Steven M. Christensen's Quantum Theory of Gravity: Essays in honor of the 60th PDF

By Steven M. Christensen

ISBN-10: 0852747551

ISBN-13: 9780852747551

The 33 essays during this quantity jointly offer a invaluable evaluate of the growth in the direction of a concept of quantum gravity, and supply succinct remedy of: quantum box thought in curved space-times, supergravity, cosmology, black holes, quantum geometry, supersymmetry and similar phenomena.

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Additional resources for Quantum Theory of Gravity: Essays in honor of the 60th birthday of Bryce S. DeWitt

Example text

Sunlight apart, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle explains something much closer to home: the very existence of the atoms in our bodies. UNCERTAINTY AND THE EXISTENCE OF ATOMS By 1911 the Cambridge experiments of New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford had revealed the atom as resembling a miniature solar system. Tiny electrons flitted about a compact atomic nucleus much like planets around the Sun. However, according to Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, an orbiting electron should radiate light energy and, within a mere hundred-millionth of a second, spiral into the nucleus.

It also prevents far bigger things from shrinking without limit. The far bigger things in question are stars. UNCERTAINTY AND STARS A star is a giant ball of gas held together by the gravitational pull of its own matter. That pull is constantly trying to shrink the star and, if unopposed, would very quickly collapse it down to the merest speck—a black hole. For the Sun this would take less than half an hour. Since the Sun is very definitely not shrinking down to a speck, there must be another force counteracting gravity.

A higher-frequency wave has more peaks and troughs in a given space. It is choppier, more violent. In the case of an atom, such a wave corresponds to a faster-moving, more energetic electron. And a fastermoving, more energetic electron is able to defy the electrical attraction of the nucleus and orbit farther away. The picture that emerges is of an electron that is permitted to orbit at only certain special distances from the nucleus. This is quite unlike our solar system where a planet such as Earth could, in principle, orbit at any distance whatsoever from the Sun.

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Quantum Theory of Gravity: Essays in honor of the 60th birthday of Bryce S. DeWitt by Steven M. Christensen


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