Fields of Color: The theory that escaped Einstein by Rodney A. Brooks (PDF)

Description

Fields of Color explains Quantum Field Theory to a lay audience without equations. It shows how this overlooked and misunderstood theory resolves the weirdness of Quantum Mechanics and the paradoxes of Relativity. The third edition contains a new and simple solution to “the most controversial problem in physics today”: the measurement problem.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I found this book thrilling to read (twice). Very understandable by lay people. QFT will continue to be refined and Dr. Schwinger will be given the credit he is due.

⭐I learned so much in a concise, easy-to-read paperback. I love this little book!

⭐I found Dr. Brooks’ arguments in favor of quantum field theory over particle physics to be quite convincing. For example, QFT explains the double-digit experiment in a very natural way. It does away with the wave-particle duality and replaces everything by six kinds of fields, with matter being quanta that extend throughout space and collapse to specific locations that mimic particles only when the quanta are measured or observed.The one thing I find a bit troubling is the frame dependence of QFT. According to Brooks, physical phenomena take place in a flat 3-dimensional space that extends to infinity, and the properties of space itself (its fields) constitute all matter and energy. This amounts to a preferred frame of reference, not unlike the luminiferous ether that fell out of fashion over one hundred years ago. Brooks’ wife, Karen, really nailed this discrepancy. To his credit, Brooks includes her objection to QFT in Appendix A:”How can something which is no more than a marker of events in itself have special properties? If there are any special properties, it is in the way those events proceed, not in something as abstract as ‘time.’ The same is true of space. Space has no meaning in itself, only the word ‘distance’ does, and distance has meaning only in relationship to physical objects.”Brooks’ explanation of the Lorentz contraction is also a bit hard to swallow. He says material objects shrink in the direction of motiion due to the rearrangement of the fields that make up the atoms. However, this cannot explain why the distance between two stars shrinks as seen by a space traveler who journeys between them at close to the speed of light, since empty space is obviously not made of atoms. Brooks needs to explain that phenomenon within the context of fields in a more rational way.Despite these difficulties, I found the book to be well written and appropriate for a general audience. Brooks intentionally avoids mathematics in order not to “lose” his audience, so much of what he says must be taken at face value, but I wish he would have given a few mathematical examples of applied QFT in the appendices. Nevertheless, I’m very glad I bought the book. If nothing else, it gives a very nice historical account of physics from Newton up to the present time, and gives opposing views by particle physicists a very balanced and fair treatment.I especially enjoyed the three appendices at the end of the book. In his explanation of general relativity, he states that although Minkowsky space-time works mathematically, we should not think that space-time is real or conflate space and time (they are very different things). He is one of the few authors with enough courage to slay the sacred cow of Minkowsky space-time, and I happen to agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment.https://sites.google.com/site/amateurscientistessays/

⭐First off, in common with every other book on QM, this book does not explain or resolve the paradoxes or mathematical inconsistencies of quantum theory. It does present a less common visual interpretation of the theory, following Schwinger’s QFT, which is valid, and interesting. Also has a lot of interesting and entertaining footnotes.I would summarize the author’s case as : “Field equations are the most intuitive and mathematically sound way of understanding physics.” Most of the book is not about QFT, but about building this case. Mr. Brooks does this in an elementary and entertaining fashion. The author understands the subject, and does a good job of presenting his preferred way of viewing physics, which is: “fields are everything.” The author was a student of the brilliant Julian Schwinger, who was the principle architect of QFT, and whom the author feels (perhaps rightly) has been overshadowed by more flamboyant (Feynman) or less mathematically rigorous (Feynman) physicists.As far as popular expositions of quantum fields, I would compare this book to Feynman’s “QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter”, which gives a nice intuitive description of the path integral approach to quantum fields, at about the same level.Both approaches are used by working physicists, as appropriate. Both approaches are mathematical tools for making predictions; neither is a key to understanding the nature of reality. Also note there are other formulations, or tools, in use.As far as ‘paradoxes’ and ‘understanding quantum phenomena’, in my opinion, the two above approaches are really about different mental models, and where to put the magic.Brooks/Schwinger – imagine a wave-function extending over space. Now the odds for an event occurring at a particular point can be calculated, but the event *happens* when the function magically and instantaneously collapses to that point, and disappears.Feynman – imagine a particle function which magically knows every possible path it could have traveled over a particular interval. The odds of the particle interacting or existing at a particular point are given by this function.Now, the mathematics in the two approaches is different, but equivalent, so what changes is the mental image that helps to facilitate the calculations. And it is always worthwhile to look at problems from different viewpoints.

⭐I delighted in reading Fields of Color, twice (so far). It’s very accessible, with clear models of essential concepts. Dr. Brooks provides a feast of important quotes from leading physicists (many from Nobel award lectures), which alone are worth the modest price. No advanced math required. This is a book the famed visualist, Michael Faraday might have written.

⭐I bought this book because Amazon said it: “… explains Quantum Field Theory to a lay audience …”. It does no such thing. What it is is largely a narrative history of the development of quantum theory. There are plenty of quotations from the protagonists but very little by way of explanation; the photographs are blurred (at least in the Kindle edition), and the few diagrams mostly pointless – even patronising in there over simplicity. Occasionally there’s some hope of interest as in this paragraph:”In fact, there is a property of fields called Fourier’s theorem that relates the spatial spread of a field to the spread of its wavelengths. Now in QFT the wavelength of a quantum is related to its momentum, so Fourier’s theorem is equivalent to the relationship between position and momentum in the Uncertainty Principle. I still remember my moment of insight in graduate school when I realized that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is nothing more than Fourier’s theorem.” Brooks, Rodney A.. Fields of Color: The theory that escaped Einstein (Kindle Locations 2635-2639). Epic Publications. Kindle Edition.But then there’s no explanation of what Fourier’s theorem actually is or how it, “relates the spatial spread of a field to the spread of its wavelengths.”Overall a frustratingly disappointing book whose only value, apart from as a potted history, is in enabling the poor old layman (me) to make a list of things to try to find out about via YouTube or some other forum.

⭐After spending years (decades) reading a mixture of “Popular Science” and a selection of proper “Textbooks” on various aspects of Optics / Light / Electromagnetism / Matter / Cosmology / QED / QCD / etc. etc. I came to realise that Quantum Field Theory is probably the best way of looking at things, at the current time. You come away wondering why you ever spent time contemplating & trying to reconcile “Particle versus Wave” .The author is clear and honest in respect of what this book can teach you, and it is an enjoyable, healthy challenge, taking it on board. It was Sean Carroll’s “The Higgs Boson and Beyond” (An audio version of the Great Courses) where the benefit or indeed necessity, of an explanation using Fields first caught my attention, and by seeking, I found Fields of Colour. First rate, and one of my most prized books. If only I had read this twenty years ago.

⭐It all started by watching Sean Carroll’s videos on YouTube. He was the first to mention Quantum Field Theory. He said QFT is dominant theory used at CERN to make predictions and analysis. So, I decided to dive in from there and after some digging I found this book. Its amazing how little info about QFT is available to general public.If you are into understanding quantum mechanics, than this is the first book you should read. Popular media stops at quantum mechanics (QM), which is now old hat, because ‘new’ quantum field theory (QFT) is more cutting edge. QFT is confirmed by more experiments and to higher accuracy than QM. But media just love ‘impossible-to-understand’ paradoxes, dead-and-alive cats etc.Bad luck with QFT is that it is easy to understand and there are no paradoxes. To me personally, QFT immediately made more sense that QM. There are no particles, there are only fields. Electron is a very small region, consisting of electric field. Its like a drop of ink, there is no center, but its gently spread out from the most dense to the most diffused region. Nothing more than this simple QFT’s model of electron, completely dispenses with well known QM’s paradox that in the center of QM electron, electric field would have to have infinite energy.Book is a good read, written in a friendly manner based around simple principle: no formulas, no heavy-duty scientific jargon, laced with a lots of historical anecdotes. So its really an eye opener, of a sort.Wholeheartedly recommended!

⭐This book is mostly a survey of the history of the subject and actual explanations of modern QFT itself is a very small part of it. The use of colours as an aid to visualisation adds nothing to the explanations.What it does do is to argue that QFT should replace older versions of ‘Quantum Mechanics’-a view I strongly support- because QFT resolves many, if not all, of the ‘paradoxes’ which those older versions present.The problem with this book is that this could be done in 10 pages.

⭐Fields of Color is a superb book. Ignore reviews that say otherwise. If you’d like to quickly get a good idea of what QFT is all about, buy it at once and read it!I expected to get from it a rough idea of QFT so that, along with other sources, I could gradually deduce whether or not it would be worth my time looking into QFT in more mathematical detail. I was hugely rewarded not only with precisely that information, but a thorough, complete, chronological analysis of the way physics has developed over time and therefore the reason why QFT is the logical extension of what has come before.The book is well-peppered with quotes (mostly from physicists, and always precisely in context, despite what you may have read elsewhere) which back up the content of the book and which illuminate beautifully the intricacies of the explanation of QFT up to that point.I came away not only with a thorough understanding of what QFT is all about, but also how it fits in context with the other theories, how it differs from quantum mechanics, how it incorporates relativity and how all these things gradually came together from earlier particle and field theories. There’s even good discussion about why and how different theories of the stuff of the universe have come about over the centuries.

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