Out of This World: Colliding Universes, Branes, Strings, and Other Wild Ideas of Modern Physics
- Book Review,
by Stephen Webb
From Publishers Weekly
The first law of popular science is that a sense of the discipline can be conveyed without mathematical formalities. A dangerous assumption in any field, it’s especially problematic when applied to the arcana explored in this cursory digest of cutting-edge physics. Webb, author of the well-received Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life, tackles the most intractable problems of general relativity, quantum mechanics, particle physics, cosmology, string theory, superstring theory, and the shadowy "M-theory" that may lurk behind the others. It’s an ambitious project, which Webb tries to hold together with the unifying theme of symmetry, a concept he feels infuses the truths of science with a "beauty" comparable to the greatest works of art. Unfortunately, we’re not talking Grecian urns here; the symmetries of avant-garde physics are the kind you find in ten- or eleven-dimensional space-time-that is, baffling abstractions that Webb admits are "difficult to describe, and probably impossible to visualize." Physicists themselves can grasp such rarefied ideas only as the outcome of fiendishly difficult mathematics, and Webb can do little more than skate over them in a mixture of opaque jargon and inexact analogy that lay readers will still find incomprehensible after a few chapters. Occasionally an arresting result surfaces, like the notion that the universe might be a hologram, or that there might be a microscopic twin universe that shrinks as ours expands, or possibly a full-sized twin universe offset from ours by a fraction of an inch. But readers who lack the Ph.D-level training needed to make sense of these speculations may find that Webb’s book alternately numbs and boggles the mind without really enlightening it. 143 illustrations.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Science News
Webb presents ideas so that nonspecialists can grasp the basics of topics as esoteric as alternative dimensions and particle physics.
Book Description
Although it is now almost unanimously accepted that the cosmos started with the Big Bang, we still have no plausible theory for the forces that set this creative cataclysm into motion. Some of the most profound questions science arise out of the difficulties scientists have explaining how our Universe was born. What happened, and indeed what was, before the Big Bang? During the past few years cosmologists and physicists have begun to develop new ideas, sometimes fantastic, that are beginning to shed light on such questions. In OUT OF THIS WORLD, Stephen Webb examines these amazing recent theories. After introducing general relativity and quantum mechanics-the twin foundations of twentieth century physics-he explains how they are fundamentally incompatible. Then, in a series of increasingly astonishing chapters, he introduces us to the seemingly outlandish and bizarre proposals-from almost unbelievably small particles to huge membranes that may envelope our Universe-that physicists have devised to account for this incompatibility, ultimately leading to us to wholly new realms of understanding. Webb makes these strange and wonderful goings-on accessible, engaging, and enjoyable, conveying not just what theorists have begun to believe about the cosmos, but the awe and excitement felt by scientists as this new picture of the Universe slowly emerges.
About the Author
Stephen Webb works in Learning and Teaching Solutions at the Open University, England, and is the author of WHERE IS EVERYBODY? (Copernicus Books, 2002.)
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