Physics on the fringe : smoke rings, circlons, and alternative theories of everything / Margaret Wertheim.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wertheim, Margaret.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Physics.

Mathematical physics.

Grand unified theories (Nuclear physics).

Physical Description:

x, 323 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 22 cm

Edition:

First U.S. edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Walker, 2011.

Summary:

Centuries ago, natural philosophers puzzled out the laws of nature using the tools of observation and experimentation. Today, theoretical physics has become mathematically inscrutable, accessible only to an elite few. In rejecting this abstraction, outsider theorists insist that nature speaks a language we can all understand. Through a profoundly human profile of Jim Carter, Wertheim's exploration of the bizarre world of fringe physics challenges our conception of what science is, how it works, and who it is for. Jim Carter, the Einstein of outsiders, has developed his own complete theory of matter and energy and gravity that he demonstrates with experiments in his backyard'-with garbage cans and a disco fog machine he makes smoke rings to test his ideas about atoms.

Contents:

A trailer park owner imagines the world

Outsider science. Under the hood of the universe ; Counterpart universes "excisting" ; 'A budget of paradoxes'

Jim's world. There's diggers, and there's everyone else ; The four sexes ; Circlon science ; Smoke rings ; Creating the world ; Gravity and levity

Sciences of imaginary solutions. A reformation of science? ; Swimming physicists ; Tree rings

Appendix. 'The principles of circlon synchronicity and the living universe' / by James Carter.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [309]-314) and index.

ISBN:

9780802715135

0802715133

OCLC:

757730904