This book provides a unified overview of "modern physics" - combining its foundational pillars: relativity, quantum physics and gravity - and takes the reader on a tour of fundamental physics, through structural, historical and biographical perspectives. The book presents a "big picture" of physics, as well as its completion in terms of a new vision of the quantum theory of space, time, matter and energy.
Chapters explore the overarching and unfinished structure of fundamental physics, defined via the three fundamental constants of physics (the velocity of light, the gravitational constant and the Planck constant).
The book also celebrates the centenary of quantum mechanics, and the apparent conceptual conflict between quantum theory and the deepest theory of spacetime physics, Einstein's general theory of relativity, and the resolution of that conflict in a new ("gravitized quantum") view of the problem of quantum gravity.
This book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students of physics, professional physicists and scientists from other disciplines, as well as a general audience of non-professionals interested in the topic.
Key features:
- Presents a cohesive and accessible overview of fundamental physics and its worldview
- Intertwines historical and biographical perspectives with scientific aspects
- Discusses a timely and cutting-edge topic at the forefront of research and discussion
Tristan Hübsch (b. 1958) is a Professor of Physics at Howard University, Washington, DC, USA, a Visiting Professor at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, and a Research Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. His professional publications include over 130 research articles in string theory, quantum field theory and related mathematical physics, supersymmetry, high energy physics, cosmology and quantum foundations, and three books. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia, USA.
Djordje Minic (b. 1964) is Professor of Physics at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA. He has coauthored more than 180 publications in string theory, quantum gravity, quantum field theory and its applications, high energy physics, cosmology and quantum foundations. For his work in theoretical physics, he has been acknowledged with many awards including the Buchalter Prize, the Marko Jaric Prize, and awards from the Gravity Research Foundation and the Julian Schwinger Foundation. He is a foreign member of the Serbian Academy of Nonlinear Sciences, and he lives with his family in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.
