The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
abduction, 224
accelerating expansion of universe, 7, 9, 177, 181–83, 205–16, 288, 365
“aces,” 112
Acta Mathematica (journal), 41–43
Adams, John Couch, 187–88
aging, 262–64
Alhazen, 189
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll), 153
Allen, Paul G., 347
Allen, Woody, 301
Allen Institute for Brain Science, 347–48
Alpha Centauri, 178
al-Sufi, Abd al-Rahman, 194
altitude sickness, 204
alzahr, 23
Alzheimer’s disease, 313
Amiot, Lawrence, 277
amplitude, 129, 130, 133, 139–40
Analyst, The (Berkeley), 84
ancient Greece. See Greeks, ancient
Anderson, Carl, 99–100
Andromeda nebula, 194–95
anesthesia, 334, 335, 339, 345–46
angle trisection, 375
angular momentum, 282
animal consciousness, 317–19, 322
Aniston, Jennifer, neuron, 324–27
anthropic principle, 222
antimatter, 99–100
aphasia, 307
Apple computers, 322
Aquinas, Thomas, 295, 394–95, 410
Arago, François, 188
archeological digs, 22–23
Archimedes, 83
Aristarchus of Samos, 179
actual and potential infinity, 393–94
brain and senses, 305
categories of events, 23–24
concept of matter, 79, 83–84, 92
light and vision, 189
rhetoric and, 368
Arithmetica (Diophantus), 372, 376
artificial brain and consciousness, 351–52
artificial intelligence, 277–78, 313, 425
Ascent of Man (Bronowski), 4
Asteroids (computer game), 196–97, 200–201
Astronomer Royal, 186, 187, 192
asymmetrical twins, 263–64, 280
atheism, 416–18
atomic algebra, 86–87
atomic number, 87
attractors, 62
Augustine of Hippo, Saint, 24, 241, 294, 395
Avatar (movie), 330
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 75, 114
backgammon, 23
Bacon, Francis, 403
banking system, 55
Bank of England, 55
barber paradox, 383
Barbour, Julian, 297–98
Beit Guvrin, 22
Bell, John, 162
Berger, Hans, 314
Berkeley, George, Bishop, 84
Berlin Observatory, 187–88
Bessel, Friedrich, 191–92
Besso, Michele, 294
Big Bang, 9, 210–13, 217, 226–27, 228, 240, 260, 274, 287–93
Big Ben, 244
Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, 377
black hole information paradox, 285–87
black holes, 269–70, 272–74, 274, 278–82, 284–87
Black Swan, The (Taleb), 13
black swans, 230–31
Blair, Tony, 53
Body in Question (Miller), 4
Bohr, Niels, 99, 153, 169, 426
Boltzmann, Ludwig, 89
Bombelli, Rafael, 372–73
Book of Optics (Alhazen), 189
Borges, Jorge Luis, 177
boundedness, 198–202
Boyle, Robert, 84
Bradwardine, Thomas, 395
Brady, Nicholas, 85–86
Brahmagupta, 372
Brahman, 320
brain
consciousness and, 304–13, 320–23
free will and, 335–39
Jennifer Aniston neuron, 324–27
neural telescopes, 5, 313–16, 323
sleep and, 339–45
brain function, 306–7
brain plasticity, 307
Braudel, Fernand, 55–56
Brief History of Time, A (Hawking), 10, 273
Broca, Paul, 307
Brown, Robert, 90–91
Bruno, Giordano, 182
Bulgarian state lottery, 60
California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 99, 101, 165, 286, 321–23, 324
Cambrian period, 59
Cambridge University, 32, 69, 165, 227
Candelas, Philip, 148
“Can One Hear the Shape of a Drum?” (Kac), 216
Cantor, Georg, 396–405
Cardano, Girolamo, 24–26
Carrey, Jim, 196
Carroll, Lewis, 153
cascade particles, 105
Case for God, The (Armstrong), 172, 417
Cassini, Giovanni, 189–90
Castro, Patricía, 217
celestial sphere, 180–83, 190–91, 196
cello, 75–76, 78, 114–15, 119–20, 130–31, 133, 216
celluloid, 88
cellulose acetate, 88
Center for Sleep and Consciousness, 339–40
Cepheid stars, 193–95
cesium fountain, 244
Chadwick, James, 98
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan, 271
chaos, 21–71
Chaos (journal), 66–67
chaos theory, 46, 234, 406, 426
evolutionary biology and, 59–60
evolutionary tree and, 61–63
policy decisions and, 52–57
religion and God, 68–71, 169–70
chimpanzees, 318
Chinese Room, 338–39
Chomsky, Noam, 390–91
Christmas crackers, 363–64, 390–91, 393–94
Church, Alonzo, 420–21
Cicero, 178
City of God (Augustine), 395
Clairaut, Alexis, 31
Cleverbot (app), 301–2, 317, 332, 337–38
climate change, 54
cloud chambers, 99–101
comets, 186
Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, A (Penrose), 292
Comte, Auguste, 11–12, 193, 415
Confessions (Augustine), 241
Connes, Alain, 298
consciousness, 149, 301–59, 407, 414, 426–27
continuous theory of matter, 79–80, 83–84, 86, 89, 92
continuum hypothesis, 404, 407–8
convergence, 62
Copenhagen interpretation, 169
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 183, 197–98, 202, 229
corpus callosotomy, 307–10
corpuscular theory of light, 85
cosmic light horizon, 212–13, 214, 218
cosmic microwave background radiation, 212, 217–19, 220–21, 285, 291
cosmic rays, 99, 101–2, 135–36
cosmic speed limit, 188–90
cosmological constant, 205, 215–16
cosmological inflation, 7, 219–23, 225
cosmology and religion, 226–30
Cosmos (Sagan), 4
Coulson, Charles, 17
Curtis, Heber, 194–95
Cusanus, Nicolaus, 182
cyclical models, 285–91
Cygnus X-1, 272–73
Dalton, John, 86
Darboux, Gaston, 41
dark, 215
dark energy, 214, 215, 225, 365
da Vinci, Leonardo, 305
Dawkins, Richard, 15, 17, 227, 229
death, consciousness after, 353–55
death-awareness, 318
de Boisbaudran, Paul-Émile Lecoq, 88
de la Rue, Warren, 12
Delta baryon, 104
Dennett, Daniel, 357–58
Descartes, René, 189, 302, 306, 331, 359, 373, 410
Dhammapada, 333
dice, 21–27
atomic matter of, 76–77, 80, 88
chance and natural selection, 57–58
dynamical systems and rolling, 65–68
patterns in rolls, 22, 24–25, 55–56
predicting roll of, 21–27, 37–38, 46
quantum physics and, 157–58
digital technology, 241
discrete theory of matter, 80, 86, 88–89
division by zero, 32–34, 84, 119
Doctor Who (TV series), 144–45
“Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?” (Lorenz), 48
dopamine, 224
double-slit experiment, 126–28, 135–46, 155–56, 161, 164
doubling the cube, 375
Douspis, Marian, 217
dualism, 331
du Bois-Reymond, Emil, 384–85
Earth, 79, 179–80, 183–85, 185, 218
shape of, 197–98
speed of light, 189–90
stars and, 191–92
earth moon sun triangle, 179–80, 180
echolocation, 59
Eddington, Arthur, 265–66, 273–74
“Edges,” 14
EEG (electroencephalography), 313–16, 323, 340
eightfold way, 107–8
cosmological constant, 205, 215–16
electromagnetic radiation, 133–35
general relativity, 9, 12, 219, 260, 261, 262, 263–67, 271–74, 278
mass–energy equivalence, 103
photoelectric effect, 136
special relativity, 100–101, 133–35, 240, 244, 247, 248, 254–56, 294
“spooky action at a distance,” 163–64
uncertainty principle, 161–64
Einstein’s Dreams (Lightman), 269
electromagnetic field, 221–22
electromagnetic force, 102–4, 270
electromagnetic radiation, 129–32, 129–35, 355
electromagnetic theory of light, 129–32
electrons, 77, 92–95, 93, 96, 98, 99–100, 102–3, 112, 118–20, 129, 132–34, 136–42, 155–57
electrostatics, 37
Elkies, Noam, 377
elliptical orbit, 184–85
embodied cognition, 424–25
emergent phenomenon, 298, 331,
End of Time, The (Barbour), 297–98
epileptic seizures, 308, 324–25
epistemology, 70, 162, 168, 170, 418–19, 425
equilateral triangles, 79, 177–78, 374–75
equivalence principle, 261, 262
Erdős, Paul, 379–80
Euclidean geometry, 368, 380–82, 405
Euler, Leonhard, 36
event horizon, 272, 273, 274, 279, 280, 281–82, 284–85
Everett, Hugh, 149
evolution, 4, 9, 56, 57–63, 221, 354
evolutionary biology, 57–61
expansion of space, 205–7
false hand illusion, 329–30
Fermat, Pierre de, 26–29
Fermat’s Last Theorem, 6, 376–77, 416
Fermi, Enrico, 102
Fermilab, 115
Ferreira, Pedro, 217
Feynman, Richard, 4, 114, 123, 124, 151, 153, 165, 272, 304
fine-tuned universe, 221–22
Finnegans Wake (Joyce), 111
first law of motion, 34–35
Fitch, Frederic, 420
Flanagan, Owen, 350
fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), 5, 315–16, 323, 333–37, 350–51, 356, 357
Foerster, Heinz von, 277
Fourier, Joseph, 36
fractal evolutionary tree, 61, 61–63
fractals, 61–62
Franklin, Melissa, 115–18, 231–32
Franklin, W. S., 48
free will, 24, 70, 164–65, 335–39
Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, 374
galaxies, 213–14
Galileo Galilei, 26, 31, 183, 189, 197–98, 226, 250, 297, 395–96, 398
Galle, Johann Gottfried, 188
gallium, 88
Gallup, Gordon, 317–19
Galois, Evariste, 375–76
Gardner, Martin, 5
gas equations, 39
Gastineau, Mickael, 64–65
Gauss, Carl Friedrich, 396
Geiger, Hans, 96–97
Gell-Mann, Murray, 104–5, 108–12, 118–19, 165
general relativity, 9, 211, 219, 260, 261, 262, 263–67, 271–74, 278, 281–82, 288
tests of, 265–67
gene therapies, 423
geometric proofs, 366–69
geometry, 23, 32–33, 80, 119, 255
George III of England, 186
Gettier, Edmund, 418–19
globes, 178
consciousness and, 319–20, 349
as imaginary number, 415–18
Pascal’s wager, 29–30, 232, 234
“God of the gaps,” 16–17, 416–17, 418
God Delusion, The (Dawkins), 15, 17
Gödel, Kurt, 258–59, 364, 386–91, 405–6
Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, 379–80, 386–90, 406–7, 420–21
“going into the red,” 372
Goldbach’s conjecture, 377
Golgi’s method, 311
Gordon, Carolyn, 216
Gould, Stephen Jay, 62
GPS (Global Positioning System), 263, 423
Grabski, Juliusz, 66–67
graphene, 6
grasshopper, 48
gravitons, 288
gravity (gravitation), 31, 35, 36–37, 39–40, 103, 215, 261–67, 270, 271–72
Great Debate (astronomy), 194–95
Greeks, ancient
astronomy and, 178, 189, 190–91, 211
mathematics and, 23–24, 366, 368, 369–70, 371–72, 376, 393–94
Gregory, James, 183–84
Grishchuk, Leonid, 217
group theory, 375–76
Guth, Alan, 219–20
Haldane, Andrew, 55
half-life, 252
Halley, Edmond, 184–85
hard problem of consciousness, 302–4, 347–48, 350
Harrington, Leo, 390
Harvard College Observatory, 193
Hawking, Stephen, 10, 150, 173, 260, 273, 274, 282, 285–87, 296, 427
Hawking radiation, 285–87
Haynes, John-Dylan, 335–36, 337, 338
hearing the shape of a drum, 216
heat flow, 36
heel bones, 22–23
Heisenberg, Werner, 107, 124, 153–54
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, 125, 153–54, 156–65, 170–71, 172–73, 234–35, 260, 270
Heron of Alexandria, 189
Herschel, Friedrich Wilhelm, 186–87, 191
Hertz, Heinrich, 94
Higgs boson, 5
Higman, Graham, 377–78
Hilbert, David, 384–86, 402, 404
Hilbert’s problem, 384–86
Hinduism, 320
Hippasus, 81
holographic principle, 287
Homer, 320
Hubble, Edwin, 195, 202, 205–6
Human Brain Project, 351–52
Hume, David, 422
Hyatt, John Wesley, 88
hydrodynamics, 37
I Ching, 29
idleness, 31
Iliad (Homer), 320
imaginary numbers, 369, 373–74, 415–16, 424–25
indivisibility, 98
induction, 407
infinite complexity, 65–68
infinite divisibility, 84–85
infinite numbers, 396–405
infinite regress, 120, 171, 406, 410
infinite universe, 9, 181–83, 196, 209, 216, 232–34, 235
inflation (cosmology), 7, 219–23, 225
Innes, Robert, 192
integrated information theory (IIT), 342–47, 344, 349–50, 352–53
International Congress of Mathematicians, 384
Internet, 345–46
inverse square law, 275
irrationality of square root of 2, 370–71, 374
irrational numbers, 81–84
“island universes,” 194
isolation, 32
Israeli Defense Force, 108
Jackson, Michael, 334
Jaynes, Julian, 319–20
Jennifer Aniston neuron, 324–27
Joyce, James, 111
Kac, Mark, 216
Kant, Immanuel, 137, 139, 194, 423, 425
kaons, 101, 102, 103, 106, 108
Kapitaniak, Tomasz and Marcin, 66–67
Karolinska Institute, 329–30
Kelvin, William Thomson, Lord, 12, 13
Kennard, Earle, 157
Kepler, Johannes, 31, 36, 183–84
Khayyam, Omar, 203
kinetic energy, 66, 89, 173, 215
Klein-Gordon equations, 114
Knowledge and Its Limits (Williamson), 420–21
known unknowns, 8–14
Koch, Christof, 321–22, 325–26, 328, 347–55, 359
Kronecker, Leopold, 402–3
Lakatos, Imre, 422–23
Lamb, Willis, 102
Lambert, Johann Heinrich, 82–83
Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 36–37, 65, 71, 125, 271–72
Large Hadron Collider (LHC), 5, 97, 113–14
Lascaux caves, 22, 241–43, 242
Laskar, Jacques, 64–65
law of inertia, 34–35
law of octaves, 87
laws of motion, 34–40, 85, 94, 245–46
Leavitt, Henrietta, 193–94, 195
Lectures on Physics (Feynman), 151
Lemaître, Georges, 205, 210, 226–27
Les Atomes (Perrin), 91
Leverrier, Urbain, 187–88
Liber de Ludo Aleae (Cardano), 26
Library of Babel, The (Borges), 177
theories of, 126–32
Lightman, Alan, 269
Linde, Andrei, 220
Lippershey, Hans, 183
Lloyd, Seth, 378–79
locked-in syndrome, 334
logistic map, 50–52
Lord of the Rings (Tolkien), 369
Lorenz, Edward, 46–48
lottery, 60
Louis XI of France, 24
Lucas, John, 389–90
Lucretius, 90
Luminet, Jean-Pierre, 217
luminous matter, 230
lunar eclipses, 189
Lyapunov exponent, 64
McGurk effect, 328–29
Mach, Ernst, 89
magnetic deflection, 93–95
Major, John, 53
Mandelbrot, Benoit B., 364
Manhattan Project, 110
“many worlds” hypothesis, 149
Marino, Lori, 318
Markram, Henry, 351–52
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 46
mathematics, 295–96
of nature, 30–34
science vs., 364–66
of symmetry, 99, 105–9, 118–19
mathematical crackers, 363–64, 390–91, 393–94
mathematical infinities, 393–406
mathematical proofs, 366–74, 381, 422–23
mathematical set theory, 383–84
mathematical statements, 364, 369–80, 379, 386–87
Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH), 295
mathematical unknowns, 6, 9–10
Mathematician’s Apology, A (Hardy), 83
matter, 75–120
Matter and Motion (Maxwell), 49
Max Planck Institute, 217, 327–28
Maxwell, James Clerk, 37, 49, 128, 135, 427
May, Robert, 49–57
Meditations (Descartes), 302
Mendeleev, Dmitri, 86–88, 102, 103, 109
Mephistopheles, 117
Méré, Antoine Gombaud, Chevalier de, 26–28
Messiaen, Olivier, 304
Michell, John, 271–72
Michelson, Albert, 12, 245, 248–49, 272
Midnight’s Children (Rushdie), 239, 257
Milky Way, 194–95
Miller, Jonathan, 4
Mill Hill telescope, 203
Millikan, Robert Andrews, 135–36
mind-body problem, 331
“Minds, Machines and Gödel” (Lucas), 389–90
Minkowski, Hermann, 254–56
Minkowski spacetime, 255–56
mirror self-recognition test, 317–19
Mittag-Leffler, Gösta, 42–43, 195, 403
mixed state, 144
Möbius strip, 363–64
Mora, Patricia, 277
Morley, Edward, 245, 248–49, 272
Mother Teresa, 227
Mount Baldy, 321–22
Mount Cook, 269
Mount Wilson telescope, 101, 195
Mr. Tompkins in Paperback (Gamow), 142
musical harmony, 78–79
mysterianism, 349–50
National Physical Laboratory, 244
National Weather Service, 48
natural selection, 57–59
Nature (journal), 10
Navier-Stokes equations, 37
Neddermeyer, Seth, 100
Ne’eman, Yuval, 108–9
negative numbers, 372–73
neurons, 324–25
neuron theory, 311–13
neuroscience, 5–6. See also brain
Newlands, John, 87
Newton, Isaac, 7–8, 30–38, 70–71, 84–85, 275
law of universal gravitation, 35, 186
laws of motion, 34–40, 85, 94, 245–46
Principia Mathematica, 31, 34–36, 37, 85, 245–46, 250
Nishijima, Kazuhiko, 104–5
no-hair theorem, 282
North Pole, 381
number 31, 223
observable universe, 83
observation effect, 160–65
observer effect, 142–50
“Ode to Saint Cecilia” (Brady), 85–86
Odyssey (Homer), 320
On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (Bruno), 182
On the Nature of Things (Lucretius), 90
ontology, 70, 162, 168, 170, 418–19, 425
Oresme, Nicolas, 180–81, 209, 226, 395, 397, 398
origins of universe, 9, 210–13. See also Big Bang
out-of-body experiences, 330–32
Owen, Adrian, 333–34
Oxford University, 291–92
Pais, Abraham, 104–5
paper globe, 177–78
paper telescopes, 322–23, 327, 328
Papplewick Pumping Station, 129–31
paradox of unknowability, 420–21
parallax, 191–92
parallel postulate, 380–82
Paris, Jeff, 390
Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank, 306, 313
particle horizon, 212–13, 214, 218
particle theory of light, 126–29, 135
Pascal’s triangle, 28–29
Pascal’s wager, 29–30, 232, 234
Penrose, Roger, 274, 287–93, 390
pentagons, 200
Penthouse (magazine), 273, 281, 286
Pepys, Samuel, 38
perceptronium, 355–56
Perelman, Grigori, 377
periodic table, 87–88, 102, 109
Perrin, Jean Baptiste, 91
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Newton), 31, 34–36, 37, 85, 245–46, 250
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Laplace), 37
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein), 356–57
philosophy of space and time, 241–42, 245
photoelectric effect, 133, 135–36
photons, 211, 212, 219–20, 288–89
physical constant, 221–22
Planck, Max, 131–32
Planck length, 414
planetary motion, 31, 36, 183–85
detection of, 186–88
Podolsky, Boris, 163
Poincaré, Henri, 38–44, 45, 63
Poincaré conjecture, 6, 40–42, 45, 377
Poisson, Siméon-Denis, 36–37
politics of chaos, 52–57
Polkinghorne, John, 69–70, 165–70, 354–55
pollen, 90–92
polyhedron, 422
Popper, Karl, 224, 230–31, 422
population dynamics, 49–54
positive curvature, 200–201, 201
positrons, 100
power of 2, 241
prime numbers, 9–10, 150, 394, 408, 422
principle of relativity, 250, 253, 261
Private Eye (magazine), 273, 281, 286
probabilistic method, 26–30, 39, 151
probability, mathematics of, 26–30, 414
Proofs and Refutations (Lakatos), 422–23
proprioception, 424
protons, 77, 87, 96–98, 99, 112
pulsating stars, 193–95
punctuated equilibria, 62
puzzle books, 5
Pythagoras, 78–79, 80, 363, 376
Pythagorean theorem, 80–81, 247–48
Pythagorean triple, 80–81
quadratic equations, 366, 377–78
qualia, 325–26
quantum, 129
quantum entanglement, 163–64
quantum fluctuation, 173, 174, 220, 285
quantum gravity, 9
Quantum Mechanics and the Particles of Nature (Sudbury), 114
quantum physics, 9, 12, 123–74, 414
Question Mark and the Mysterians (band), 350
Rabi, Isidor, 101
radioactive decay, 103–5
radioactivity, 96–98
Rainbow Serpent, 226
Ramón y Cajal, Santiago, 310–13
randomness, 10, 60, 124, 125–26, 136–37, 151, 164–65
real numbers, 373–74
reductionism, 168
Rees, Martin, 426
reincarnation, 354
Reiss, Diana, 318
relativistic velocity-addition formula, 246
relativity, 250, 253–58. See also general relativity; special relativity
Relativity Dogs (movie), 253–54, 256
religion, 15–17, 171–72. See also God
cosmology and, 226–30
rhetoric, 368
Riemann, Bernhard, 255
Riemann hypothesis, 255, 377, 379–80, 405–6, 408, 419
Robertson, Howard, 157
Robinson, Julia, 405
Rømer, Ole, 189
Rome Science Festival, 115
Rosen, Nathan, 163
Rovelli, Carlo, 298
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, 4
Royal Swedish Academy of Science, 41–42
Rubaiyat, The (Khayyam), 203
rubber band and the ant, 207–9, 208
Rufus of Ephesus, 305
rule of eight, 87
Rumsfeld, Donald, 13
Russell, Bertrand, 383–84, 418–19
Rutherford, Ernest, 96–98
Sagan, Carl, 4
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 337
Saturn, 186–87
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 75
Schrödinger, Erwin, 124, 139–40, 147
Schrödinger equation, 147, 168
Schumacher, Heinrich Christian, 396
Schwarzschild, Karl, 271
Schwarzschild limit, 271
science
chaos theory and, 52–57
importance of, 3–4
math vs., 364–66
Scientific American, 4
scientific classification, 102–3
scientific inquiry, 224–26, 229
scientific progress, 10–11
scientific theory, 224–26, 230–31, 365, 409
Searle, John, 338–39
second law of thermodynamics, 282–84, 287, 290
self-awareness, 317–19
sense of self, 317, 319, 331, 342, 343
Serber, Robert, 110–11
Shakespeare, William, 211
shape of universe, 196–202, 228, 258
Shapley, Harlow, 194–95
Shull, Clifford, 159–60
silo mentality, 167–68
Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, 6, 7, 15
singularities, 274–78
Singularity Is Near, The (Kurzweil), 277– 78
Singularity movement, 10, 277–78
61 Cygni, 191–92
Skeptical Chymist, The (Boyle), 84
sleep, 339–42
Small Magellanic Cloud, 193
Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, 194
Socrates, 418
solar eclipses, 189
solipsism, 350
special relativity, 133–35, 240, 244, 247, 248, 250, 253–58, 294
special unitary group, 106–7
speed of light, 188–90, 245–48
Sphinx Observatory, 203–4
spiral nebulae, 194–95
split brains, 308–10
“spooky action at a distance,” 163–64
square root of 2, 82–83, 370–74, 425
squaring the circle, 374–75, 376
stability of solar system, 39–44, 63–65
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, 112–13
stars, 11–12, 178, 180–81, 190–95, 203–7, 213–16, 270
static universe, 180–81
stellar distance, 206–7
stellar parallax, 191–92
stellar pulsations, 193–95
stem cells, 3
strangeness theory, 103, 104–6
string theory, 225
strong nuclear force, 103–5
Strzalko, Jaroslaw, 66–67
SU(3), 106–9
SU(6), 113–14
subatomic particles, 92–95
Sudbury, Anthony, 114
sun, 12, 179–80, 183–85, 218, 243
supernovae, 213
Surrogate (movie), 330
symmetry in mathematics, 99, 105–9, 118–19
synapses, 7, 312–13, 324–25, 378
Taleb, Nassim, 13
Tartaglia, Niccolò Fontana, 27
technology, 5–6
Tegmark, Max, 295
telescopes, 179–80, 183–90, 186, 191, 203–4, 212, 303
telomeres, 6
tennis, 333–35
tests of general relativity, 265–67
thalamocortical system, 343–44
Thales of Miletus, 366–67
Theory of Everything (ToE), 10, 36, 37
theory of knowledge, 418–19
theory of relativity, 250, 253–58. See also general relativity; special relativity
thermal time hypothesis, 298
thermodynamics, 282–84, 287, 290
Things We Cannot Know, 11–13
third law of motion, 35
Thomson, J. J., 92–95
Thorne-Hawking bet, 273
Thorne-Hawking-Preskill bet, 286–87, 290
time, 239–98
defining, 241–42
measuring, 241–44
slowing down, 247–51
speeding up and living longer, 251–53
time-energy uncertainty principle, 172–74
time standard, 243–44
TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation), 339–40
Tolkien, J.R.R., 369
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein), 427
transcendence, 15–17
transit, 184
trigonometry, 179, 184, 191–92
trisecting the angle, 375
Truman Show, The (movie), 196–97
trumpet, 119–20
Turing test, 338
twinkling stars, 193–94
twin primes conjecture, 377
type 1a supernovae, 213
unconscious, 13, 335–37, 339–40
unit of time, 243–44
Uppsala University, 40
uranium, 96–97, 123–26, 153, 154, 171
variable stars, 193–95
Vedic tradition, 320
vegetative state, 333–34
ventricles, 305
Venus, 65, 180, 184–85, 185, 203
Vilenkin, Alexander, 220
virtual reality goggles, 330
viscous fluids, 37
vitalism, 358
Wallis, John, 396
wave function, 139–40, 142–43, 146–50, 169
wavelengths, 200, 204–7, 216–17
wave-particle duality, 136
wave theory of light, 126–29, 134–35, 141
weak nuclear force, 103–5
weather forecasting, 46–48
Weeping Angel, 144–45
Weil, André, 389
Well, David, 216
Wernicke, Carl, 307
What Is the Name of This Book? (Smullyan), 364
Wheeler, John, 272
white dwarf, 270–71
Wigner, Eugene, 296
Wiles, Andrew, 376–77, 416, 428
Williamson, Timothy, 420–21
Wiseman, Richard, 327
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 356–57, 422, 427
Wolpert, Scott, 216
Woodin, Hugh, 408
Wright, Thomas, 194
Yajnavalkya, 419–20
Young, Thomas, 126–27
Young’s interference experiment. See double-slit experiment
Zel’dovich, Yakov, 217
Zeno of Elea, 84
zero, 119
equals one minus one, 172–74
Zizek, Slavoj, 13
Zweig, George, 112