Turok is a world class theoretical physicist with a great interest in innovative education as well as cosmology. The book is based on a series of lectures, and reflects the wide interests of the author. Many of Turok's lectures are available on YouTube and I highly recommend listening to them since his lecturing is as good if not better than his writing which is quite good. Turok occasionally goes back in history to give you a more complete understanding of a subject. He gives a brief biography of himself and how it develops his way of thinking and uses this to introduce the Scientific Method. He talks about some of the big experiments being done currently and then develops the history of where some of the ideas started that we are now testing. He goes way back to the Pythagoreans and Egyptians to explain the insights they had. He himself has adopted the philosophy that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in, that he got from Richard Feynman who in turn picked it up from John Von Neumann.
He goes back in history to discuss some of the greats like Newton describing his great creativity in mathematics, his physical intuition and ability to perform critical experiments. Turok then moves to the Age of Enlightenment in Scotland and gives a history of James Clerk Maxwell, and in London the great experimentalist Michael Faraday. Maxwell was a great mathematician with wide ranging interests, while Faraday had superb physical intuition and the ability to design and carry out insightful experiments. The two together did a phenomenal job of explaining electricity and magnetism and laying the groundwork for a major revolutions in industry and improvements in the quality of life for people in industrialized nations.
This combination of a great theoretician and one of the best experimenters ever, resulted in the combination of the many laws of electricity and magnetism into a single consistent mechanical framework. Using the best experimental data Maxwell was able to predict the speed of light accurately and determine that it was electromagnetic in nature. This allowed Hendrik Lorentz to see a symmetry between space and time. The resulting Lorentz transformations later helped Einstein develop general relativity. I’ve been immersed in physics and cosmology for decades and find that Turok makes connections among the work of great scientists that are much clearer than most.
Action is defined mathematically as the energy multiplied by the time or the momentum times the length. Richard Feynman used the idea of action to propose that the quantum world follows all possible histories (paths) at once with some paths more probable. He uses this idea to explain the ‘double slit’ experiment, that the particle or photon follows both paths to the screen. When you add both paths you get the Schrodinger equation. Turok points out that in solving the Schrodinger equation, that contains imaginary numbers (contain i which is the square root of -1), is an application of the Pythagorean theorem, and squaring expressions that contain imaginary numbers become real numbers and have an application to the world around us.
The symmetry concept says if you transform a system by rotating, translating or any other transformation the system should not change. It turns out that a system described in terms of its action that is unchanged by shifts in time, which is true of most physical systems, automatically has its energy conserved. For experiments on the earth both energy and momentum are conserved. The conservation laws are mathematical consequences of the symmetries of space and time and other basic ingredients found in the laws of physics.
Despite extraordinary success in predicting the outcomes of experimental measurements produced from the quantum electrodynamics theory, QED, theorists like Paul Dirac felt that the mathematical tricks like normalization, required to keep answers from blowing up to infinity, made the results suspect. He also believed that exploring beautiful mathematics would provide insight into understanding the universe.
Cosmologies such as string theory and M theory are discussed and found wanting. Turok also touches on his own theory which sees the start of the universe as just one step in a continuing cycle due possibly to the collision of two M theory membranes. He considers these theories to be powerful tools that can help us understand the universe, but they are incomplete. The number of grand unified theories, GUTS, have proliferated and have become very complex despite not including gravity.
Turok notes that a lot of the most innovative work in the 1900’s was done by Jewish scientists like Bohr and Einstein who were newcomers to the field since they had historically been kept out of the field. Turok is doing his part to set up special schools in Africa. Their purpose is to find and train students with great potential, who might otherwise be excluded, to increase the possibility that they will make the next breakthroughs.
In the last chapter he switches to quantum computing where he explains that once you get to individual particles like atoms and electrons it is possible to form qubits, quantum bits. They have this property of following all paths at the same time, and can potentially hold a great amount of information. In addition they can be entangled so they communicate essentially instantaneously. Because of the probability factor each cubit has the possibility of storing a very large numbers of bits. Any attempt by an outsider would result in a major change to the data and could be easily detected. Estimates have been made that indicate that present computer encryption systems would be useless against this speed. He sees possible connections in bringing ideas and people closer together world-wide. There are experiments showing that relatively small numbers of electrons can act together as a new type of matter and that there are many new types.
In the last chapter he uses the ideas of many people from many different eras to tie together the fantastic breakthroughs science has made with the possible creation of better communication between the scientific world and the world we live in. His hope is that using the many innovations we can create a fairer and even more interesting world in which to live.
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Top reviews from other countries
G. Dack
Who was this book written for?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2017
dgm
Great overview read for those with enquiring minds
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 1, 2013Sunflowers
One of the best books on quantum theory that I have read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 29, 2015J P Jones
Excellent and hopeful.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 28, 2013
