This monograph expounds on general Yang-Mills symmetry, a new symmetry based on arbitrary vector gauge functions and Hamilton's characteristic phase functions in the gauge transformations of Abelian and non-Abelian groups. General Yang-Mills symmetry includes the conventional gauge symmetries as special cases and is useful for describing phenomena at scales ranging from the super-macroscopic such as dark matter, to the ultra-microscopic such as the quantum 3-body problem of baryons. Moreover, this symmetry supports the Broader Particle-Cosmology framework based on particle physics and quantum Yang-Mills gravity in flat space-time, which can explain why the gravitational force is always attractive. This volume also discusses how CPT invariance in particle physics suggests a 'Big Jets' model for the birth of the universe, proposing one explanation for the dearth of anti-matter in our universe. Finally, we discuss a simplified quantum shell model for N baryons with a quark Hamiltonian and a Sonine-Laguerre equation that gives reasonable eigenvalues for the energies of the 29 N baryons.

The Roman Catholic faith has inspired some of the world's greatest creative works and has been a powerful force in history from the Roman Empire to the present. Catholic writers reflect their heritage in their works, and generations of readers have continued to appreciate the Catholic literary tradition. Many works by Catholic writers hold a high place in the literary canon and have exerted a tremendous cultural and political influence. Still others continue to be widely read by contemporary readers and quietly shape modern society. Some works, too, reflect the conflicts of the Catholic Church in the 21st century and capture the struggles of individual Catholics in a secular society. This encyclopedia covers the vast riches of the Catholic literary tradition from its origins to the present day. Included are substantial entries on more than 70 major works from around the world. A special effort has been made to cover women writers and writers of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, whose works reflect the many dimensions of the Catholic experience. The encyclopedia provides entries on such writers and works as St. Augustine's Confessions, Catherine of Siena's Dialogue, Dante's The Divine Comedy, Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Muriel Spark's Memento Mori. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography of the writer, a plot summary of a major work, an extended critical discussion, an overview of the work's critical reception, and a selected bibliography. The entries give detailed attention to particular works and explore their relation to Catholic thought. The encyclopedia concludes with a selected, general bibliography.

YangOCoMills gravity is a new theory, consistent with experiments, that brings gravity back to the arena of gauge field theory and quantum mechanics in flat space-time. It provides solutions to long-standing difficulties in physics, such as the incompatibility between Einstein''s principle of general coordinate invariance and modern schemes for a quantum mechanical description of nature, and Noether''s OCyTheorem IIOCO which showed that the principle of general coordinate invariance in general relativity leads to the failure of the law of conservation of energy. YangOCoMills gravity in flat space-time appears to be more physically coherent than conventional gravity in curved space-time. The problems of quantization of the gravitational field, the operational meaning of space-time coordinates and momenta, and the conservation of energy-momentum are all resolved in YangOCoMills gravity.The aim of this book is to provide a treatment of quantum YangOCoMills gravity, with an emphasis on the ideas and evidence that the gravitational field is the manifestation of space-time translational symmetry in flat space-time, and that there exists a fundamental space-time symmetry framework that can encompass all of physics, including gravity, for all inertial and non-inertial frames of reference.

This collection of papers presents ideas and problems arising over the past 100 years regarding classical and quantum gravity, gauge theories of gravity, and spacetime transformations of accelerated frames. Both Einstein's theory of gravity and the Yang-Mills theory are gauge invariant. The invariance principles in physics have transcended both kinetic and dynamic properties and are at the very heart of our understanding of the physical world. In this spirit, this book attempts to survey the development of various formulations for gravitational and Yang-Mills fields and spacetime transformations of accelerated frames, and to reveal their associated problems and limitations.The aim is to present some of the leading ideas and problems discussed by physicists and mathematicians. We highlight three aspects: formulations of gravity as a Yang-Mills field, first discussed by Utiyama; problems of gravitational theory, discussed by Feynman, Dyson and others; spacetime properties and the physics of fields and particles in accelerated frames of reference.These unfulfilled aspects of Einstein and Yang-Mills' profound thoughts present a great challenge to physicists and mathematicians in the 21st century.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Most appealing... technical accuracy and lightness of tone... Impeccable.”—Wall Street Journal “A porthole into another world.”—Scientific American “Brings science dissemination to a new level.”—Science The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions entertaining, presents in his uniquely lucid voice the fundamental ideas informing the modern physics of reality. Physics offers deep insights into the workings of the universe but those insights come in the form of equations that often look like gobbledygook. Sean Carroll shows that they are really like meaningful poems that can help us fly over sierras to discover a miraculous multidimensional landscape alive with radiant giants, warped space-time, and bewilderingly powerful forces. High school calculus is itself a centuries-old marvel as worthy of our gaze as the Mona Lisa. And it may come as a surprise the extent to which all our most cutting-edge ideas about black holes are built on the math calculus enables. No one else could so smoothly guide readers toward grasping the very equation Einstein used to describe his theory of general relativity. In the tradition of the legendary Richard Feynman lectures presented sixty years ago, this book is an inspiring, dazzling introduction to a way of seeing that will resonate across cultural and generational boundaries for many years to come.

Over the course of the last century it has become clear that both elementary particle physics and relativity theories are based on the notion of symmetries. These symmetries become manifest in that the "laws of nature" are invariant under spacetime transformations and/or gauge transformations. The consequences of these symmetries were analyzed as early as in 1918 by Emmy Noether on the level of action functionals. Her work did not receive due recognition for nearly half a century, but can today be understood as a recurring theme in classical mechanics, electrodynamics and special relativity, Yang-Mills type quantum field theories, and in general relativity. As a matter of fact, as shown in this monograph, many aspects of physics can be derived solely from symmetry considerations. This substantiates the statement of E.P. Wigner "... if we knew all the laws of nature, or the ultimate Law of nature, the invariance properties of these laws would not furnish us new information." Thanks to Wigner we now also understand the implications of quantum physics and symmetry considerations: Poincare invariance dictates both the characteristic properties of particles (mass, spin, ...) and the wave equations of spin 0, 1/2, 1, ... objects. Further, the work of C.N. Yang and R. Mills reveals the consequences of internal symmetries as exemplified in the symmetry group of elementary particle physics. Given this pivotal role of symmetries it is thus not surprising that current research in fundamental physics is to a great degree motivated and inspired by considerations of symmetry. The treatment of symmetries in this monograph ranges from classical physics to now well-established theories of fundamental interactions, to the latest research on unified theories and quantum gravity.