A tantalising taster
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I found this book by following the link from Brioan Greene's Elegant Universe, and I'm glad I did. It is frustratingly brief, but covers almost as much ground as Greene in a moree accessible way. After reading this version of the story, I got a lot more out of the longer book. If only Gribbin had taken the time to write a full length history of strings and membranes.
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The 10 hidden dimensions
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Gribbon superbly summarises the state of string theory in the 1990's. His detailed understanding of the theory comes from the fact that he actually worked on the equations involved, stremalining anomalies and on one stormy night completing one of the most fundamental formulas in science - the theory of everything. In some ways, it's an account of how string theory (little strings of energy that vibrate in different ways to set cosmic constants) has evovled from it's uncertain origins of an accidental discovery by a young mathemaician looking for the formula for the strong nuclear force.. Putting his career on the line, Gribbon absorbed his life's work into this one theory, which cannot ever be proven by observation or experiment. This book charters the doubts, the lows and breath-taking breakthroughs of one of the universe's baffling mysteries - the elusive graviton and the predixtions made by the string formula that there are an extra 6 dimencions packed into an infinitely small space.
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