Part 2 - LIGHT now available!

A Journey into Modern Physics Part 2 - LIGHT is now available!

This is a condensed version of Part 2 from the main series. The same topics are included, but some of the detail has been removed or edited, to make the content more suitable for younger readers.

The LIGHT adaption of the series has been developed to predominately assist teenagers contemplating higher education in either a science or engineering subject, helping to prepare the change from school science to university thinking.

However, the LIGHT series is also suitable to anyone, regardless of age and career aspirations, who just wants to discover more about the richness of modern physics.

In Part 2-LIGHT, the story begins with the current understanding of how the universe started from something the size of a proton, described as the 'cosmic egg'. There was no explosion or 'big bang', but a sudden and astonishingly dramatic expansion, faster than light-speed.

You'll be somewhat astounded to discover that the universe has no centre and no edge and proof is offered courtesy of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - the oldest thing that we can 'see' (with suitable microwave equipment of course).

Then, meet the Primordial Black Holes, created in the early epochs of the expansion, long before the birth of the first suns. They can range in size from a particle to the size of typical black holes and may well be the source of the massive quasars that lurk at the centres of galaxies.

The story continues from the birth of the cosmic web, the largest structure in the universe, to the birth of suns and then galaxies along the filaments of the cosmic web. The role of dark matter was critical to the development of the cosmic web.

Along the way, from birth to demise, fundamental aspects of the universe will be revealed, for example; the physics of fusion that powers all the suns of the cosmos and the physics of fission, which supplies us with nuclear power and weapons of mass destruction. There will be some shocks on the way about what creates the energy in fusion and fission: it's not associated with the loss in rest-mass! So, E=mc2 has nothing to do with what causes fusion or fission! It's all to do with an increase in binding energy.

And then there are the neutrinos, the strangest of all fundamental particles, the products of radioactivity. We live in a veritable soup of trillions upon trillions of neutrinos coming from our sun and outer space. Their ability to shape-shift, as they oscillate between different flavours of neutrino and their tiny rest-mass values, indicate that when they are fully understood, this may lead to a new version of the standard model of particle physics. They are, by far, the strangest of all the fundamental particles and may even hold the secret as to how quarks beat off anti-quarks in the early universe when they were produced in equal numbers. And you'll meet the theoretical, massive, sterile neutrino. Neutrinos raise more questions than answers at the present time.

Fundamental to understanding the universe and how it works, are special and general relativity and concise, but informative descriptions of Einstein's theories are presented and you get to understand that space-time is only a mathematical model that helps us to understand reality.

Then, we move on to an aspect of quantum physics that is surrounded by a deep mystery - Quantum Entanglement. There is a very modern theory that attempts to explain the mystery and this ground-breaking explanation may also shed light on something that bothered Newton enormously. He worried about how his version of gravity could act instantaneously across huge distances. Einstein's geometric interpretation of gravity solved the issue but Newton's theory still holds good, based on gravitational forces. Perhaps this new theory, branded as ER=EPR or GR=QM, holds all the answers. It's a truly fascinating concept and one of the most interesting to gain traction in just a few years. Even from the grave, Einstein is able to turn the world of physics upside down with his predictions from general relativity and his total abhorrence of what he called 'spooky action at a distance'.

Also, you can learn all about the fabulous Multiverse that's all around us, where everything that can happen does happen in an almost infinite collection of universes! The book starts with one universe and ends with a vast multitude of them!

Then there's the theory that describes the mathematics of black holes as 3D Holograms, all due to a mixture of quantum physics, thermodynamics and general relativity, thanks to Steven Hawking's original, ground-breaking work on black holes back in the 1970s. But it is thermodynamics that, hopefully, explains how the universe will end. There are theoretical alternatives, that are none too pleasant: the big crunch, the big rip and vacuum decay. But increasing entropy and the ever-increasing expansion of the universe come to the rescue and are by far the most probable end to our universe.

From the birth of the universe to its ultimate demise and in between, it's a wonderful story, with lots of sub-stories.

Maths is kept to a minimum, but if you want to know about the maths behind much of the content, Google references are provided where you can fill your boots!

Down-loads are free if you are enrolled in AMAZON's Kindle-Unlimited programme.

If you have to pay, be consoled by the fact that it's cheaper than the equivalent main series down-load!