Quantum gravity is the name given to a theory that unites general relativity - Einstein's theory of gravitation and spacetime - with quantum field theory, our framework for describing non-gravitational forces. The Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity brings together philosophers and physicists to discuss a range of conceptual issues that surface in the effort to unite these theories, focusing in particular on the ontological nature of the spacetime that results. Although there has been a great deal written about quantum gravity from the perspective of physicists and mathematicians, very little attention has been paid to the philosophical aspects. This volume closes that gap, with essays written by some of the leading researchers in the field. Individual papers defend or attack a structuralist perspective on the fundamental ontologies of our physical theories, which offers the possibility of shedding new light on a number of foundational problems. It is a book that will be of interest not only to physicists and philosophers of physics but to anyone concerned with foundational issues and curious to explore new directions in our understanding of spacetime and quantum physics.

During the last decade, scientists working in quantum theory have been engaging in promising new fields such as quantum computation and quantum information processing, and have also been reflecting on the possibilities of nonlinear behavior on the quantum level. These are challenging undertakings because (1) they will result in new solutions to important technical and practical problems that were unsolvable by the classical approaches (for example, quantum computers can calculate problems that are intractable if one uses classical computers); and (2) they open up new 'hard' problems of a fundamental nature that touch the foundation of quantum theory itself (for example, the contradiction between locality and nonlinearity and the interpretation of quantum computing as a universal process).In this book, one can distinguish two main streams of research to approach the just-mentioned problem field: (1) a theoretical structural part, which concentrates on the elaboration of a nonlinear quantum mechanics and the fundamentals of quantum computation; and (2) a theoretical experimental part, which focuses on the theoretical aspects of applications that arise from new technology and novel research perspectives such as quantum optics and quantum cryptography. Particular attention is also paid to the measurement problem, the classical limit and alternative interpretations (such as the hidden measurement approach).

This book is an introduction to the simple math patterns used to describe fundamental, stable spectral-orbital physical systems (represented as discrete hyperbolic shapes), the containment set has many-dimensions, and these dimensions possess macroscopic geometric properties (which are also discrete hyperbolic shapes). Thus, it is a description which transcends the idea of materialism (ie it is higher-dimensional), and it can also be used to model a life-form as a unified, high-dimension, geometric construct, which generates its own energy, and which has a natural structure for memory, where this construct is made in relation to the main property of the description being, in fact, the spectral properties of both material systems and of the metric-spaces which contain the material systems, where material is simply a lower dimension metric-space, and where both material-components and metric-spaces are in resonance with the containing space. Partial differential equations are defined on the many metric-spaces of this description, but their main function is to act on either the, usually, unimportant free-material components (to most often cause non-linear dynamics) or to perturb the orbits of the, quite often condensed, material trapped by (or within) the stable orbits of a very stable hyperbolic metric-space shape.

analyzing the experimental data and constructing math.ematical models of the processes under study, one has to rely rather on the physical intuition than on the strict calculations. Now let us go one step higher and explain the main title of the book. The concepts of "laminary" and "turbulent" motions were first introduced in hydrodynamics. Since the old days these concepts have considerably broadened; now the laminar and the turbulent motions have been discovered and investigated at all levels of description of nonequilibrium processes in the open systems, from kinetics to reaction diffusion. In any case, one of the principal characteristics of the turbulent motion is the existence of a large number of well-developed macroscopic degrees of freedom. For this reason the turbulent motion is extremely complicated and to a large extent unpredictable. As the laminar and the turbulent flows play an important role in the processes of evolution in the open systems, and in particular, in the processes of self-organization, the need arises for assessing the relative degree of order of laminar and turbulent motions, and also for comparing the degree of order of various turbulent motions. Without being able to make such estimates it will be impossible to determine whether the evolution is going towards higher or towards lower organization when one turbulent state is replaced by another.

This 1982 book contains selected contributions presented at the Nuffield Quantum Gravity Workshop held at Imperial College, London, in August 1981.

Reality is a rather large place. It contains protons, economies, headaches, sentences, smiles, asteroids, crimes, and numbers, and very many other things. Much of the content of our reality appears to depend on other of its content. Economies, for example, appear to depend upon people and the way they behave, amongst other things. Some of the content of our reality also appears to be, in some significant sense, more important than other of its content. Whilst none of us would wish to deny the very important role that economies play in our lives, most of us would agree that without matter arranged certain ways in space, for example, there could be no economies in the first place. Very many contemporary philosophers are concerned with how exactly we are to fill in the details of this view. What they are inclined to agree on is that reality has an over-arching hierarchical structure ordered by relations of metaphysical dependence, where chains of entities ordered by those dependence relations terminate in something fundamental. It is also commonly taken for granted that what those dependence chains terminate in is merely contingently existent - those things could have failed to exist - and consistent - they have no contradictory properties. This volume brings together fifteen essays from leading and emerging scholars that address these core, yet often under-explored, commitments.

Only a book this big could convey the majesty of the ever-expanding universe and provide a glimpse into the ultimate limits of space. Originally published in French in 1997 and updated to include recent developments, this volume takes readers on a unique, scenic exploration of the universe. More than 200 incredible, full-color photographs gathered from the Hubble Space Telescope and the largest telescopes in the world capture the magic and wonder found in the vast expanse of the universe. In a beautiful, large format, containing many full-page color spreads, Majestic Universe allows readers to witness the birth of stars; scan the sky for extrasolar planets; venture near black holes; travel into the realm of galaxies and clusters of galaxies; gauge the vastness of space with Hipparcos; and finally wonder about the history and future of our mysterious universe. Clear, enthusiastic captions accompany each image, providing details on the great theories of the structure of the cosmos; descriptions of the latest advances in cosmology; and a trip into the past in search of the origins of the universe, of space, and of time. Majestice Universe is the ultimate "vehicle" for armchair space buffs to explore the final frontier. Serge Brunier is chief editor of the journal Ciel et Espace, a photo-journalist, and the author of many nonfiction books aimed at both specialists and the general public.

The principal intent of this monograph is to present in a systematic and self-con tained fashion the basic tenets, ideas and results of a framework for the consistent unification of relativity and quantum theory based on a quantum concept of spacetime, and incorporating the basic principles of the theory of stochastic spaces in combination with those of Born's reciprocity theory. In this context, by the physicial consistency of the present framework we mean that the advocated approach to relativistic quantum theory relies on a consistent probabilistic interpretation, which is proven to be a direct extrapolation of the conventional interpretation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The central issue here is that we can derive conserved and relativistically convariant probability currents, which are shown to merge into their nonrelativistic counterparts in the nonrelativistic limit, and which at the same time explain the physical and mathe matical reasons behind the basic fact that no probability currents that consistently describe pointlike particle localizability exist in conventional relativistic quantum mechanics. Thus, it is not that we dispense with the concept oflocality, but rather the advanced central thesis is that the classical concept of locality based on point like localizability is inconsistent in the realm of relativistic quantum theory, and should be replaced by a concept of quantum locality based on stochastically formulated systems of covariance and related to the aforementioned currents.