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Summary: Will look at the world differently.
Review: After having read Brian Greene's "Elegant Universe", I found his "Fabric of the Cosmos" book quite a bit easier reading, since I am a lay person who has been interested in the subject for many years. His discussions of a "probability wave" gives thought to how our "free will" might possibly function. I will surely look at the world around us with an ever-increasing awe for the mysteries contained within. Great book!
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Summary: Not done yet...
Review: ...but i have a quesiton and some comments. First, i've really been struggling with the "Persistent Illusion of Past, Present and Future" section (pages 132-139). I simply cannot grasp why when "Chewie" stands and walks away from Earth, his conception of "now" rotates into the past. Can anyone explain it?As for comments, the graphics are downright microscopic and the book does cover lots of the same ground as Elegant. Also, in his description of the "two-slit" experiment he completely neglected to say what makes it so weird: the fact that the particle interacts with itself and follows all possible paths in the universe on its way to the photo screen. I hope he gets back to that...
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Summary: Oh My God What A Good Book!!!
Review: It is a page turner. I am a physicist and got a PhD from MIT in plasma physics, quantum theory, and nuclear engineering. I think I understand most of the physics and what the author is trying to do. It is just an outstanding book. It is not a book about time travel or science fiction. It is a book about the theory of the cosmos and basic physics theory - explained for the lay person. There are a group of brilliant young scientists such as Brian Greene at some of the leading US universities today such as Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and Columbia (to name a few) that have been quickly promoted to full professors at a young age and who have decided to share their knowledge with the general public by writing these and similar books or publishing articles in general science magazines such as Scientific American. Gone are the mumbo jumbo mixture of opaque mathematical equations and references to other complicated theories and equations of the "Physical Review" style and instead we have simple stories, black and white illustrations, and analogies that clearly transmit the essence of the science. Read the first chapter "Roads to Reality" - which is 22 pages long - and a layman will have one of the best summaries that describes the development of physics over the past 300 years. Does he miss things, yes definitely. But he presents the evolution of classical mechanics, electromagnetic theory, relativity theory, quantum mechanics and now the convergence of quantum and relativity to be reconciled in string theory. This is done all in a short concise form that is easy to understand and makes for a fascinating read. He discusses the situation 110 years ago when Michelson thought that modern science was essentially explained. Oh what a rude shock to discover 10 years later that he was completely wrong and it was more like 5% was known. He goes on in the other chapters to lay out many different concepts and examples. Science progresses hand in hand with theory and experimental observations. We still do not have the machines, telescopes, detectors, and other equipment to see all that we would like to see, but the book gives a wonderful lay introduction to the field and where we are today. Brian Greene is not presenting a new discovery or telling us a lot that we cannot read elsewhere if we look. But he pulls together a lot of interesting and important scientific stuff from very small stings to the evolution of forward time and the universe in one easy to read and page turning book. The book is moderately long - 500 plus pages - and contains many small black and white illustrations and graphs. Looking at the book in the bookstore, it took me 10 seconds to decide to buy the book and I was not disappointed. If you are interested in "time travel" there is an excellent book by the Princeton Professor J. Richard Gott - "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe". Jack in Toronto
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Summary: Fabric Delivers Inspiration and Information
Review: The Fabric of the Cosmos creates a great debate-how can we live in a world that seems real to us that does not reflect the true nature of reality. We take time for granted as some kind of matrix that life just systematically unfolds in, but why? I am not a scientist interested in the equations behind these discoveries, but a avid fan of science and the inspiration to be found in scientific inquiry. For a amature like me, Fabric of the Cosmos delivers information, ideas and inspiration in abundance.
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Summary: An Achievement--BRAVO
Review: The Fabric of the Cosmos is an achievement, a milestone in making the hardest ideas available to the general reader. I have only one thing to say: BRAVO. (A second thing to the author:
write more books!)
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Summary: Never thought I would like physics.
Review: As an artist and a math-phobe, I stay away from all things science. After hearing this articulate, plain-speaking author on Leonard Lopate's radio show, I decided to break my patterns and give science a try. I am stunned myself, but I actually just finished Fabric of the Cosmos. I can't say I've mastered every last word but I think I got the essentials. At times I had to put the book down because, in teenage lingo, it was blowing my mind. The last week with this book has shaken me up and opened my eyes. I recommend it to artists and scientists a like. Immerse yourself in the strange world that is our universe.
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Summary: Deep and Thoughtful Look at Reality
Review: This is a deep and thoughtful look at reality through the eyes of one of the new generation of leading physicists. I thank Professor Greene for taking valuable time away from his research to bring the latest advances to the masses. It takes a special talent to take a mathematical subject and de-mathematize it and Greene's talents here are without equal. With more books like this the world would be a different place.
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Summary: !!!! A Great Work...
Review: ...that everyone should read. You have heard that reality is stranger than fiction. Read this book to find out why. Many things you thought were obvious and clear, are actually very, very, strange, and very, very unlike what you thought. This should be the bible of the 21st century.
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Summary: The Best
Review: Anyone who has gotten half way through one of the many science books that clutter the shelves of every book store, and had to throw it aside out of frustration, will receive this book as a gift. It delivers while so many other books only promise and then hide when the going gets difficult. For a quick summary, skip this book and read a newspaper article or Scientific American magazine. For the real deal, read this book. I am positively ecstatic about it. It gives a concise but brilliant history of thinking on space and time, and then goes on to the non-local features of the universe in quantum theory. That is something I had read a whole book about, but was only given flimsy explanations and so I never knew where Einstein had gone wrong and what the implications were. Now it is all positively clear. I am still struggling with the claims about time, and loving every minute of it, if a minute can still be said to exist! For the newcommers to popular science books, skip all the rest so you can skip the frustration. Read this, it is the best.
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Summary: Record Setting
Review: I've never written a review before, but I have enjoyed browsing reader's comments on books I read or teach from. While reading the review that claims this new book to be a "dumbing down" of The Elegant Universe, and to have "no new material", I felt I had to set the record straight. For the record: I teach Physics for Poets class in a local community college, and use The Elegant Universe as one of our books. Next year I will add Fabric of the Cosmos to the syllabus since it has at least 80% new material, and the overlap with The Elegant Universe is done in a new way that I have not seen in any other book, The Elegant Universe or otherwise. The reviewer says that "200 pages are spent reviewing Newton and Einstein" which is a factual error. It is just over 50 pages, and a fascinating new angle known as Mach's principle is used. For the reviewer to say that "spooky action at a distance" is in Elegant, is also a factual error. He must be thinking of another book. This (huge) subject, entanglement, was not covered in the Elegant Universe as I know for sure, since in the past I have had to assign other books for these ideas. I might add that the discussion of entanglement in Fabric goes far ahead of any other since it proves Bell's theorem, without math! I didn't think that was possible! The main theme of The Arrow of Time which runs through Fabric, is not touched on at all in Elegant, nor are the questions of whether space and time are real or just ideas. If someone is looking for a direct sequel to Elegent, this is not that book. Fabric is a monumental work of its own and should be read as such. For other suggested readings: Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps, Janna Levin's How the Universe Got its Spots.
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