This book explores the Micro-World of subatomic particles and forces, including the recently discovered Higgs boson.The pursuit of nature’s smallest parts is one of mankind’s oldest quests, beginning at least 26 centuries ago. But, just in our lifetimes it seems we’ve finally “hit bottom.” Each step deeper into the Micro-World has revealed surprises, and expanded our understanding of nature on all size scales. At the bottom, we see a remarkable unity — nature is the same everywhere...

This book tells the story of our universe and how humanity fits into the grand cosmic scheme. Einstein said: "The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it is comprehensible." We humans claim to understand what lies beyond the most distant stars, what happened billions of years ago, and what will happen in the remote future. We will explore the most important things that science has discovered about our universe Then we will examine the remarkab...

This book continues our exploration of cosmology, the science of the universe as a whole.Here we examine four critical and somewhat mysterious phenomena that have shaped our universe and the science of cosmology: Inflation, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, Dark Matter, and the Cosmological Principle.Inflation was an extremely brief period of extremely rapid expansion, occurring just after the Big Bang. While not derived from any fundamental principle, Inflat...

From the 16th century onward, scientists began to understand that the stars in the heavens are suns much like our own. They started to wonder whether those other suns had their own planets. And if so, they wondered, could any of those planets be like Earth. Profound questions, but how could we answer them? Stars are typically a million times brighter than the planets that huddle near them. This means a star’s light swamps the feeble glow of any nearby planet. It seemed the search...

This book continues our exploration of stars. Here we discuss the spectacular ways in which stars die, creating supernovae that are some of the most violent events in our universe. We also explore the exotic remnants of these explosions: white dwarfs, neutron stars, and particularly, black holes. We examine how black holes can grow as massive as small galaxies, and how they can evaporate through Hawking radiation. We talk about what stars are, how they form, the life & death ...

Feynman Simplified gives mere mortals access to the fabled Feynman Lectures on Physics.Quantum mechanics is rarely taught well in introductory physics courses, largely because this challenging subject was not well taught to many of today’s instructors. Few had the opportunity to learn quantum mechanics from some who understood it profoundly; almost none learned it from one of its creators. Here more than anywhere else, Feynman excels. Here more than anywhe...

With this book you begin exploring the mysterious world of Quantum Mechanics — two words that have for over 100 years struck terror in the hearts of both physics students and the general public. As we shall see, the behavior of nature is remarkably surprising in the micro-world of molecules, atoms, and everything smaller yet. But this should be a surprise of wonder instead of terror. For most of us, nature is also surprising on the savannahs of Serengeti, but who wouldn't delight...

Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are the two major pillars of 20th century physics. These theories, launched within five years of one another, revolutionized our understanding of nature. They utterly dismantled the conceptual basis of Newtonian physics that had been the gold standard of science for over 200 years, and introduced radically new concepts that defy human intuition. These theories may represent the greatest upheaval in the history of science. Both Relativity and Quantum Mechan...

This book concludes our exploration of Quantum Mechanics in the Everyone’s Guide Series. Here, we discuss the outstanding mysteries of Quantum Mechanics and the meaning of Reality. Our topics include: EPR paradox Parallel Universes / Many Worlds Bohm’s pilot waves Bell’s Inequality Tests of Locality & Realism Spacetime Quantization & the Planck scale Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mec...

All of modern astrophysics and cosmology stands on the foundation of General Relativity that is best expressed in tensors. This book, and its prequel General Relativity 3, present the clearest, most comprehensible, and most complete introduction to the tensor calculus of differential topology, which Einstein used to explain the cosmos. Derivations that are difficult to find elsewhere, are all collected here and explained in detail.     This book explores:...

This is the third book in the Everyone’s Guide Series devoted to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity.In this book, we explore the primary application of Special Relativity: high-energy particle physics. Subatomic particles travel closer to the speed of light than any other form of matter. It is in particle physics that Special Relativity makes its greatest contribution and meets its most demanding tests.We will also examine the most famous and ...

All of modern astrophysics and cosmology stands on the foundation of General Relativity that is best expressed in tensors.This book, and its sequel, General Relativity 4: Astrophysics & Cosmology, present the clearest, most comprehensible, and most complete introduction to the tensor calculus of differential topology, which Einstein used to explain the cosmos. Derivations that are difficult to find elsewhere, are all collected here and explained in detail.This book presents...