A physics book unlike any other I’ve read. Reality is distorted by the mind-bending possibilities of physics that are beyond our reach. Sometimes, the physics has been proven, but we’re missing technological advances necessary to bring it to life, other times, it’s physics that might truly be impossible. In either case, the idea’s themselves are delightful to consume. Some minds are truly special.
Bookmarked ideas
- A tidal wave of commercial applications could be set off if we create room-temperature superconductors. Magnetic fields a million times stronger than that of the earth could become commonplace.
- Levitation for zero friction movement.
- Since water is a diamagnet, it too can levitate in the presence of a powerful magnetic field. Scientists have levitated small animals, like frogs, for example.
- Negative energy is real! The Casimir effect - the pressure felt by two parallel (neutral) plates in a vacuum by “virtual particles”. When these plates are brought close together, you can extract energy out of the system’s mutual attraction. Predicted in 1933, and proven in 1948, the attractive force was precisely measured in 1996 to be miniscule, 1/30,000 the weight of an ant.
- There are exotic solutions to relativity whereby stable wormholes can be created that transport you to other universes, or transversable wormholes where you can pass back and forth freely. The problem with these exotic solutions is that they require a fabulous amount of positive and negative matter.
The founder of antimatter (TL;DR)
A longer version of this can be found in the book.
Paul Dirac noticed that Schrödinger’s equations failed to work with the theory of relativity. In 1928, he proposed a radical reformulation (now called Dirac’s equation) that satisfied both, using a mathematical object called spinors. Additionally, these new equations showed that E = mc^2 no longer holds. Rather, it is E = +/- mc^2.
The implications of this mathematics is considered one of the greatest triumphs in theoretical physics. Not only did this new formulation predict anti-matter, which was then discovered a few years later, it also provided a theoretical justification for the fundamental phenomenon of spin.
5/5.