Parallel Worlds : A journey through creation, higher dimensions, and the future of the cosmos

Rating:
Summary: Very well written, Very intresting.
Review: I am physics student and found this book very interesting. Kaku assumes that you have some prior elementary knowledge of physics and mathematics. It is not like the recent book of Brian Green where he explains many times the details which makes the reading unpleasant and break the tempo e.g. Kaku on symmetry just assume that the reader must have heard of symmetry groups like SU2 and SU3 and on wave functions and probability amplitudes he assumes that reader have some kind of prior knowledge. He doesn't go technical though so you won't find any equation and unnecessary details. It is one of those books which is easy to follow and fun to read. It makes the reader to think about all that theory and equations in QM. I love the way he told about the Feynman path integration. No body told us that before. Lots of equations in physics and mathematics are just another equation but in this book Kaku put meaning to lot of them which not many people can do successfully.
I found this book much better than the Brian Green's Fabric of Cosmos. It is just like when you compare QM text by Shanker and Sakurai. This is much like Sakurai, concise and interesting and easy to read as Griffiths.


Rating:
Summary: Brilliant but Misguided
Review: Kaku presents an excellent account of conventional progress toward a unified theory of elementary particles and forces. The educated reader will note his bias toward string theory and multiple dimensions as the basis for unification. The author has produced graduate academic texts on string/M-theory which are also available online. This makes him an expert on the leading edge of the conventional approach. But the bias and almost religious dogmatic adherence to the probabilistic perspective makes the book mediocre. For a truly balanced perspective, the author should have included references to works such as Space, Elastic and Impeding which outlines a semi-classical approach toward unification. The author, in typical conventional style, ignores such attempts in Parallel Worlds - by omission, dismissing them as fringe or quackery. For instance, Caroline Thompson, a British computer scientist, has basically proven that Aspect's conclusions about EPR are wrong. The bottom line is that he ignores credible refutations of conventional perspectives. This tendency in convention will only doom physics to become more and more detached from reality - as exemplified by invention of multiple dimensions to explain unification. In my estimation, it is this and the concept of virtual particles which have derailed true progress in theoretical physics. The unfortunate situation is that the physics community has not realized this derailment. Kaku is brilliant in his treatment of the conventional understanding and its development. His book is entirely readable by the average science-minded person. But, be careful as you read to read between the lines - his omissions of contemporary refutations of conventional dogma.