The Best Modern Physics History

The human side and the succession of events are often full of drama.
Emilio Segre, From X-Rays to Quarks, p. ix

By far and away the best book that I have read on the history of modern physics from the late 19th century to roughly the the end of the 20th century has to be From X-Rays To Quarks by Emilio Segre. What makes it so memorable is the natural gift of the author to tell a story, actually having been there at the historic moments and knowing a lot of the principals doesn't hurt either!

Emilio Segre - Manhattan Project ID

 It is just mind boggling to contemplate the insane amount of progress that has taken place in just my lifetime, but when you go back to the end of the 19th century and follow it through to the end of the 20th century and follow the flowering the modern physics through the stories and all the inter relations of events mundane and historical, more random than than a quantum soup of what we commonly refer to as life, it is all pretty momentous stuff.

This is the style of writing that will satisfy the general reader and the specialist, leaving both satisfied, which is a real hard feat to successfully pull off. The text is nicely illustrated and the quality of the printing is the excellent W. H. Freeman level. There is also included many personal photographs, most of which have never been published I am sure.
 

The best quality of the book is Segre's ability to wrap you up into the frenetic whirl of the explosion of the revolution of physics that has changed our world forever. Especially the individual stories of long labor and sacrifice that I found very well done. Such as the trials and tribulations of the Curie's and the development of radioactivity, which I found spellbinding.

If you are an interested and budding amateur astronomer or arm chair cosmologist, you will greatly enjoy this. It is sort of like a program at a baseball game...     

Cosmology - The Best First Text

Societies create universes, not only do these universes reflect their societies, but each universe controls the history and destiny of its society.
Edward R. Harrison, Cosmology - The Science Of the Universe, 1981, p.18

Books on cosmology are pretty thin on the ground. The best one you can order from Amazon and not go wrong on is by Edward R. Harrison who spent most of his professional life in the United States and was greatly admired and respected by his students and his peers.

Edward R. Harrison

The Oracle of Ottawa has been holding onto his copy of Cosmology - The Science Of the Universe for decades. The first edition came out in 1981, published by Cambridge University Press, which I have found is always a great start if you are into reading the best science books money can buy. You can't go wrong with anything from good old Cuppers.

It was only recently that I finally had the time to finally read the book. And as I turned each successive page I was pretty glad that I kept hold of it all these years. The major strength of this text is the perfect balance of what I consider to be the three pillars of cosmology. And those three pillars are philosophy, physics, and mathematics. It certainly is not surprising that has a 4.8 out of 5 rating by Amazon customers.

Another great strength of the work is that all the major theories of the Universe are treated respectfully without any detectable agenda for or against any of the major plausible theories. And all the background information that you must be aware of such as time and curvature and expansion are handled brilliantly in their development to the reader, whether a student or a lay person of above average curiosity.

There are no glossy pictorial barrages of Hubble Telescope images like many undergraduate astronomy textbooks, and you soon come to realize that in cosmology this is a good thing. There are elegant line illustrations were they are really required. Best of all the text is fully cited which means you can use it for future reference and further exploration. All in Dear Reader, this is the one to start on, and one that will really stick with you.

Even though the first edition came out in 1981 and the second came along in 2000, the whole work is by no means dated, even at the time of this writing. But what is really interesting is how far our view and confirmed facts of cosmology have progressed and how a very favorite theory of the Universe is under great pressure. Edward R. Harrison, no doubt, would have loved that...

The Pull Of The Electric Universe

Possibly the single most tantalizing feature is the omnipresence of magnetic fields. Detectable fields a hundred thousand times weaker than the earth's field are found in interstellar space. At the other extreme, the feebly glowing dense cores of some defunct stars have magnetic fields twenty million times stronger than that of the earth!
Lawrence H. Aller, Atoms, Stars and Nebulae, (Third Edition), p. xii

The fans of the Electric Universe have been around for a very long time. And the Oracle of Ottawa is amazed at the utter quality of the names. And I was very surprised to see the endorsement of L. H. Aller to it in the Preface of the Third  Edition of his very popular and standard book Atoms, Stars and Nebulae, which I have just finished reading today.

Lawrence H. Aller

But not to worry about Lawrence getting in trouble over stating the truth of the future of the universe. He covered himself by making sure to mention the big bang and black holes the required number of times through out the remainder of the text and thus ensuring telescope time and office resources with out interference for the whole of his career.

Of course you have to wonder why the conception of the Electric Universe gets such a rough ride, especially if you know that the strongest force in the universe is the electromagnetic force. While gravity is in a distant place far away from the electromagnetic in weakness. Why it can be more dangerous to your academic career to state this fact than talk about intrinsic red-shift!

But the Oracle of Ottawa does not in  the least expect you to take my word for it. There are many very instructive videos on the Electric Universe on tap at the University of You Tube. And as a public service the Oracle of Ottawa has selected what I think is the most fascinating one, just to start you off on your new education. Bet you can't watch just one video on this soon to be cutting edge topic.