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Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics, by Jim Al-Khalili
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From Booklist
This exploration of enigmas in physics is aimed at popular-science readers, but in places, it does require at least a working knowledge of higher math. Some of the famous paradoxes (or, rather, perceived paradoxes) that quantum physicist and university professor Al-Khalili dissects are relatively easy to grasp, such as the one that explains, despite what our brains might tell us, why you only need a group of 57 people to guarantee that at least two of them will share a birthday. But others, such as Zeno’s famous paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise (which seems to suggest that, no matter how fast Achilles runs, he can never catch up to the slower tortoise), take quite a bit of explaining and occasionally some physics history or mathematics. It’s a very interesting book with some nifty surprises: Olber’s Paradox, for example, which asks why the sky gets dark at night when there are billions of stars up there, provides proof of the Big Bang theory. Not for your average brain-teaser fan, but this volume should have definite appeal to readers with the necessary grounding in the subject. --David Pitt
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“Readers who enjoy mental challenges and scientific mysteries will have fun with Al-Khalili’s lighthearted, accessible discussion.” – Publisher’s Weekly“A very interesting book with some nifty surprises.” – Booklist Online
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Product details
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books; Reprint edition (October 23, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780307986795
ISBN-13: 978-0307986795
ASIN: 0307986799
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.2 out of 5 stars
87 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#275,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
To say I am disappointed is an understatement. I am aware of most of these paradoxes already, and I think that the explanations for the paradoxes are sometimes quite poor. Also the author occasionally brings up unrelated physics, only to explain it poorly.As an example, he talks about the Quantum Zeno Effect. He spends five pages never saying exactly what it is. Just the bog-standard quotes about quantum physics being weird and who knows what "observation" really is. He jokes about the incomprehensibility of "a quantum physicist will happily tell you that the effect can be explained by "the constant collapse of the wave function into the initial decayed state"". He then does not explain what that means. As far as I can tell, he's just using jargon to impress the lay reader.I see what he intends because know what he's referencing. If you don't already know the Quantum Zeno Paradox better than he explains it, his coverage will just be baffling. Honestly, a reference to the wikipedia page on the Quantum Zeno Effect would have better than this mushy 5 page summary.Writing about complex subjects simply is hard to do. Jim Al-Khalili does not succeed.
Maybe I shouldn’t have purchased this book. The chapter 1 puzzles were all familiar to me as was chapter 2’s Achilles and the Tortoise. Chapter 3 was somewhat new as far as digging into the details. However, I question a couple of items here.1/ The assertion that the stars in consecutive shells of space, with the same thickness, radiate equal amounts of light back to Earth is questionable. Here we see an increase in the number of stars equal to the increase in volume of the shell assuming an average star density. Given a shell numbering of n, going from 1 to infinity, the increase is precisely n^3 – (n – 1)^3. Conservatively we can reduce this to simply n^3. But because these stars are further away, their apparent brightness is reduced by 1/n^2. And also because their apparent size is also reduced by 1/n^2, their ability to light up the sky is further diminished so the overall effect is a reduction of n^3/n^4 which simplifies to 1/n. Now, if we say the light emitted by stars reaching the Earth from the first shell is magnitude L, then we can generate a harmonic series L/1, L/2/ L/3, L/4, L/5………etc. The sum of the harmonic series L/n is the total for all shells. This infinite sum diverges to infinity and would result in an illuminated sky. But the sum of the partial series, limited to the extent of the visible universe, falls far short of the light intensity required to even see an object in the night sky. Hence, this is the reason why the sky appears mostly black at night. I’m not disputing the answer because this is obviously what we see but I’m questioning some of the details.2/ “Like walking too slowly down an escalator going up†is not an accurate description of light traveling in an expanding universe. It really is more like the common mathematical puzzle of the ant walking along a stretching rubber rope which does, un-intuitively, reach the end albeit an age later.These are questions by me and are posed to solicit responses; am I missing something?Update: I skimmed through the remaining chapters and was not impressed by the side-tracking to physics lessons away from discussion about the actual paradoxes. For those already familiar with the physics, this would be frustrating read. The book should be re-titled, physics lessons around apparent paradoxes. It's probably OK for those wanting to know more physics.
I enjoyed this book and found that it helped to clarify the paradoxes discussed in this book (see below). In doing so, it also provided a good overview of many of the conundrums that relativity theory and quantum mechanics have created. I give this book 5-stars and recommend it to people, like myself (a retired research metallurgist with a long ago exposure to modern phyaics in graduate school and further reading since I have retired), which have some understanding of the ideas presented in this book, but with the reservation that those with little or no background in the subjects covered are likely to view the book less positively.What is in this book-This book discusses the most important paradoxes created by modern physics, plus two introductory chapters that discusses some logic paradoxes. The chapters and their content are as follows:Chapter 1 – The Game Show Paradox – Monty Hall and how his knowledge of what is behind the three curtains alters the odds when he lets a contestant switch from their initial choice to another one.Chapter 2 – Achilles and the Tortoise – Classical paradoxes and how they are resolved.Chapter 3 – Olbers’ Paradox – Why is the sky not covered with stars, making the nighttime as bright as the daytime? The physics here is about the finite nature of the visible universe and the ideas concerning the beginning and expansion of the universe.Chapter 4 – Maxell’s Demon – The physics of the second law of thermodynamics is discussed in this chapter.Chapter 5 – The Pole in the Barn Paradox - Special relativity and length contraction are discussed in this chapter.Chapter 6 – The Paradox of Twins – This chapter focuses on special relativity and time dilation.Chapter 7 – The Grandfather Paradox – This chapter focuses on relativity theory and the possibility of travel back in time that the theory allows for.Chapter 8 – The Paradox of Laplace’s Demon – This chapter deals with the ideas of a mechanically deterministic universe and free will.Chapter 9 – The Paradox of Schrodinger’s Cat - The basic paradox of Quantum Mechanics and the question of entanglement is discussed in this chapter.Chapter 10 – Fermi’s Paradox - Fermi asked - if there are aliens from other planets why haven’t they visited (at least as far as most people are concerned) or have given any indication of their existence? The physics is about the possibilities of life on other planets.Chapter 11 - Remaining questions – These are not paradoxes, but questions which the author thinks will be answered in his lifetime, answered but not in the foreseeable future and questions that may never be answered. This chapter is only 6-pages long and only lists the questions, but does not discuss them.
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