Yuku free message boards

Einstein Defiant: Genius Versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution
Edmund Blair Bolles

A scandal hovers over the history of 20th century physics. Albert Einstein, the century's greatest physicist, was never able to come to terms with quantum mechanics, the century's greatest theoretical achievement. For physicists who routinely use both quantum laws and Einstein's ideas, this contradiction can be almost too embarrassing to dwell on. Yet Einstein was one of the founders of quantum physics and he spent many years preaching the quantum's importance and its revolutionary nature.
More information

Einstein's Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time
Marcia Bartusiak

A new generation of observatories, now being completed worldwide, will give astronomers not just a new window on the cosmos but a whole new sense with which to explore and experience the heavens above us. Instead of collecting light waves or radio waves, these novel instruments will allow astronomers to at last place their hands upon the fabric of space-time and feel the very rhythms of the universe.
More Information

NASA's Beyond Einstein Program: An Architecture for Implementation
Committee on NASA's Einstein Program

Observations of the cosmos now have the potential to extend our basic physical laws beyond where 20th-century research left them. Such observations can provide stringent new tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity, indicate how to extend the Standard Model of elementary-particle physics, and-if direct measurements of gravitational waves were to be made-give astrophysics an entirely new way of observing the universe.
More Information

Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century
Committee on the Physics of the Universe

Advances made by physicists in understanding matter, space, and time and by astronomers in understanding the universe as a whole have closely intertwined the question being asked about the universe at its two extremes, the very large and the very small. This report identifies 11 key questions that have a good chance to be answered in the next decade.
More Information

Controlling the Quantum World: The Science of Atoms, Molecules, and Photons
Committee on AMO 2010

Discusses both the roles and challenges for AMO science in instrumentation; scientific research near absolute zero; development of extremely intense x-ray and laser sources; exploration and control of molecular processes; photonics at the nanoscale level; and development of quantum information technology. This book also offers an assessment of and recommendations about critical issues concerning maintaining U.S. leadership in AMO science and technology.
More Information

The Quantum Zoo: A Tourist's Guide to the Neverending Universe
Marcus Chown

The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einstein's general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world we live in. But, almost a century after their advent, most people haven't the slightest clue what either is about. Did you know that there's so much empty space inside matter that the entire human race could be squeezed into the volume of a sugar cube?
More Information

Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities
Jeffrey S. Rosenthal

From terrorist attacks to big money jackpots, Struck by Lightning deconstructs the odds and oddities of chance, examining both the relevant and irreverent role of randomness in our everyday lives.
More Information

Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science Ends...and Pseudoscience Begins
Charles M. Wynn and Arthur W. Wiggins

Astrology... poltergeists and ghosts... firewalking... spontaneous human combustion... psychic surgery... ESP. This is the stuff of tabloid headlines. Sure, many people find them laughable, but consider that these papers are all staying in business because people are buying them-and often believing in their outrageous stories, even labeling it all science.
More Information

Revealing the Hidden Nature of Space and Time: Charting the Course for Elementary Particle Physics
Committee on Elementary Particle Physics in the 21st Century

Provides an assessment of the scientific challenges in particle physics, including the key questions and experimental opportunities, the current status of the U.S. program and the strategic framework in which it sits and a set of strategic principles and recommendations to sustain a competitive and globally relevant U.S. particle physics program.
More Information

Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos
Paul Halpern and Paul Wesson

Cosmologists yearn to behold the unseen elements of our universe. And as new technologies become more powerful and precise, scientists are getting their wish though these tools are challenging the limits of our imagination as fast as they are answering many longstanding questions.
More Information