The Weight of Quantum : Quantum Theory and the Structure of Physics

This book provides an overview of “modern physics” - relativity, quantum physics and gravity - taking readers through structural, historical and biographical perspectives. Readers will include university physics students, professional physicists and other scientists, and a general audience of non-professionals interested in the topic.

This book provides a unified overview of “modern physics” - combining its foundational pillars: relativity, quantum physics and gravity - and takes the reader on a tour of fundamental physics, through structural, historical and biographical perspectives. The book presents a “big picture” of physics, as well as its completion in terms of a new vision of the quantum theory of space, time, matter and energy. Chapters explore the overarching and unfinished structure of fundamental physics, defined via the three fundamental constants of physics (the velocity of light, the gravitational constant and the Planck constant). The book also celebrates the centenary of quantum mechanics, and the apparent conceptual conflict between quantum theory and the deepest theory of spacetime physics, Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and the resolution of that conflict in a new (“gravitized quantum”) view of the problem of quantum gravity. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students of physics, professional physicists and scientists from other disciplines, as well as a general audience of non-professionals interested in the topic. Key features:Presents a cohesive and accessible overview of fundamental physics and its worldviewIntertwines historical and biographical perspectives with scientific aspectsDiscusses a timely and cutting-edge topic at the forefront of research and discussion