Emergence in Condensed Matter and Quantum Gravity: A Nontechnical Review

This book surveys the science at a semipopular, Scientific American-level. It is even-handed with regard to competing directions of research and philosophical positions. It is hard to get even two people to agree on anything, yet a million billion water molecules can suddenly and abruptly coordinate to lock themselves into an ice crystal or liberate one another to billow outwards as steam. The marvelous self-organizing capacity of matter is one of the central and deepest puzzles of physics, with implications for all the natural sciences. Physicists in the past century have found a remarkable diversity of phases of matter-and equally remarkable commonalities within that diversity. The pace of discovery has, if anything, only quickened in recent years with the appreciation of quantum phases of matter and so-called topological order. The study of seemingly humdrum materials has made contact with the more exotic realm of quantum gravity, as theorists realize that the spacetime continuum may itself be a phase of some deeper and still unknown constituents. These developments flesh out the sometimes vague concept of the emergence-how exactly it is that complexity begets simplicity.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Springer
Published: 08/11/2022
ISBN: 9783031098949
Pages: 95
Weight: 0.37lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.23d