The Lightness of Being by Wilczek, Frank -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Title Page Dedication About the Title Reader’s Guide PART I - The Origin of Mass

1 - Getting to It

Senses and World-Models Power, Meaning, and Method The Centrality of Mass

2 - Newton’s Zeroth Law

God and the Zeroth Law Getting Real Downfall Does Mass Have an Origin?

3 - Einstein’s Second Law

Finding New Laws, Made Simple Einstein’s Second Law FAQ

4 - What Matters for Matter

Building Blocks

5 - The Hydra Within

Fermi’s Dragons Wrestling with Dragons Hydra

6 - The Bits Within the Its

Quarks: Beta Release Quarks 1.0: Through an Ultrastroboscopic Nanomicroscope Partons, Put-Ons, and Putdowns Too Simple Asymptotic Freedom (Charge Without Charge) Quarks and Gluons 2.0: Believing Is Seeing

7 - Symmetry Incarnate

Nuts and Bolts, Hubs and Sticks Quarks and Gluons 3.0: Symmetry Incarnate

8 - The Grid (Persistence of Ether)

A Brief History of Ether Special Relativity and the Grid Gluons and the Grid Material Grid The Mother of All Grids: Metric Field Grid Weighs Recapitulation

9 - Computing Matter

A Toy Model in Thirty-Two Dimensions Laplace’s Demon versus Grid Pandemonium The Big (Number) Crunch

10 - The Origin of Mass

First Idea: Blossoming Storms Second Idea: Costly Cancellations Third Idea: Einstein’s Second Law Scholium

11 - Music of the Grid: A Poem in Two Equations 12 - Profound Simplicity

PART II - The Feebleness of Gravity

13 - Is Gravity Feeble? Yes, in Practice 14 - Is Gravity Feeble? No, in Theory

Universality and Unification

15 - The Right Question 16 - A Beautiful Answer

Pythagoras’ Vision, Planck’s Units Unification Scorecard Next Steps

PART III - Is Beauty Truth?

17 - Unification: The Siren’s Song

The Core: Choice Bits Critique The Charge Account The Siren’s Song

18 - Unification: Through a Glass, Darkly

Symmetry Not Correcting Our Vision A Near Miss

19 - Truthification

Upping the Ante: More Unification

20 - Unification ♥ SUSY

Correcting the Correction Gravity Too

21 - Anticipating a New Golden Age

The LHC Project Dark Matter in the Balance One Shoe Heard From; Listening for Others

Epilogue Acknowledgements Appendix A - Particles Have Mass, the World Has Energy Appendix B - The Multilayered, Multicolored Cosmic Superconductor Appendix C - From “Not Wrong” to (Maybe) Right Glossary Notes Illustration Credits Index Copyright Page