Waves in an Impossible Sea: Commentary and Discussion

Here you will find follow-up commentary and ongoing discussion concerning the book Waves in an Impossible Sea. They are organized by chapter. Many but not all entries involve follow-up on specific endnotes.

• 1 Overture 1

• Part I: Motion
  • 2 Relativity: The Greatest Illusion 15
  • 3 Coasting: Easier Than It Appears 29

• Part II: Mass
  • 4 Armor against the Universe 45
  • 5 Enter Einstein: Rest Mass 63
  • 6 Worlds within Worlds: The Structure of Material 79
  • 7 What Mass Is (and Isn’t) 97
  • 8 Energy, Mass, and Meaning 106
  • 9 That Most Important of Prisons 115

• Part III: Waves
  • 10 Resonance 125
  • 11 The Waves of Knowing 140
  • 12 What Ears Can’t Hear and Eyes Can’t See 151

• Part IV: Fields
  • 13 Ordinary Fields 169
  • 14 Elementary Fields: A First, Unsettling Look 182
  • 15 Elementary Fields: A Second, Humble Look 212

• Part V: Quantum
  • 16 The Quantum and the Particle 225
  • 17 The Mass of a Wavicle 234
  • 18 Einstein’s Haiku 251

• Part VI: Higgs
  • 19 A Field Like No Other 257
  • 20 The Higgs Field in Action 262
  • 21 Basic Unanswered Questions 279
  • 22 Deeper Conceptual Questions 290
  • 23 The Really Big Questions 295

• Part VII: Cosmos
  • 24 Protons and Neutrons 311
  • 25 The Wizardry of Quantum Fields 320
  • 26 Coda: The Extraordinary in the Ordinary 327