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4.5
Prof. Rowlands presents a clear and concise view of the nature of the very fabric of reality which is not only tactile and intuitive, but complete. He takes the reader on a journey from first principals which stem from purely philosophical grounds i.e. the zero totality, or that there is no fundamental structure of the universe, and follows a logical progression culminating in gravity, supersymmetry, and more.The fundamental building block of reality is described as a 'nilpotent' or algebraic structure with properties stemming from the division algebras. Using this structure, and the steadfast adherence to the concept of 'zero totality', Rowlands demonstrates how natural physical phenomena simply 'emerge' from this framework.The section on the Dirac equation is particularly enlightening. Using a nilpotent structure as the basic unit of information, Rowlands shows how the redundancies and singularities of the classical implementation can be avoided. Quantum field theory, one of the most difficult theories of modern physics, is a natural consequence of the nilpotent formulation in terms of the 'vacuum'. It completely removes any need for second quantization. Supersymmetry is also an inherent property.He provides a thorough treatment of the standard model, and how all the symmetries and predictive power of the standard model is preserved in the nilpotent formulation as well as an interesting insight into the nature of gravity. Conjectures as to grand unified theories and symmetries are also discussed.
