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Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg teaches at the University of Texas, Austin. He has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics and the National Medal of Science. His latest book is To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science. His essay in this issue is based on the fourth annual Patrusky Lecture of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, delivered in San Antonio in October 2016. (January 2017)

Steven Weinberg and the Puzzle of Quantum Mechanics

April 6, 2017 issue

The physicist Eric J. Heller’s Transport XIII (2003), inspired by electron flow experiments conducted at Harvard. According to Heller, the image ‘shows two kinds of chaos: a random quantum wave on the surface of a sphere, and chaotic classical electron paths in a semiconductor launched over a range of angles from a particular point. Even though one is quantum mechanical and the other classical, they are related: the chaotic classical paths cause random quantum waves to appear when the classical system is solved quantum mechanically.’

The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics

Despite its great successes, arguments continue about its meaning and its future.

January 19, 2017 issue

Letter

N. David Mermin

Steven Weinberg and the Puzzle of Quantum Mechanics

April 6, 2017 issue

The Whig History of Science: An Exchange

February 25, 2016 issue

‘Scenography of the Copernican World System’; engraving from Andreas Cellarius’s Harmonia macrocosmica, 1660

Eye on the Present—The Whig History of Science

December 17, 2015 issue

Exchange

Arthur M. Silverstein

The Whig History of Science: An Exchange

February 25, 2016 issue

A view of about a quarter of the ‘Hubble Deep Field,’ a tiny patch of sky about one thirtieth the diameter of the full moon, photographed in December 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope with an exposure time of ten days, showing the ‘deepest-ever’ view of the universe. The galaxies in this picture are so far away that their light has been traveling to us for most of the history of the universe.

Physics: What We Do and Don’t Know

November 7, 2013 issue

The Election—IV

November 8, 2012 issue

Part of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider under construction, Cessy, France, 2007

Why the Higgs?

August 16, 2012 issue

The central part of the Compact Muon Solenoid is lowered into place, Cessy, France, February 28, 2007

The Big Higgs Question

Although the Higgs particle is so heavy that a giant particle collider was needed to create it, we still have to ask, why is the Higgs mass so small?

July 9, 2012

Construction of an underground shaft for the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas. The SSC was supposed to be the largest particle accelerator in the world, but its funding was canceled by Congress in 1993.

The Crisis of Big Science

May 10, 2012 issue

The five regular polyhedra. Steven Weinberg writes that ‘they satisfy the symmetry requirement that every face, every edge, and every corner should be precisely the same as every other face, edge, or corner.... Plato argued in Timaeus that these were the shapes of the bodies making up the elements: earth consists of little cubes, while fire, air, and water are made of polyhedra with four, eight, and twenty identical faces, respectively. The fifth regular polyhedron, with twelve identical faces, was supposed by Plato to symbolize the cosmos.’

Symmetry: A ‘Key to Nature’s Secrets’

October 27, 2011 issue

The Atom at 3 PM

March 10, 2011 issue

Stephen Hawking at the World Science Festival’s opening night gala at Lincoln Center, New York City, June 2, 2010

The Universes We Still Don’t Know

The Grand Design

by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow

February 10, 2011 issue

Letter

Jeremy Bernstein

The Atom at 3 PM

March 10, 2011 issue

Give Credit to Kepler and Brahe!

November 19, 2009 issue

‘…side by side with Zeus himself…’

November 5, 2009 issue

Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Copernicus; illustration by Stefan Della Bella from the frontispiece of Dialogo di Galileo Galilei (1632), on view in the exhibition 'Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works,' at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas Austin through January 3, 2010

The Missions of Astronomy

October 22, 2009 issue

‘Without God’: An Exchange

November 20, 2008 issue

Without God

September 25, 2008 issue

Exchange

‘Without God’: An Exchange

November 20, 2008 issue

The Election and America’s Future

November 4, 2004 issue

What Happened at Vienna

April 29, 2004 issue

The Wrong Stuff

April 8, 2004 issue

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