The extraordinary story of psychoanalyst Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli and their struggle to quantify the unconscious. In 1932, the groundbreaking physicist Wolfgang Pauli met the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Pauli was fascinated by the inner reaches of his own psyche and not afraid to dabble in the occult, while Jung looked to science for answers to the psychological questions that tormented him. Their rich friendship led them, in Jung’s words, into “the no-man’s land between physics and the psychology of the unconscious . . . the most fascinating yet the darkest hunting ground of our times.” Both were obsessed with the far-reaching significance of the number “137”—a primal number that seemed to hint at the origins of the universe itself. Their quest to solve its enigma led them on a lifelong journey into the ancient secrets of alchemy, the work of Johannes Kepler, and the Chinese Book of Changes. This is the captivating story of an extraordinary and fruitful collaboration between two of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.

"The history is fascinating, as are the insights into the personalities of these great thinkers." —New Scientist Is there a number at the root of the universe? A primal number that everything in the world hinges on? This question exercised many great minds of the twentieth century, among them the groundbreaking physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Their obsession with the power of certain numbers—including 137, which describes the atom’s fine-structure constant and has great Kabbalistic significance—led them to develop an unlikely friendship and to embark on a joint mystical quest reaching deep into medieval alchemy, dream interpretation, and the Chinese Book of Changes. 137 explores the profound intersection of modern science with the occult, but above all it is the tale of an extraordinary, fruitful friendship between two of the greatest thinkers of our times. Originally published in hardcover as Deciphering the Cosmic Number.

In 1932, world-renowned physicist Wolfgang Pauli had already done the work that would win him the 1945 Nobel Prize. He was also suffering after a series of troubling personal events. He was drinking heavily, quarrelling frequently, and experiencing powerful, disturbing dreams. Pauli turned to C. G. Jung for help, forging an extraordinary intellectual conjunction not just between a physicist and a psychologist but between physics and psychology. As their acquaintance developed, Jung and Pauli discussed the nature of dreams and their relation to reality, finding surprising common ground between depth psychology and quantum physics and profoundly influencing each other's work. This portrait of an incredible friendship will fascinate readers interested in psychology, science, creativity, and genius.

An accessible look at the mysteries that lurk at the edge of the known universe and beyond The observable universe, the part we can see with telescopes, is incredibly vast. Yet recent theories suggest that there is far more to the universe than what our instruments record—in fact, it could be infinite. Colossal flows of galaxies, large empty regions called voids, and other unexplained phenomena offer clues that our own "bubble universe" could be part of a greater realm called the multiverse. How big is the observable universe? What it is made of? What lies beyond it? Was there a time before the Big Bang? Could space have unseen dimensions? In this book, physicist and science writer Paul Halpern explains what we know?and what we hope to soon find out?about our extraordinary cosmos. Explains what we know about the Big Bang, the accelerating universe, dark energy, dark flow, and dark matter to examine some of the theories about the content of the universe and why its edge is getting farther away from us faster Explores the idea that the observable universe could be a hologram and that everything that happens within it might be written on its edge Written by physicist and popular science writer Paul Halpern, whose other books include Collider: The Search for the World's Smallest Particles, and What's Science Ever Done For Us: What the Simpsons Can Teach Us About Physics, Robots, Life, and the Universe

Holding doctorates in chemistry, physics and biology, Peter Plichta applies his multifaceted scientific knowledge to the search for a universal building plan and makes a profound discovery. Plichta shows how a mathematical formula based on prime numbers underlies the mystery of the world. By decoding this fundamental numerical code, Plichta answers questions that have baffled mankind for ages and proves that the universe did not arise out of chance.

This book presents a fully scientific account of the use of the golden ratio. It explores the observation that stable nucleides obey a number theory based general law. The discovery described in this book could be of seminal significance, also in other fields where the golden ratio is known to be of fundamental importance.