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Summary: Wonderful
Review: This book is as good as it gets. Read it and see the world differently. What more could you ask for?
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Summary: If you think that this book covers only superstrings !!
Review: Man I tell you this book is complete. I read it twice and I discovered a Physist in myself.The book essentially covers the basics of Special and General relativity, Quantum mechanics and its wierdness in the most lucid manner inclined strictly for non-mathematical readers. The transition to String theory after the first few chapters is better than ever !! Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" is equally compelling and complete but for the String theory.
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Summary: Bravo! Look at all the reveiws for this book
Review: Superstrings is one hard theory but easy to understand anything that mysticfy the public is goona sell big before this book came noone think about tackling with superstrings you at least had to study physics for 7 years even to go on higher dimensions study and if you did some people said your a crock but now since superstring should btheory it e true that other dimensions exict but can we even prove superstring to be true this is a excellent book makes you think about our reality and as everyone said this is a easy book to understand now we are at the point of gonna beyond our realms of reality going anbeyond our selfs d if we can meassure gravity very small we can prove the calabi-yau theory but for now we have to wait time travel and extra dimension may not be a paranormal in the future
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Summary: Incredibly Clear, Enjoyable Read -- A Great Book
Review: Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" is the best book on a scientific subject I've ever read. The first five chapters, which deal with Space, Time, Special & General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, are incredibly clear and worth the price of the book alone. Without using any math, Greene is able to explain the key points of all these topics, and most importantly, to show why Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are incompatible, and why that's a problem for physicists. He then takes the reader through the various stages of thinking that have gone into String Theory, and it's fascinating stuff! Greene uses copious examples to demonstrate concepts that are difficult to visualize or grasp, and this is incredibly helpful. You definitely get a sense, for instance, of what a "curled up dimension" means, through some very clever reduced-dimension examples (not sure if these are Greene's constructions or well-known in the physics world, but they're very clear and helpful). The going gets a little tougher towards the end of the book, where the most recent thinking on String Theory and the discussion of Black Holes & the early instants of the cosmos are more complex and tougher to grok straight through. But even so, they are fascinating and worth the effort. Greene's prose is clear, analytical, and well thought out. At least a half dozen times while reading the book, I said to myself, "Hmmm, but what about X?" to find a few paragraphs later Greene would write, "You may be wondering about X. Well, here's how that works..." To me, this is a sign of a clear thinker and helped make the book even more enjoyable to read. If you're at all interested in cutting edge physics theory, this is a great book to turn to.
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Summary: TOE - Theory of Everything
Review: Albert Einstein spent the last twenty years of his life attempting to formulate a unified Theory Of Everything (TOE). Although Einstein was unsuccessful, physicists may now have reached that goal. With the advantage of testing and measurements from particle accelerators and other advances in technology, modern day physicists finally have the tools that were not available to Einstein in his day. Modern physics rests upon two foundational pillars. Einstein's general theory of relativity provides a theoretical framework for understanding the macro universe of stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc. Quantum mechanics provides a framework for understanding the micro universe of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. These two theories have been experimentally confirmed, but are at the same time mutually incompatible as they are currently formulated. By substituting the attributes of subatomic particles as being one dimensional vibrating strings rather than as point-particle material constituents, the incompatibilities between quantum mechanics and general relativity are resolved. The warping of space and time, the constancy of the speed of light, the expanding universe, black holes and the time just before the big bang all concern general relativity. Planck's constant, wave lengths and frequency, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle are the concerns of quantum mechanics. Calabi-Yau shapes, eleven dimensions (ten for space and one for time) and M-Theory all concern string theory. The quest for knowledge is a never ending journey not unlike our quest for enlightenment.
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Summary: An Elegant Book
Review: For anyone who wants a better grasp of the laws and current theories about how the universe works, this book is for you. Mr. Greene does a masterful job of bringing extremely complex, esoteric topics to the level of the lay reader without ever making you feel that you are being talked down to or patronized. The book begins with the classical physics of Newton and moves through Einstein's relativity and quantum mechanics before delving into the latest cutting edge research on superstring theory being done by Mr. Greene and his colleagues. Mr. Greene is masterful at using analogy and example to illustrate very complicated ideas. I will confess that I still have some difficutly trying to imagine 9 or 10 dimensional shapes, but I will credit that as a fault of my own (or maybe the general wiring of the human brain) rather than that of the author. Perhaps the highest praise I can give this book is that after reading it, I found myself wishing I could have taken a class with Brian Greene.
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Summary: Terrific work
Review: One of my top five favorite books. This is a thorough, exsciting review of where we are in String Theory. Fascinating insights that make you really see how scientists may be able to discover the physics to handle singularities, for example. This is a must have.
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Summary: Elegant Book
Review: Like Dr.Guth, Dr.Greene also achieved to bring down the theories of the Theoretical Physics down to earth to the level of understanding of man on the street. It is all about finding a fundemental particles in the creation. fundemental building block and fundemental formula that will spring out explain the creation as we know it. After a good and simple introduction you start to learn the difficulties and questions that resulted in String Theory, or Theory of everything or Grand Unification, whatever you call it. As you read the book if you are not the techinician of the field you start to imagine things and start to give shape to the things that are described. That is okey at least you became familiar with what is going on. He talks about Higgs fields, is it a type of a Corn field or may be a liitel more seriously, is it some kind of magnetic field. Anyway if you know what he is talking about you learn great from the book, otherwise you know your deficit and get direction.
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Summary: Science or Religion?
Review: Brian Greene sometimes sounds like the high priest of Babel of Physics in this book. It is quite understandable when one attempts to explain the theory of "everything". To most scientists, modern physics is truly another way to experience God. He shoud have been a little more aware of his potential audiance though. It is a sure bet that anyone who picks up a 450 page book on this topic has some appropriate background and some of the cartoons and freshman textbook examples simply do not fit in. It is a very daring attempt and he has tried to cover all aspects and directions without simplifying generalizations that are supposed to help the average reader but in reality a cop out for explaining the difficult. This was much appreciated. He has obviously penetrated the heart of the issue and writes with authority. It is very present tense and forward looking as opposed to long historical analysis. It is still a hard read. Editing could have been better and some sections were obviously added at very different times. I would also recommend Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace", which is much better written and with good historical context.
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Summary: Spectacularly successful!
Review: It's hard to believe that anyone could have written a book about contemporary theoretical physics and make it as interesting and accessible as Greene has done here. The central topic of the book is something called "Superstring Theory", which is physicists' latest attempt at a "Theory of Everything". By a "Theory of Everything" we mean a description of the physical world at its most fundamental level. If literally everything - matter, energy, and all the curious little in-between objects like photons - is made up of superstrings, then to understand superstrings completely will be to understand EVERYTHING completely. How "accessible" is the book? Well, you don't need an advanced degree in theoretical physics in order to understand it. But a reader with no knowledge of college-level physics or mathematics will probably find it rough going. You probably should at least have an idea of what the subject of quantum mechanics is, as well as some notion of relativity - although Greene describes both of those subjects for the neophyte. You should know enough mathematics that the idea of nine or eleven-dimensional space doesn't blow you away completely. If the suggestions in this paragraph intimidate you, then I suggest reading the incomparable "One Two Three....Infinity" by George Gamow before reading this book. Despite being more than 40 years old (Gamow certainly had never heard of superstrings), that book will do a wonderful job of opening your mind to the point where you can accept the notions of "The Elegant Universe" more easily. My only reservation about the book is that it seems premature. According to Greene's account, there is remarkably little direct physical evidence to support superstring theory. That is not to say that there is physical evidence CONTRADICTING string theory, either - there isn't. But when many of the best brains in the human race are devoting their lives to studying string theory, one might ask whether they are jumping the gun by giving so much effort to an unproven theory. There seem to be at least a couple of answers to that objection. First, there are good reasons for the absence of physical evidence for string theory. One is that the physical events predicted by string theory can be experimentally discovered only under extremely high-energy or physically tiny conditions - conditions which we lack the technology to create and examine. Another reason is that string theory addresses such tiny, precise quantities that the usual "approximate" mathematics we use in everyday life is inapplicable. For example, a doctor wouldn't think twice about prescribing the same dosage of medication for a 150-lb. patient and a 155-lb. patient. Those weights are approximate anyway, and nothing would be gained by making a distinction. However, the quantities dealt with by string theory are so small and precise that the string theorists have not been able to confidently predict the outcomes of the experiments which would be performed to test string theory! A second answer is that there is a sort of "philosophy of science" which goes back centuries. That philosophy carries several assumptions, two of which are symmetry and economy. Symmetry means essentially that the laws of physics are the same everywhere and at every point in time. It means that no observer is special; that no person (and no galaxy!) can regard himself as the center of the universe, or the only object in the universe that is at rest. There is no proof of this principle, nor can there be, but using it as an assumption has led to many scientific and intellectual breakthroughs, including Einstein's theory of relativity. The "economy" principle means more or less that the universe contains nothing except those things necessary to make the universe work. Scientists have discovered 16 different varieties of basic matter particles and 4 "force" particles. But physicists are extremely reluctant to accept the idea that all 20 of those particles came into existence by themselves, for 20 independent reasons. Historically, science has made progress because scientists have explicitly rejected the notion that "things are as they are because they are that way". String theory dominates theoretical physics because right now it's the "only game in town" which maintains economy and symmetry. It's the only theory we know of which gives hope of unifying what we know into one mathematically and logically consistent theory. The book really belongs to the world of mathematics rather than physics. Rather than performing physical experiments and finding a pattern in the results, string theorists start from highly theoretical assumptions and then work out the theory of what would happen if those assumptions turned out to be true. This is what mathematicians do! Indeed, Greene relates one example of a physicist solving some complex mathematical problem by attacking it from a string theory point of view, when at the same time a mathematician was working on the same problem by employing much more difficult techniques. The mathematician and the physicist came up with very different answers, and to Greene's obvious satisfaction the physicist turned out to be right. Rather than writing a physics textbook here, Greene has taken a contemporary-history approach. He covers the major discoveries chronologically, setting the stage for each new advance by lucidly describing the uncertainties and obstacles that were resolved by the next breakthrough. This approach gives the book more human interest than a textbook, and places each idea in an understandable context. By the way, we can confidently dismiss the criticisms of a couple of reviewers below who claim that the book is scientifically false or unsound. Greene is a Rhodes scholar, a world-class researcher, and a professor at Cornell and Columbia. He knows what he's talking about. But I must return to what really makes this a five-star book, which is the clarity of the writing and explaining. As a math teacher myself, I was deeply impressed by Greene's ability to communicate such advanced ideas to an audience of educated laypersons. I'll bet he is a great, great teacher.
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