"Pay It Forward", and stretch your mind to think outside of it's linear three dimensional container...Feed Thy Head!
Get out more & read MORE!!
I will reccomend the following.........
http://www.weburbia.com/pg/strings.htm
"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." How much can physics explain? This free on-line, downloadable book presents a startlingly integrated world view from the forefront of physics. So often we read about the new quantum paradigm which has replaced the old mechanistic philosophy of physics, but seldom do we find "what the paradigm is" spelled out so succinctly. Throughout this book, the author returns to the principle of event symmetry -- in particle physics, in cosmology, in superstring theory, in epistemology. Coupled to the storyteller's paradigm this new idea of philosophy and physics dares to free us from the constraints of our intuition, to reveal natures truths.
How much can physics explain? "Event-Symmetric Space-Time" presents a startlingly integrated world view from the forefront of physics. So often we read about the new quantum paradigm which has replaced the old mechanistic philosophy of physics, but seldom do we find "what the paradigm is" spelt out so succinctly. "The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." (Muriel Rukeyser) This is the storyteller's point of view. Through a literal interpretation of those words we transcend causality and determinism to see the quantum multiverse as a whole.
Throughout this book, the author returns to the principle of event symmetry -- in particle physics, in cosmology, in superstring theory, in epistemology. Coupled to the storyteller's paradigm this new idea of philosophy and physics dares to free us from the constraints of our intuition, to reveal natures truths. We are in the midst of a revolution in our understanding of physics and the universe. This new interpretation of superstring theory is slowly helping to bring physicists' long search for the holy grail of knowledge to fruition.
At the debut of the twentieth century Einstein revealed how the laws of nature are independent of any co-ordinate system. According to general relativity, no matter how a reference frame of space-time is turned, pulled and stretched, the laws of physics remain the same because gravity keeps track of the changes. Einstein's only restriction was that he did not allow space-time to tear. You cannot cut out two pieces of space-time and swap them over expecting the forces of nature to compensate, or can you? Research attempting to form a theory of quantum gravity suggests that space-time can tear and reconnect in ways which change its topology. This book suggests that Einstein's symmetry must be extended to allow space-time to be atomised into space-time events which can be pulled apart and recombined in any permutation. The unified forces of nature must permit this "event symmetry" just as gravity already permits the more restricted co-ordinate transformations.
Recently theorists have discovered matrix models of superstring theories which vindicate these ideas. In this new picture pioneered by Leonard Susskind at Stanford, the co-ordinates of space-time have been replaced by anti-commuting matrices in the same way that quantum theory modified the commuting observables of position and momentum seventy years before. Now it is space-time itself which is being remoulded. In the limit where the co-ordinate matrices commute they can be diagonalised simultaneously so that their eigenvalues represent the co-ordinates of classical space-time events. The order of these events can be permuted under the symmetry of the model and thus the principle of event-symmetry is realised. In the true non-commuting geometry this is generalised to a matrix group symmetry which unifies gauge symmetry and particle statistics. These features had been previously predicted as a natural outcome of event symmetry. Other predictions to be found in this book, such as the relationship between multiple-quantisation and dimension, may further help string theorists to understand the nature of space and time.
