Aaron Sidney Wright - Böcker

The vacuum is central to physicists' best theories of subatomic particles, gravitation, and cosmology. Nothingness provides the reference point with which to compare new particle creation and annihilation. Cosmologists use empty universes to study the causal structure of spacetime. Paradoxically, our best physical theories of particles, gravity, and spacetime are theories of nothingness. Stranger still, the physicists' vacuum is a hive of activity. Quantum fluctuations fill empty space with particles, and astronomers measure gravitational waves, the vibrations of empty spacetime itself.More than Nothing uses the history of the vacuum to show how technical concepts in physics are made real through everyday practice. It provides new insight into the development of twentieth-century theoretical physics through sustained analysis of understudied figures including John Wheeler's geometrodynamics and Sidney Coleman's false vacuum. It reveals the surprising influence on physicists from the psychology of impossible objects to drawings of the black hole, and the ways in which the development of the physics of the vacuum became inseparable from the development of larger cultural movements in aesthetics, art, psychology, and fiction. Across decades and across disciplines, More than Nothing shows how physicists over and again chose to study the vacuum for insight into the world around them. Drawing on newly unearthed laboratory notes, private letters, and published material, More than Nothing offers a scoping history of the vacuum as a lens into the development of modern physics.

Sidney Coleman (1937-2007) was a renowned theoretical physicist, who taught for more than forty years at Harvard University. He contributed critical work on quantum field theory, high-energy particle physics, and cosmology. He was also a remarkably effective teacher who introduced generations of physicists to quantum field theory, mentoring several leading members in the field. His sense of humor and wit became legendary. This selection of his previously unpublished correspondence illuminates changes in theoretical physics and in academic life over the course of Coleman's illustrious career.The letters show the depth of Coleman's activities and interests, including science fiction, space travel, and the US counter culture.The volume also includes Coleman's legendary lecture "Quantum Mechanics in Your Face."