view that is entirely different from the one that greeted the twentieth century. We have learned that the universe is billions of galaxies larger than we imagined--and billions of years older. We know more about how it came to be and what it is. Because of physics, we live in a world of greater danger and more convenience, smaller particles and bigger ideas.


Charap introduces these ideas but spares us the math behind them. After a review of the twentieth century's thorough transformation of physics, he checks in on the latest findings from particle physics, astrophysics, chaos theory, and cosmology. His tour includes ongoing efforts to find the universe's missing matter and to account for the first moments after the big bang. Taking readers right to the field's speculative edge, he explains how superstring theory may finally unite quantum mechanics with general relativity to produce a consistent quantum theory of gravity.


Along the way, Charap poses the questions that continue to inspire research. Why is the universe flat? Why can't we forecast weather better? Can Schrodinger's cat really be simultaneously dead and alive? Why does fractal geometry keep showing up in strange places? Might spacetime have eleven dimensions? What does quantum mechanics mean about the nature of our world?


In this book's pages, the nonphysicist will accept as commonsensical Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and physicists can meet across specialties. Students can access physics' critical concepts, and poets can learn a new language to describe the universe's many wonders. Taking us from the ultraviolet catastrophe that undid the Newtonian world to tomorrow's Theory of Everything, Charap brings today's most fascinating science down to Earth, where we can all enjoy it.

Genres: Science, Physics, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published July 29, 2002

Reviews

[J.D. Steens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is uneven. First, the good parts. Charap clarifies that it is incorrect to state that some particles (photons, mainly, but also neutrinos) have zero mass. Their mass is in the form of energy and, per Einstein’s formula, they carry “rest-mass” energy. “Particles with zero rest-mass can never be at rest; they always travel at the speed of light.” (1) With relativity and quantum mechanics, Charap states that there has been “a radical shift in the notion of what is meant by an elementary particle. It is no longer a point-like structure but, rather “a quantum excitation of a field” and its "wavelength attributes.” On the uncertainty principle, if I read him accurately, Charap also clarifies that Newtonian causality doesn’t inherently not exist at the quantum level but, rather, it is a measurement problem that prevents us, perhaps inherently as well, from finding it out. And I like his description of the microworld as measured by the Planck constant, which are the infinitely small scales related to mass, length and time.” (2)

For the pre-Big Bang moment, Charap states that all cosmic energy and mass collapsed, not necessarily literally, into a single point, but into “a mathematical singularity” since this is where the numbers lead when one follows gravitational force to its logical (and infinite) conclusion. Also, for the author, this is where Einstein’s space-time theory becomes one with the quantum world: In the singularity, there is no space no time, and there is possibly no distinction between energy and mass. This in turn takes him to his hard-to-follow explanation of string theory where ultimate reality is non-particle like strings that vibrate (or something like that). Again, if I understand him accurately, Charap helpfully explains that time and space physically (vs. thought experiment) contracts in the direction of motion at the speed of light because acceleration compresses, beyond severely, electrons-protons/neutrons in the direction of movement and, thus, shortens space and, therefore, contracts time.

And now for the rough parts of this book. Charap says there are two forms of field but after reading this section over and over, I could only find one. The book’s more basic problem is that he either is more into describing physical phenomena, rather than explaining them (e.g., it is known that particles have antiparticles, but why is this so?), or because the language of physics is at odds with our everyday understanding (e.g., “acceleration” is a change of direction as well as the force that moves [or stops] something). Thus, referring to the “nature of the forces,” he writes that the bosons carry the forces, but this means they are not the forces themselves. So, this leaves open the question, what is the “nature of the forces?” The glossary has neither force nor boson so that doesn’t help either. The language used to describe particle-like properties refers to mass and energy as if they are separate things, but we also know that mass is energy in hard form. Why should there not be a word like “mass-energy” just as there is for space-time? Elsewhere, he defines reality as matter (fermions) and force (bosons) that connect matter with each other, but what is common to both is energy. When you go to his glossary, though, Charap’s definition of energy is “the capacity to do work,” which, given that energy is basically equivalent to all cosmic phenomena, seems highly lame.

Charap refers to “waves propagating through empty space,” but he doesn’t tell us what is the agency of propagation. To propagate means to spread, but the word is silent as to agency, and so is Charap. Yet the question remains: Is it an external source, or does it come from something inside that does the propagating? While the outward movement from the Big Bang suggests an external source, as does Einstein’s gravitational “force.” We also know that it was a heavily packed ball of energy that started it all, so that means the propagation was via an internal source. We also know that objects contain energy that dissipate (moves, which in turn moves other bodies) and that energy-objects move in a straight line unless accelerated. So, is an object a subject that acts or an object that is acted upon, or is it both? (3)

In Charap’s discussion of “free fall,” the moon/earth move toward the center of gravity of the larger body (earth/sun) but why “fall” since that implies downward versus “toward” (and does “downward” conflict with Einstein’s no preferred “frame of reference)? Charap also doesn’t mention that the speed of the “falling body” is a crucial element, along with its own inertial resistance. More slowly, the body moves toward the center of gravity. Move too fast, and it escapes the larger body’s influence. When the post Big Bang temperature cools sufficiently, electro-magnetic and weak forces separate suddenly and take off to create an emergent phenomenon, inflation or inflationary expansion, and the uniform background radiation detected today. But how this matches up with “fluctuation” that seeded (via concentrated explosion waves) to allow for star-galaxy formation via gravitational effects is not clear. Finally, Charap makes a big deal about the cosmos having no boundary because it is a sphere (created by a Big Bang event). In any figmental time-travel scenario, if one walks in a straight line, one returns back to the starting line. This is clear, logically, and literally, but it still doesn’t explain what lies outside the sphere, i.e., if a Big Bang creates spacetime, what is it that spacetime moves into?

(1) Energy-mass are “interconvertible…at a fixed rate of exchange given by the square of the speed of light,” which means, what, that mass carries a whole lot of rest energy and that light is highly, highly vaporized mass?
(2) Charap writes that “it is not possible to measure the position of a particle without disturbing its velocity; neither can the velocity be measured without disturbing its position.” On the Planck constant, Charap writes that “These are the so-called Planck mass (approximately 1019 times the proton mass), the Planck length (about 2 x 10 - 35 meters), and the Planck time (approximately 5 x 10 – 44 seconds).”
(3) Does the Big Bang frame our thinking too much: If Einstein says that it is gravity that stops space-time (via a pulling toward), is there a possibility that some gravitational force pulls the cosmic expansion from the opposite end of spacetime? Or is it possible that post Big Bang cosmic expansion diffuses mass-energy to such a point that it escapes all slowing-breaking gravitational effects and continues with its now infinitely free movement (externally or internally propagated) into the void (whatever lies beyond the cosmic sphere) at the speed of light?

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phwor! Heavy stuff for me here. I feel like I've been sitting a degree course in particle physics. The author is Professor of Theoretical Physics at London Uni, and 'Explaining the Universe' seems to be written for students on his course. The only concession to dimbo's like myself is that we are spared the vast chalkface full of mathematical quadratic equations.
However, I've battled manfully through the mirky bog land of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, Newtonian dynamics, quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics...then to run breathlessly down the road of relativity, grazing my knee whilst tripping over Schrodinger's cat to finally stagger through the misty streets of a standard model of particle physics, only to get tangled up in strings to conjecture a theory of everything.
Charap's 'New Age of Physics' is not to be embarked upon without strong hiking boots and protective head gear.