Damiano Anselmi

From Physics To Life Damiano Anselmi

The discoveries made in physics during the past one hundred years provide answers to the deepest questions we may ask ourselves (who are we?, where do we come from?, what is the purpose of life?, what is the origin of the world?, what is the meaning of everything?). Presenting the key principles of quantum mechanics in a brand new light and combining them with newer ideas about quantum gravity, we can understand what nature is trying to tell us about life and the meaning of the universe. Written in a language accessible to everybody, the book takes us on a trip to the infinitesimally small. In the first part of the journey, we get to the atomic scales of magnitude, which are the realm of quantum mechanics. There, we learn about a number of disconcerting phenomena, which upset your understanding of life and nature. We make the acquaintance of the uncertainty principle and realize how profoundly different the microscopic world is from the macroscopic one. Then we ... go to the movies. Chapter 5 contains the story of a science fiction movie inspired by the ideas gathered in the first part of the journey. Three youngsters use the principles of quantum mechanics to sell products of a type never seen before. The sales boom and ignite a chain reaction of developments that soon gets out of control. One thing after the other, the world finds itself on the verge of a catastrophe. After the movie, we resume the journey by plunging down to the infinitesimally small scales of magnitude. There we meet quantum gravity and the fakeon, which reveal the hidden secret of the universe and the reason why we are here, the mission we are called to accomplish. Will we be up to our task?Damiano Anselmi is a theoretical physicist. He works on quantum field theory and quantum gravity. After getting his PhD from ISAS, Trieste, he did research in various parts of the world, including Harvard University, the Ecole Polytechnique, CERN, the Science Academy of Beijing, the Perimeter Institute and the University of Pisa. He is the author of numerous scientific publications in leading international journals. You can follow his research at the site renormalization.com and the YouTube channel Quantum Gravity