Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Summarized below are the latest theories in physics, the set of rules everything abides by. Most say Einstein was bored and deemed unfit for schooling. Are you bored? I bet the next Einstein is living amongst us!
But first, refresh your mind on the most beautiful of theories — general relatively… don’t be scared.
ONE & ourselves
Our species will not last long. It does not seem to be made of the stuff that has allowed the turtle, for example to continue to exist more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years; for hundreds of times longer, that is, than we have even been in existence. We belong to a short-lived genus of species. All of our cousins are already extinct. What’s more, we do damage. There are frontiers where we are learning, and our desire for knowledge burns. They are in the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, at the origins of the cosmos, in the nature of time, in the phenomenon of black holes, and in the workings of our own thought processes. Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world. And it’s breathtaking. audio sample
TWO & general relatively
A gravitational field is not diffused through space; A gravitational field is space itself. An entity that undulates, flexes, curves, twists. We are immersed in a gigantic flexible snail-shell. A colourful and amazing world where the unbounded extensions of interstellar space ripple and sway like the surface of the sea. audio sample
THREE & quanta
Heisenberg imagines that electrons do not always exist. They only exist when someone watches them, or better, when they are interacting with something else. In quantum mechanics no object has a definite position, except when colliding headlong with something else. audio sample
FOUR & the architecture of the universe
Science begins with a vision. For millennia the earth was below, the sky was above. Then the sun, moon and stars revolved around us. Then, the Earth is a great stone that floats suspended in space. Later, Copernicus understands and shows that our Earth is not at the centre of the dance of the planets, but that the sun is there instead. Our planet becomes one amongst the others. audio sample
FIVE & particles
Even if we observe an empty region of space, in which there are no atoms, we still detect a minute swarming of these particles. There is no such thing as a real void, one that is completely empty. Just as the calmest sea looked at closely sways and trembles, however slightly, so the fields that form the world are subject to minute fluctuations. audio sample
SIX & grains of space
In the heavens we can now observe black holes formed by collapsed stars. Crushed by its own weight, the matter of these stars has collapsed upon itself and disappeared from our view. Once compressed to the maximum, it rebounds and begins to expand again. This leads to an explosion of the black hole. audio summary
SEVEN & probability, time and the heat of black holes
In every case in which heat exchange does not occur, or when the heat exchanged is negligible, we see that the future behaves exactly like the past. While there is no friction, for instance, a pendulum can swing forever. But if there is friction then the pendulum heats its supports slightly, loses energy and slows down. Friction produces heat. And immediately we are able to distinguish the future (towards which the pendulum slows) from the past. audio sample
I bumped into Seven Brief Lessons on Physics at a book store during my current quest: learning about the mind. Published in 2015, this book is perfect at refreshing what you might forgot or missed in physics. I read a few lessons of this book aloud to friends, others I listened to on audible. Divided into seven, easy to digest chapters… it is a mind-boggling, light read.
