Not a "light" read
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Brian Greene has a talent for conveying complex ideas in a way that is easy to understand. He is constantly using word pictures (and sometimes actual pictures) to explain relativity, quantum theory, and other topics that are utterly fascinating but are sometimes difficult to get your brain around. Elegant Universe is not a light read, but for those looking to get a moderate understanding of the subject matter I highly recommend it.
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Too much personal history. Disappointed promise.
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I took this book with me on holiday with great hopes. It started well with the tables of complete and regular features of fondamental particles exercising my imagination and being very satisfying to show how a few particles could engender all the complexity of the elementary particles, then the atoms, etc.... Many of the other reviews here show the other good and strong points, as well as some of the weaknesses of this book. I will not go through them again.
I did find the " internal personal history " of the author and his colleagues over long and of some, but not much relevance to the subject. At the end of the book, I was left unsatisfied by the promise of the beginning with the neat tables of fundamental particles, I felt we knew nothing of how each, and which, different frequency of the vibrating strings engendered a specific fondamental particle.
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An Introduction to SuperstringTheory/M Theory
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This book offers an enjoyable ride through a lovely landscape of Superstring theory/M theory. The author is an active researcher and a popular writer in this field who is also known for his presentation on PBS's NOVA about quantum cosmology. Since the postulation of special theory of relativity, Einstein and subsequent physicists have struggled to explain the four natural forces of the most basic components of matter; the electromagnetic force; the strong and weak nuclear forces; and the gravitational force by one unified field theory (a.k.a., theory of everything: Superstring/M Theory). This theory must unify the forces of the cosmos, and forces of microcosm thereby explaining the creation of heaven and earth. The author covers significant amount of material in simple clearly written non-technical and non-mathematical form. The book is described in four parts; first two parts introduces theory of relativity and quantum mechanics and the unholy marriage of the two that results in the complexity of understanding the forces of the cosmos and subatomic forces. The latter two parts describes Superstring theory that evolves into more focused M theory to explain all physical forces of nature. This theory suffers from lack of experimental evidence, but rests solely on mathematical calculations. Hence it was subjected to heavy criticism during early years of the theory by leading physicists. However it has emerged as a winner as the theory grew out of academic obscurity to leading contender in quantum cosmology. The book has interesting tales about the leaders of the field such as Ed Witten who is strongly favored as the true successor of Albert Einstein. The author's enthusiasm and excitement about his involvement in this field is evident abundantly, when he discovers that fabric of space tears and repairs itself. This book is lot more informative and enjoyable than Michio Kaku's Hyperspace (see my review of this book). At the end of the book, notes to each chapter, Glossary of scientific terms, and suggested books for further reading offers stepping stones to more enthusiastic readers for furthering their knowledge. The author has done an excellent job of writing this book, and I encourage you to buy it: But he could have considered writing a chapter on mathematical methodology and some basic approaches to calculations that probably would have made this book one of the top few in this field.
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Full of wonder
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I read my brother's copy of this after he'd had his head stuck in it for about a month. I knew that anything which could keep him quiet for so long had to be good, and it is. Like Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" there are no equations to slow things down or put off the mathematically challenged (well, there are some in the helpful and insightful notes, but not in the main text). It begins with an overview of classical physics, explaining everything you need to keep up with the author once he delves into quantum and, beyond that, into string theory.
I did find myself having to read and reread parts of this - particularly from about half-way onwards - because it covers so much ground and it wasn't all sinking in, but it's well worth persevering with and Greene does a great job at explaining some of theoretical physics' concepts in a non-technical and enlightening way.
If you feel jaded about the world and have lost that sense of wonder, read this and be amazed all over again.
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How does a single electron pass through two slits at the same time? It must move discontinuously...
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Greene gave a very popular introduction of the mysterious quantum world. His H-Bar is an ingenious pun. However, his explanation of Feynman's path integral was wrong. Maybe he inherited from Hawking. The paths in Feynman's approach are purely quantum states, not classical continuous paths at all, as Greene depicted in his book. Nor did Feynman claim that his method implied such a bizarre picture.
However, a single electron does pass through two slits at the same time in the double-slit experiment. But how does it pass through two slits at the same time? Nobody knew. In fact, it seems very evident that the single electron can only pass through the two slits at the same time in a discontinuous way. Therefore, its motion may be not continuous but discontinuous. To our surprise, such discontinuous motion is imaginable and comprehensible. This intriguing idea has actually been lucidly expounded in a recent book Quantum Motion - Unveiling the Mysterious Quantum World. A more popular introduction can be found at my name.
Once we realize that motion is discontinuous and random in reality, we may finally understand the mysterious quantum world, where an electron can pass through two slits at the same time.
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