探索终极现实：数学宇宙之旅

5星 · 超过95%的资源需积分: 12 101 浏览量更新于2024-07-18 收藏 13.61MB PDF 举报

《我们的数学宇宙：我的终极现实探索之旅》是由马克斯· tegmark撰写的一本深度探讨宇宙本质和现实理论的著作。这本书在2014年由美国阿尔弗雷德·A·诺普夫出版社出版，版权归属于Max Tegmark。作者通过个人的求索和对数学在宇宙学中的关键作用的阐述，引领读者进入一个充满惊奇的科学领域。本书的核心内容围绕着数学在宇宙观中的核心地位展开，它将宇宙论、物理学与数学紧密结合起来，提出“我们的宇宙可能是一个数学结构”的假设。Tegmark通过他的个人经历，包括与编辑Dan Frank等多位专家的交流，以及他与妻子Meia的深厚感情，为读者呈现了一种新颖的视角，即认为现实可能是由一系列数学定律和模式所决定的。书中涵盖了复杂的数学概念，如哥德尔不完备性定理、多世界解释、量子纠缠等，这些都是理解我们宇宙潜在无限可能性的关键。作者试图解答一些深层次的问题，比如宇宙是否有一个固定的数学基础，我们的观测者角色是否受到宇宙基本法则的限制，以及是否存在其他平行宇宙。章节结构严谨，从大爆炸理论开始，逐步深入到弦理论、量子引力和超弦宇宙学等前沿科学议题。Tegmark还分享了他在探索过程中遇到的挑战和思考，如何将这些理论与实际观测数据相结合，以验证或反驳这些数学宇宙的观点。值得一提的是，书中的封面设计巧妙地展示了可观测宇宙的边缘，以一个球体形象呈现，象征着我们宇宙的起源和边界，这与书中探讨的主题相得益彰。此外，书中还包含了一些宝贵的参考资料链接，鼓励读者进一步探究这个深奥而引人入胜的数学宇宙世界。《我们的数学宇宙》不仅是一次知识的探索，也是一次哲学上的思考，它挑战了读者对于现实的理解，并提出了未来科学研究可能的新方向。这是一本既富有学术价值又通俗易懂的著作，适合对宇宙学和数学有浓厚兴趣的读者阅读。

What’s the Ultimate Question?

For as long as our human ancestors have walked the Earth, they’ve

undoubtedly wondered what reality is all about, pondering deep existential

questions. Where did everything come from? How will it all end? How big is

it all? These questions are so captivating that virtually all human cultures

across the globe have grappled with them and passed on answers from

generation to generation, in the form of elaborate creation myths, legends and

religious doctrines. As Figure 1.2 illustrates, these questions are so difficult

that no global consensus has emerged on the answers. Instead of all cultures

converging on a unique worldview that could potentially be the ultimate

truth, their answers have differed greatly, and at least some of these

differences appear to reflect their differences in lifestyle. For example,

creation myths from ancient Egypt, where the Nile River kept the land fertile,

all have our world emerge from water. In my native Sweden, on the other

hand, where fire and ice used to strongly affect survival, Norse mythology

held that life originated from (surprise!) fire and ice.

Figure 1.2: Many cosmological questions that we’ll tackle in this book have fascinated thinkers

throughout the ages, but no global consensus has emerged. The classification above is based on a

2011 presentation by MIT grad student David Hernandez for my cosmology class. Because such

simplistic taxonomies are strictly impossible, they should be taken with a large grain of salt:

Download from www.finelybook.com girro@qq.com

many religions have multiple branches and interpretations, and some fall into multiple

categories. For example, Hinduism contains aspects of all three creation options shown:

according to one legend, both the creation god Brahma (depicted) and our Universe emerged

from an egg, which in turn may have originated from water.

Click here to see a larger image.

Other big questions tackled by ancient cultures are at least as radical. What

is real? Is there more to reality than meets the eye? Yes! was Plato’s answer

over two millennia ago. In his famous cave analogy, he likened us to people

who’d lived their entire lives shackled in a cave, facing a blank wall,

watching the shadows cast by things passing behind them, and eventually

coming to mistakenly believe that these shadows were the full reality. Plato

argued that what we humans call our everyday reality is similarly just a

limited and distorted representation of the true reality, and that we must free

ourselves from our mental shackles to begin comprehending it.

If my life as a physicist has taught me anything at all, it’s that Plato was

right: modern physics has made abundantly clear that the ultimate nature of

reality isn’t what it seems. But if reality isn’t what we thought it was, then

what is it? What’s the relation between the internal reality of our mind and

the external reality? What’s everything ultimately made of? How does it all

work? Why? Is there a meaning to it all, and if so, what? As Douglas Adams

put it in his sci-fi spoof The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “What’s the

answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?”

Thinkers throughout the ages have offered a fascinating spectrum of

responses to the question “What is reality?”—either attempting to answer it

or attempting to dismiss it. Here are some examples (this list makes no claims

to be complete, and not all alternatives are mutually exclusive).

This book (and indeed my scientific career) is my personal attempt to

tackle this question. Part of the reason that thinkers have offered such a broad

spectrum of answers is clearly that they’ve chosen to interpret the question in

different ways, so I owe you an explanation of how I interpret it and how I

approach it. The word reality can have many different connotations. I use it

to mean the ultimate nature of the outside physical world that we’re part of,

and I’m fascinated by the quest to understand it better. So what’s my

approach?

One evening back in high school, I started reading Agatha Christie’s

detective novel Death on the Nile. Although I was painfully aware that my

alarm clock would go off at seven a.m., I couldn’t for the life of me put it

down until the mystery had been solved, around four a.m. I’ve been

Download from www.finelybook.com girro@qq.com

The Journey Begins

A physics approach? Isn’t that a great way to turn something exciting into

something boring? When the person sitting next to me on a plane asks what I

do, I have two options. If I feel like talking, I’ll say, “Astronomy,” which

infallibly triggers an interesting conversation.

If I don’t, I’ll say, “Physics,”

at which point they typically say something like “Oh, that was my worst

subject in high school,” and leave me alone for the rest of the flight.

Indeed, physics was also my least-favorite subject in high school. I still

remember my very first physics class. With a monotonous and sedative voice,

our teacher announced that we were going to learn about density. That

density was mass divided by volume. So if the mass was blah and the volume

was blah, then we could calculate that the density was blah blah. After that

point, all I remember is a big blur. And that whenever his experiments failed,

he’d blame humidity and say, “It worked this morning.” And that some

friends of mine couldn’t figure out why their experiment wasn’t working

until they discovered that I’d mischievously attached a magnet underneath

their oscilloscope.…

When the time came to apply for college, I decided against physics and

other technical fields, and ended up at the Stockholm School of Economics,

focusing on environmental issues. I wanted to do my small part to make our

planet a better place, and felt that the main problem wasn’t that we lacked

technical solutions, but that we didn’t properly use the technology we had. I

figured that the best way to affect people’s behavior was through their

wallets, and was intrigued by the idea of creating economic incentives that

aligned individual egoism with the common good. Alas, I soon grew

disillusioned, concluding that economics was largely a form of intellectual

prostitution where you got rewarded for saying what the powers that be

wanted to hear. Whatever a politician wanted to do, he or she could find an

economist as advisor who had argued for doing precisely that. Franklin D.

Roosevelt wanted to increase government spending, so he listened to John

Maynard Keynes, whereas Ronald Reagan wanted to decrease government

spending, so he listened to Milton Friedman.

Download from www.finelybook.com girro@qq.com

剩余582页未读，继续阅读

THESUMMERE

粉丝: 23
资源: 328

探索终极现实：数学宇宙之旅

Mathematical Methods of Statistics - Cramer 经典名著

bouc-wen hysteresis for nonlinear discrete systems

The Mathematics of Computerized Tomography

Please help me write a review of the movie 'A Beautiful Mind', with a requirement of 1000 words

mathematical explanation of diagonal loading

Following the mathematical definition of a gaussian function :implement a function named gauss (x,mu, sigma,A,K) that takes X, Il, 0 ,A and K as argumentsand returns the values of g(x ).

write a python code to compute the local order parameter of a system in gromacs

list the formula of higgs boson

最新资源