ID - 131913410 TI - Emergence in condensed matter and quantum gravity : a nontechnical review PY - 2022 SN - 9783031098956 9783031098949 9783031098963 PB - Cham, Switzerland : Springer Nature Switzerland AG, DB - UniCat KW - Solid state physics KW - Geophysics KW - zwaartekracht KW - fysica KW - Condensed matter. KW - Quantum gravity. KW - Topological insulators. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:131913410 AB - This book surveys the science at a semipopular, Scientific American-level. It is even-handed with regard to competing directions of research and philosophical positions. It is hard to get even two people to agree on anything, yet a million billion water molecules can suddenly and abruptly coordinate to lock themselves into an ice crystal or liberate one another to billow outwards as steam. The marvelous self-organizing capacity of matter is one of the central and deepest puzzles of physics, with implications for all the natural sciences. Physicists in the past century have found a remarkable diversity of phases of matter-and equally remarkable commonalities within that diversity. The pace of discovery has, if anything, only quickened in recent years with the appreciation of quantum phases of matter and so-called topological order. The study of seemingly humdrum materials has made contact with the more exotic realm of quantum gravity, as theorists realize that the spacetime continuum may itself be a phase of some deeper and still unknown constituents. These developments flesh out the sometimes vague concept of the emergence-how exactly it is that complexity begets simplicity. ER -