قراءات إضافية
There is much about nothing that I have been unable to include here, and
much more that has already been written. I have referred to some of these books and
articles in the text, and collect them here together with some suggestions for
further reading. This is by no means exhaustive. If you are seriously interested in
nothing, the books by Barrow and Genz in particular contain an extensive list of
references and original sources.
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The Book of Nothing by John D. Barrow (Vintage, 2000) and Nothingness by Henning Genz (Perseus, 1999) go further and more deeply in some cases into the story of the vacuum and other manifestations of ‘nothing’. Barrow discusses also the mathematical story of zero and aspects of cosmology, in particular of multiple universes, in detail. Genz has a particularly good description of the Higgs mechanism and of spontaneous symmetry breaking in condensed matter systems.
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A Different Universe by Robert Laughlin (Basic Books, 2005) describes the emergent nature of the laws of macroscopic phenomena and of the nature of the vacuum.
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Lucifer’s Legacy by Frank Close (Oxford University Press, 2000) describes spontaneous symmetry breaking and many examples of symmetries in Nature. Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2004) and The New Cosmic Onion (Taylor and Francis, 2007), both by Frank Close, give the ideas of particle physics that form some of the background to the later chapters of the present book. Antimatter by Frank Close (Oxford University Press) tells all about antimatter, in particular separating the factual reality from the fictional myths.
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The Goldilocks Enigma by Paul Davies (Allen Lane, 2006) describes the ideas of multiple universes and how our particular universe is so finely tuned for life.
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The Particle Odyssey by F. E. Close, M. Marten, and C. Sutton (Oxford University Press, 2002) is a highly illustrated history of modern physics.
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Einstein’s Mirror by A. Hey and P.Walters (Cambridge University Press, 1997) gives a popular introduction to relativity and The New Quantum Universe (Cambridge University Press, 2003) does the same for quantum theory.
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‘Nothing’s Plenty: The Vacuum in Modern Quantum Field Theory’ by I. J. R. Aitchison, in Contemporary Physics, 26 (1985), 333–391 gives a more advanced discussion of modern ideas about the quantum vacuum.
