Kyle’s Reviews > The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen > Status Update
Kyle
is on page 44 of 242
Oh what fun, following Feynman's physics, to figure out possible positions of a particle. It doesn't surprise me that younger minds, like the 'Knabenphysik' theorists, would belive the electron could be in various positions at the same time as they probably held onto the Santa Claus story of their youth which the old-guard physicists like Einstein and Schrödinger lost interest in promoting the use of abstract clocks.
— Dec 25, 2014 06:11PM
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Kyle’s Previous Updates
Kyle
is finished
Really, using math to prove that something most astronomers already know exists exists? White dwarves may have all the numbers in order, and the authors high-fiving their way to all the cool parties, but is not something anyone on Earth will need to worry about for the next few ten thousand years. Would have rather heard more about how a neutrino star could suddenly take down a planet or a black hole solving gravity.
— Jan 08, 2015 02:36PM
Kyle
is on page 214 of 242
And so, dear readers, Cox and Forshaw bring their book to an end, except for the longish epilogue, with a fuzzy view of unobservable particles in the universe. They put a lot of stock in science's representation of reality and the potential for the Large Hadron Collidor to change everything we know yet dismiss, however, the tortured and surreal dreamers who see things differently - do they know how imagination works?
— Jan 08, 2015 01:46AM
Kyle
is on page 195 of 242
As much as the authors try to push the "fun" Feynman physics identified as quantum electrodynamics, I'd rather stick with the sensible Schrödinger-type that includes many worlds in their field theory, even at the risk of missing out on the possibility of time traveling positrons that are consistent with earnest Einstein's Special Realitivity. Measuring words and putting them in a book changes this world's everything.
— Jan 07, 2015 03:42AM
Kyle
is on page 173 of 242
All hail the semiconductor, despite all the potential for really cool things that quantum physics can do (and the everything that does happen in the universe), controlling the flow of electrons is the most important. Kind of like the Graduate Ben Braddock finding out that the most important industry is plastics. Can't deny that the digital has its place in human innovation, just get to superposition already!
— Jan 06, 2015 02:20AM
Kyle
is on page 159 of 242
With renewed interest due to a second viewing of the excellent film Interstellar I am prepared to look past the reported "holistic drivel" the authors dismiss and take on the jargon of valence and square potential wells. One small reward for this persistence is a passing reference to superposition, unless I have missed earlier references entirely. Not yet prepared however to start reading from the beginning.
— Jan 05, 2015 05:08AM
Kyle
is on page 135 of 242
Back on solid ground, so to speak, in a straightforward account of how identical yet unique electrons move around the nucleus. Good to see that Mendeleev's Table still supports quantum number and the elusive spin-statistics, but while demonstrating why we don't fall through the floor the authors have left the question wide open for why we don't levitate in the air like Wile E. Coyote as he steps off of a cliff ledge.
— Jan 03, 2015 06:56PM
Kyle
is on page 115 of 242
Doing my best to keep track of the metaphors employed, so now there are imaginary clocks lined up inside a basketball that somehow resemble the standing waves of a guitar string and a swimming pool because science. I would perhaps be in a more open frame of mind if the authors weren't so keen to do away with the myths and hocus pocus others (who exactly?) associate with quantum physics, like in Ozeki's Tale?
— Jan 03, 2015 02:53AM
Kyle
is on page 90 of 242
Now they are working with a cluster of clocks, and while they reassure the readers that it is merely a device for explaining patterns in hard-to-visualize set of equations, it may be time to consider how apt this explaination will be in a decade or two where concepts like winding a clock will be as quaint as dialing a number on a rotatary phone. The end of this chapter moves into a digital understanding via a mp3Pod.
— Jan 01, 2015 01:23AM
Kyle
is on page 74 of 242
So they are sticking with the infinite number of clocks to represent possible positions of an electron (aren't they?) to introduce some of the fundamental principles of quantum physics. Seems like a lot of extra explaining that could misleadingly lead one to believe some sort of time travel is involved. At least theorists mentioned: Heisenberg, Planck and Einstein, may have got a chuckle out of this extended analogy.
— Dec 29, 2014 12:57AM
