Lee Smolin

The Trouble with Physics is a groundbreaking account of the state of modern physics: of how we got from Einstein and Relativity through quantum mechanics to the strange and bizarre predictions of string theory, full of unseen dimensions and multiple universes. Lee Smolin not only provides a brilliant laymans overview of current research as we attempt to build a theory of everything, but also questions many of the assumptions that lie behind string theory. In doing so, he describes some of the daring, outlandish ideas that will propel research in years to come.

In this groundbreaking new book, the renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin argues that physics - the basis for all other science - has lost its way. The problem is string theory, an ambitious attempt to formulate 'a theory of everything' that explains all the forces of nature. Articulate, passionate and authoritative, Smolin charts the rise and fall of string theory and takes a fascinating look at what will replace it. A group of young theorists has begun to develop exciting new, testable ideas. Smolin tells us who to watch for in the coming years and how we can find the next Einstein.

La teoría de cuerdas es un término familiar no sólo en la comunidad de los físicos teóricos, también ha logrado captar la atención –y la imaginación– de muchos legos. No es sorprendente, ya que se tr

Cosmology is in crisis The more we discover the more puzzling the universe appears to be How and why are the laws of nature what they are A philosopher and a physicist world renowned for their radical ideas in their fields argue for a revolution To keep cosmology scientific we must replace the old view in which the universe is governed by immutable laws by a new one in which laws evolve Then we can hope to explain them The revolution that Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin propose relies on three central ideas There is only one universe at a time Time is real everything in the structure and regularities of nature changes sooner or later Mathematics which has trouble with time is not the oracle of nature and the prophet of science it is simply a tool with great power and immense limitations The argument is readily accessible to non scientists as well as to the physicists and cosmologists whom it challenges

Quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory ever formulated The only problem with it argues Lee Smolin is that it is wrong a fount of provocative ideas lucid upbeat and finally optimistic Graham Farmelo Nature Human beings says Lee Smolin author of The Trouble With Physics have always had a problem with the boundary between reality and fantasy confusing our representations of the world with the world itself Nowhere is this more evident than in quantum physics which forms the basis for our understanding of everything from elementary particles to the behaviour of materials While quantum mechanics is currently our best theory of nature at an atomic scale it has many puzzling qualities qualities that preclude realism and therefore give an incomplete description of nature Rather than question this version of quantum mechanics however whole groups of physicists have embraced it as correct and rejected realism Subscribing to a kind of magical thinking they believe that what is real is far beyond the world we perceive indeed that the true world is hidden from our perception Back in the 1920s Einstein both a realist and a physicist believed that it was necessary to go beyond quantum mechanics to disco

El complejo universo de las fuerzas y partículas fundamentalesLa teoría de cuerdas es un término familiar no sólo en la comunidad de los físicos teóricos, también ha logrado captar la atención–y la i

Smolin, uno de los físicos teóricos vivos más importantes del mundo, nos embarca en un viaje apasionante por las distintas teorías que pretenden superar las limitaciones de la física cuántica. Si el mundo que experimentamos es tan distinto de lo que parece mantener la fisica cuantica, ¿que explica que sea como es? Enarbolando la bandera del realismo, Smolin repasara todas las teorias que parecen viables como alternativa a la fisica cuantica clasica, a la que considera, siguiendo las intuiciones de Einstein, incompleta, solo la parte superficial de algo mucho mas profundo.