Roger Penrose is a celebrated British mathematician and physicist whose work delves deeply into general relativity and cosmology. His approach to mathematics is often unconventional, weaving it with philosophical inquiries into the nature of the universe. Through his intricate arguments and visual ingenuity, he offers readers a captivating exploration of the cosmos's greatest enigmas. His writings challenge conventional thought and expand the boundaries of our understanding of reality.
Focusing on the theory of twistors and 2-spinors, this book explores their application to space-time geometry, highlighting their growing significance in understanding physical laws. It offers an in-depth examination of the conformal approach to space-time infinity, discussing general-relativistic mass and angular momentum. Additionally, the text provides a thorough spinorial classification of the full space-time curvature tensor and delves into the geometry of null geodesics, making it a valuable resource for those studying advanced concepts in physics and mathematics.
Aimed at the general reader, this guide to the universe provides a comprehensive account of the present understanding of the physical universe, and the essentials of its underlying mathematical theory.
Fearful Symmetry brings the incredible discoveries of contemporary physics within everyone's grasp. A. Zee, a distinguished physicist and skillful expositor, tells the exciting story of how today's theoretical physicists are following Einstein in their search for the beauty and simplicity of Nature. Animated by a sense of reverence and whimsy, the book describes the majestic sweep and accomplishments of twentieth-century physics. In the end, we stand in awe before the grand vision of modern physics--one of the greatest chapters in the intellectual history of humankind.
Presents a series of lectures delivered in 1994 by Hawking and Penrose, renowned professors at Cambridge and Oxford, respectively, on the general topic of how mathematical physics might best represent the realities of the universe.
From the best-selling author of The Emperor’s New Mind and The Road to Reality, a groundbreaking book that provides new views on three of cosmology’s most profound questions: What, if anything, came before the Big Bang? What is the source of order in our universe? What is its ultimate future?Current understanding of our universe dictates that all matter will eventually thin out to zero density, with huge black holes finally evaporating away into massless energy. Roger Penrose—one of the most innovative mathematicians of our time—turns around this predominant picture of the universe’s “heat death,” arguing how the expected ultimate fate of our accelerating, expanding universe can actually be reinterpreted as the “Big Bang” of a new one.Along the way to this remarkable cosmological picture, Penrose sheds new light on basic principles that underlie the behavior of our universe, describing various standard and nonstandard cosmological models, the fundamental role of the cosmic microwave background, and the key status of black holes. Ideal for both the amateur astronomer and the advanced physicist—with plenty of exciting insights for each—Cycles of Time is certain to provoke and challenge.Intellectually thrilling and accessible, this is another essential guide to the universe from one of our preeminent thinkers.
The proponents of artificial intelligence want to prove that it is only a matter of time before computers will be doing everything that a human mind can do. The author reacts against this view, by saying there is some facet of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine.
Physics has been at an awkward impasse for the past century. Two theories--
quantum mechanics and general relativity--are widely believed to be true. . .
. But they contradict each other in basic ways--they cannot both be entirely
true. InFashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe. . .
Roger Penrose, an elder statesman of physics, considers the problem. As
intellectually offbeat as he is eminent. . . he ventures here some novel ways
in which the two theories might be reconciled.--Wall Street Journal
Shadows of the Mind is a profound exploration of what modern physics has to tell us about the mind, and a visionary description of what a new physics - one that is adequate to account for our extraordinary brain - might look like. It is also a bold specul
In this book, Roger Penrose presents a masterly summary of those areas of physics in which he feels there are major unsolved problems. These ideas are then challenged by three distinguished experts from different backgrounds - Abner Shimony and Nancy Cartwright as Philosophers of science and Stephen Hawking as a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. Finally, Roger Penrose responds to their thought-provoking criticisms. This paperback edition has been updated to include a striking and easily accessible example of Gödel's theorem, and a ground-breaking proposal for a physical experiment designed to test some of Penrose's most novel ideas about quantum mechanics. Penrose's enthusiasm, insight and good humour shine through this accessible, illuminating, and brilliant account of 21st-century theoretical physics.
