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    The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
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    The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
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    The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

    Written by Brian Greene

    Narrated by Erik Davies

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From Brian Greene, one of the world's leading physicists, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way.

    Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?

    Greene uses these questions to guide us toward modern science's new and deeper understanding of the universe. From Newton's unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein's fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics' entangled arena where vastly distant objects can bridge their spatial separation to instantaneously coordinate their behavior or even undergo teleportation, Greene reveals our world to be very different from what common experience leads us to believe. Focusing on the enigma of time, Greene establishes that nothing in the laws of physics insists that it run in any particular direction and that "time's arrow" is a relic of the universe's condition at the moment of the big bang. And in explaining the big bang itself, Greene shows how recent cutting-edge developments in superstring and M-theory may reconcile the behavior of everything from the smallest particle to the largest black hole. This startling vision culminates in a vibrant eleven-dimensional "multiverse," pulsating with ever-changing textures, where space and time themselves may dissolve into subtler, more fundamental entities.

    Sparked by the trademark wit, humor, and brilliant use of analogy that have made The Elegant Universe a modern classic, Brian Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.

    With 146 illustrations

    Jacket photograph by DB Image/Brand X Pictures


    From the Hardcover edition.

    Editor's Note

    Science meets humanities…

    Brian Greene is the rare individual who has a scientific brain and a humanities heart, which allows him to explain hard, abstract concepts in such a way that makes you wish you’d paid more attention in science class.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 10, 2004
    ISBN9780739309278
    Unavailable
    The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

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    Reviews for The Fabric of the Cosmos

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    • 5/5
      This is a great introduction to the weirdness of modern physics. Very entertaining: Greene uses The Simpsons as the recurring theme for his examples.
    • 2/5
      (original review, 2004)"Within each individual [time] slice, your thoughts and memories are sufficiently rich to yield a sense that time has continuously flowed to that moment. This feeling, this sensation that time is flowing, doesn't require previous moments—previous frames—to be "sequentially illuminated."In "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian GreeneI agree that this is at least as much philosophy as science, though mathematically based philosophy. But what irks me is that for all the pages of science books devoted to this subject, no one has pointed out that for us to experience moments sequentially (assuming those moments don't themselves move) our mind has to move through those moments. And movement entails time. So while time may be a spatial dimension, if Greene (and Godel, etc.) are right, then there must be at least one other dimension of time that allows our minds to move through the different moments that all exist and experience them sequentially.I'm still not seeing a real explanation for why in any given time slice we have memories of past events, but not memories of future events. There's no reason for one but not the other. Moreover, does Greene address what this does for the idea of causality, which is so central in science? For example, "point mutations plus natural selection results in speciation." If all moments exist simultaneously from a four-dimension point of view, nothing causes anything.A four-dimensional block universe is temporal. Time is one of its dimensions, so there's no lack of time. Time exists, as events can be ordered by the temporal relations "earlier than," "simultaneous with," and "later than." It's "temporal becoming" which doesn't exist—meaning that things don't really come to be and then cease to be, since every moment exists. Events can stand in causal relations in this kind of universe. Here's an example of what it would mean to stand in a causal relation:For any entities x and y, x is the cause of y if and only if(i) If x were not to exist, y would not exist, and(ii) If y were not to exist, x would still exist.Regarding temporal relations, they can exist if time is asymmetrical. Time is not the same in both directions. That's an obvious feature of time. The temporal relations "earlier than" and "later than" are surely not arbitrary. If you had to put a series of scrambled frames of a video in the correct order, you would know how to order them. Thus, the temporal relations of "earlier than" and "later than" seem to be meaningful even in a block universe. And still regarding causal relations, I think the description that I gave for such a relation is adequate for causally relating x and y. When you say, "I still don't see why such a description would hold in a block universe," remember that events in a block universe don’t exist independently of other events. If x is the cause of y, then it’s due to the fact that x exists that y exists. X could have failed to exist and thus, y would have failed to exist. There could have been different events in one location of spacetime if matters had been different in another location of spacetime. The reality of every moment in time just shows that there aren’t in fact different events, not that there couldn’t have been different events. An account of causation doesn’t require temporal becoming to be a feature of reality. Causation can be "tenseless."Professor Greene may have gone a bit overboard trying to simplify things. Special relativity says that observers may not agree on when or where events happen, but they do have to agree that the events do actually happen and that the causal link that leads up to the event is the same. As for the distinction between the past and the future, that too is quite real. It's just that if there's no causal link between events, then it really doesn't matter which happens before which, e.g., a man sneezes in America and a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa. To an observer, the two events might happen at the same time. To another, the sneezing might happen before and to another, the sneezing might happen after. But since the events aren't causally related, it doesn't really matter. But if the man sneezing caused the butterfly to flap its wings then everyone has to agree that sneezing happened before. That is how time is actually determined. By causally linked events.Much of this book is complete nonsense and lacks a philosophical understanding of relativity. Time is absolutely a real thing at least in the flow sense of it. Things are happening, changing, evolving, and that’s definitely not an illusion. The sense of simultaneity is an illusion and the rate at which different things experience the flow or change of time varies. The future is not a place that already exists and neither is the past. They are gone. The revolutionary war isn't still going on, it ended over 200 years ago. When physicists talk about the possibility of traveling to the future, what they really mean is you are slowing the flow of time for yourself relative to the area you are attempting to travel to in the future. If you traveled on a ship really fast outwards into space at half the speed of light for about an hour and then came back, you wouldn't have traveled to the future. For you it would have only been 2 hours but for earth it would have been much longer because the flow of time was different for you two. When you say things like "time travel" or "traveling to the future" you make it sound like the future place that you're going to travel to already exists. It doesn't. The same is true with the past.As I wrote above, I suppose the key word here is causality, I believe that without causality there can be no time. mental or physical, without matter and energy there cannot be no time being observed....and where there is no time, well here then this is the illusion. It does appear however that present time is the activity of potentiality, during any instant..(Aristotle), movement in time is not the illusion, but the observation of it, ...time is time because there IS an instance of reality...reality ever changes in the things that are moving in time, this is because there is a cause for any cause, but the perception of time changes because of space time being met with energy...as with Einstein’s theories, by and large atoms and electrons are moving, stars are moving, the sea moves, the earth rotates...all that is a fact about what causes them (Newtonian physics). Every part comes from some other part during the present. I don't think that Einstein was saying that time changes, but rather the perception of it; the nature of light and energy never changes, but rather the "apparent" mass of matter changes or seems to distort reality of our time next to some other distant event, into another "now"? And this seems to be according to the general theory relativity. It would be an interesting idea if atoms have different “now times” traveling at their relativistic speeds from each other.Physics has partially been in a crisis for a while because there is still a lack of understanding about time and exactly what it is. Sean Carroll and Lee Smolin have written about this extensively. It is possible to generalize science for popular consumption and not have to tell fairy tales. NB: The proverbial idea of a loaf of bread representing entire spacetime, subject to slicing in different angles depending on the observers' relative motion may lead to conveying an inconsistent picture of reality. This implies that future already exists and all events that could ever take place have already occurred. If this was the reality, we ought to be able to predict the future. As much as I am a fan of Professor Brian Green, I sometimes feel that his enthusiasm of explaining concepts like those of spacetime that emerged from Special Theory of Relativity to ordinary people without the underlying math conveys a wrong picture to people. I applaud his zeal of explaining intricate physics to everyone, but I am afraid such explanations without the accompanying math will not provide the consistent picture that theories like Special Theory of Relativity actually paint.
    • 4/5
      I fully admit i struggled with some of the concepts discussed in this book - Brian Greene makes it as friendly as possible but some of the terminology just went over my head - still I did finish with a better understanding than I started with.
      I found that the multiple ways of describing various concepts sometimes useful but mostly repetitive. But I can see why they are there as everyone will interpret situations diferently.
      The second half of the book which goes into quantum theory and supersting theory the most difficult to understand but i think this is mostly because the concepts are so alien to our everyday understanding of life.
    • 5/5
      Great science book. Synthesis classic theory with new development, trying to answers the mysteries of this universe. Worth reading or leasening book. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Deepens and broadens a layman's understanding of Physics. Motivated to study Physics as a course.
    • 5/5
      Easy to understand and follow. I could not put it down so I stayed up all night, although I have to go to work the next morning! Some conclusions or statements were not drawn out, leaving one to ask questions that were not answered in subsequent chapters. In the interest of brevity and keeping it high level for non-astro physicists, I understand the writer's approach. I really enjoyed this book and plan on reading Greene's other books.
    • 4/5
      For pop science you could do much worse than this.
    • 3/5
      The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality "Every moment in time just is." That is a huge thing to wrap your mind around. Every moment in space-time just exists. While we experience the "arrow of time," the feeling of moving forward (which Greene explains) every moment already exists in the universe, and always will. When I saw an episode on NOVA made from this book I knew I had to read it. The episode I saw was "The Illusion of Time," and it blew me away. Watch it at the link and you'll be a 25-point Calvinist.

      Mathematics might be the highest form of worship; every Christian should read books such as this one about cosmology. The more we learn about the universe, the more improbable a self-existing first cause seems. As Greene points out, the universe we see now is dramatically less probable, statistically speaking, than one that developed from complete randomness. That the universe originated with a low-entropy (Big Bang) event is also highly improbable, but yet we know it happened.

      The universe started at a size smaller than the period on the end of this sentence. It had incredible symmetry, such that perhaps all of the forces we know today were combined together in one force. The laws of physics break down at that point, there's the incompatibility of quantum mechanics and generaly relativity such that we have a "fuzzy patch." But newly-discovered inflationary theory tells us much of what happens after the first moment, exactly how the universe began its incredible rapid expansion. (See Greene's recent article in Smithsonian Magazine).But, the "fuzzy patch still looks fuzzy."

      Galaxies are now moving apart from each other at high rates of speed. We discover planets and learn more about the makeup of the universe every day. The last third of the book deals with super string theory, which Greene also details more thoroughly in The Elegant Universe (some parts seem to be repeated verbatim in both works; I imagine all of his books essentially say the same things in different ways... one has to make money somehow).

      How many dimensions does space have? 10? More? Why did only 3 dimensions experience inflation after the Big Bang? What about curled dimensions? M theory? Planck length? Those are the tedium in the second half of the book.

      He does delve into the possibility of Star Trek-like teleportation, showing the recent advances in research that indicate this may one day be possible. Just this week the Army confirmed that it can teleport quantum data, for example.There is also an explanation of the theoretical and mathematical impossibilities of time travel-- traveling backwards in time. These are amusing aspects.

      Greene frequently uses Simpsons characters in his analogies. It is not nearly as analogic in language as The Elegant Universe, but it's mostly understandable. The second half of the book gets pretty heavy, though, an audio version is the only way I could get through it. When you get bogged down in quantum mechanics it helps to have the audio keep pushing you on to the main point.

      I really should not judge a book by one that followed it, but I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5.
    • 4/5
      Good book with some astounding thoughts on where physics and the study of space-time are going. Above my head but there are pearls of information that suggest the immensity and the unseen reality about us all. But a long read.
    • 5/5
      I'm not a Physicist, so Quantum Mechanics is not what I would've done / learned as part of my regular 'work life'. But this documentary explains the basics of Quantum world in a way that is easily absorbed by non-Quantum people (or 'lay men' according other Quantum physicists).The new and open-ended perspective regarding Multiverses is simply mind boggling and yet I'm curious to know more about it.The visuals and graphics used in the documentary uncomplicates the understanding of these intricate and composite theories.But I've got to say this, I felt a lot better reading these concepts in The Elegant Universe by the same author."One of the wonderful things about Science is, it is about evidence and not about belief."
    • 4/5
      Marking this as finished even though technically I still have two more chapters left -- they're even chapters I look forward to reading. But I know I'll be coming back to this and I wanted to move on to other reading for now.

      Having said that, this seems like a good overview of the current (well, as of the date of publication) state of the game in physics. I can't say that for certain of course, but it left me feeling like I had some understanding (not enough -- hence my suggestion I might return to it) of the current issues and the current focus of research for cosmology.
    • 4/5
      For months, I avoided writing something about Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. It was complex and only suited to summary in the most superficial way. Or so I tell myself. More likely, I am not up to the task. The book is an introduction to the current scientific understanding of the nature of space and time, emphasis on the former. While I wouldn't describe it as technical per se -- lacking the mathematics that would further illuminate but also complicate the material -- it is nonetheless challenging. The material requires the motivated nonphysicist to persist and focus, and the effort is well rewarded.Greene offers a substantive review of quantum mechanics and general relativity, both necessary to examine current conceptions of space and time. The punchline, at the risk of imprecision, is that we cannot look at space in a common sense way at all. There are important ways in which space does not involve a conventional notion of locality; quantum phenomena resist explanations that rely on the familiar behavior of quotidian reality; at the smallest dimensions space and time themselves seem to lose meaning; ultimately there is no such thing as “empty” space, as what appears empty is actually roiling with the energy of quantum fluctuations.Having established this basis, Greene uses these concepts to paint a picture of cosmic inflation and quantum loop gravity theories, aiming to show how these prominent approaches account for space itself and the vastness of the universe. Where is the controversy, one might ask? Ultimately, the trajectory of the book leads to Green's great personal interest in physics, string theory. We see how this theory, if true, might address some of the current mysteries in our understanding of space and time. But there are those for whom them’s fightin’ words. Some argue that string theory lacks the quality of falsifiability, and as such cannot be taken seriously. If you are a staunch adherent of this position, you no doubt do not need to be reading this review. The book was excellent and I highly recommend it. I found it all rather thrilling.
    • 5/5
      Brian Greene's work is comprehensive collection of scientific understanding with regard to origin of universe, grand unification, and concept of space/time. Book presumes basic awareness of key concepts (which aren't difficult to have if one has passing interest in this topic) but provides very detailed and scientific approach to whole lot of ideas and experiments designed to test those ideas. In the end, book is mind-blowing and leaves one marveled at world we inhabit. I was familiar with key themes but systematic approach still helped deepen the appreciation of, for example, experiments in LHC or multiverse theory. Recommended read for one interested in this topic.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Carl Sagan and his Cosmos marked my childhood with great memories in 1980s, and it's great to see the tradition of successful scientists laying out a great narrative is alive and ticking in books such as this one by Brian Greene. I'm a bit late to the party, so reading the book felt like a time travel. Having read it more than a decade after it's been written, I know that Higgs boson has been discovered, gravitational waves have been detected, and NASA's Gravity Probe B mission has been accomplished. Does that fact take anything away from the book's worth? Well, it depends on your perspective, but I would say "no, not at all!". Lacking the descriptions stellar scientific achievements that occurred in the last 13 years, the book is still a very good exposition of our current understanding of our universe and reality. My only criticism can be summarized as the following: it's good for a popular science book to stay away from the technicalities of complex physics theories, but I think putting a bit of math in the end notes hardly helps, simply referring to the relevant sources for details would make it more concise. Moreover, I'd expect a more thorough description of loop quantum gravity, instead of a mere few pages of introduction and a very short comparison with string theory.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed this book, and I would have given it 4 stars but I almost wish it had been more scientific. At times it felt like the use of metaphor was too distracting from the scientific concepts being explained and I came away with no real understanding of the topic but instead a rather convoluted concept about frogs in a hot metal bowl filled with worms...I will leave you to figure out what concept that was regarding....
    • 4/5
      This is a terrific book. I thoroughly enjoyed every page written by distinguished string theorist Brian Greene, who also wrote the book and Nova TV series, "The Elegant Universe", which is available in paperback. Some of the string theory in "The Fabric of the Cosmos" is repetitive of the content of the earlier book. This guy not only knows his stuff, but he also explains very difficult physics using examples and analogies that are inventive and humorous (for example, characters and situations from "The Simpsons" pop up in several different contexts). Do not get the idea that "The Fabric of the Cosmos" deals only with arcane particle phenomena that are completely irrelevant to everyday life, or that it oversimplifies to the level of cartoons. On the contrary, Professor Greene elevates the reader's thinking to the ultimate nature of reality. Over the past couple of years, I have read a number of books that purport to bring relativity, quantum mechanics, and cosmology to the non-physicist, but this is the one that I enjoyed the most. The only thing I would criticize about it is that the black-and-white illustrations (and there aren't a lot of them) don't seem to have been reproduced very well.
    • 4/5
      When I studied physics 40-something years ago, relativity and the wave/particle duality was the pinnacle of scientific weirdness. Things have moved on and the weirdness has grown. Quantum theory appears to deliver communication at a distance between widely separated entangled particles. The "inflationary" period very soon after the big bang was repulsive gravity!? String theory replaces particles as "points" with a infinitesimal vibrating string. Brian Greene covers all this and more in a readable popularisation of current physics and cosmology. He is a skilful de-mystifier and I fear that the fog that remains in my mind at the end of his book is the result of my limitations, not his. Read November 2012.
    • 4/5
      Fabric of the Cosmos sets upon the idea that what we se everyday is a veil, that there is a true reality that goes beyond our everyday perceptions. The book starts out with very basic concepts that are easy to grasp and the heat gets turned up from there. There are some mind-bending questions asked, “Why does our memory only remember the past, why not things that are yet to happen?” Brian Greene attempts to explain these high-end concepts using real world examples (a la Star Wars and The Simpson). The best example comes in the introduction where he gives the example of the rose. On its own we can appreciate its beauty, but using the knowledge of physics, we can be amazed at its existence so much more. That example demonstrates the passion of Brian Greene’s book, but it also reminded me of an episode of The Simpson where the teachers have gone on strike. One of the scientists is teaching a kindergarten class and is using a kids bubble popper. The kids want to play with it, but he retorts with something like, “You won’t appreciate the science of it as much as I do.” I thought another example from the book is a good explanation of what it is like to read the book. Greene explains about space-time, in that, you are either taking up space or time. When you are resting, you are taking up space, when you are moving, you are taking up time. This kind of concept really blew my mind. I always like the concept of time travel. Scientists provided this theory by sending a plane around the world with an atomic clock to prove the point. When the plan landed the clock was one/one billionth of a second behind. It’s an interesting proof, but my first reaction was, “that’s it?” I comprehended the first three-quarters of the book. While the book provides mind-blowing facts, you cannot discern them in everyday life, which is the point of the book. It's a fascinating history of physics told in laymen's terms. It’s fascinating to a point, but many of the concepts I couldn't fully comprehend.
    • 3/5
      Finally finished this book! It's taken me six months to read this on and off.Brian Greene writes very clearly, using imagery that is easy to understand for the armchair reader. The book does require concentration and the assimilation of one part before moving on to the next, which is why I only read it in small doses. However it is well worth the effort, providing a clear overview of 'the fabric of the cosmos' from Newtonian physics to superstring theory and beyond. It is, quite simply, a riveting read.
    • 4/5
      The second book on string theory by Greene, and actually much easier to read. It is probably a good idea to start with this book, and not "The Elegant Universe". Towards the end of the book, some very intriguing theries are discussed, these alone are worth reading this book. It will probably keep you wondering about the world (or rather, universe) we live in for quite a while.
    • 3/5
      This book gives a wonderful, detailed overview of the current state of thinking regarding certain areas of the theoretical physics world. Although I found much of the book extremely interesting, and I was constantly going to Wikipedia and other sources for more info, I still found much of the book extremely drawn out. It could have been much shorter.In particular, my favorite areas of the book were:- The description of Einstein's General and Special Theories of Relativity- The sections on Cosmology related to the Big Bang and Inflationary Theory- Quantum Fluctuations and elementary particles- Parts of the String Theory section and membranes- Time travel theoriesThe most laborious section in my mind was Greene's slow approach to entropy. Anyone with even some level of scientific study would have found this section to be boring and plodding. I can understand the need for covering entropy in his overall approach to "time's arrow" but it should have been seriously reduced in word count.I would recommend this book to people with more than passing interest in space, quantum mechanics and physics. It makes for an excellent overview for a general reader but perhaps with some searching, books of similar quality (and shorter) could also be found.
    • 5/5
      What an amazing book. Brian Greene is amazing, too -- he can take incredibly complex concepts, and write about them in a way that someone who doesn't have a PhD can understand.
    • 4/5
      I like the fluidity of Greene's writing, especially since he skips all the "unnecessary" details like calculations and such. However, I don't quite agree with some comments that this book is accessible to even people who have never before studied physics. Greene may have simplified, but the book is still rather academic in my opinion.
    • 5/5
      In terms of popular science books, this one is simply extraordinary. Brian Greene's writing makes exceedingly difficult and advanced concepts fairly accessible to the lay person.In particular I like how he starts off by tipping his hat to Camus' existensialist dillema but then disagreeding with his idea that knowledge from the sciences can't in fact make a difference. I'm not sure I agree, but I think Greene's appreciation of camus, and his belief that science can make a difference helps to illustrate his passion as a scientist.While this book covers a lot of general physics the focus is on the implications for our conceptions of space and time, as the title strongly suggests.I have not yet finished this book, but by less than half way through I have been introduced to a number of topics that I have never really come across in the popular writings of other physicists like Drs Feynman, Weinberg, or Hawking. Greene goes thru special and general relativity and orthodox qm i a delightful manner, showing all the important features, and tho he notes that he agrees with the orthodoxy on philosophic points he does not do disservice to disagreeing views, which he makes note of in the book, as well as in some of the more technical notes.We also go through some more intricate matters which one does not ordinarily see outside of a philosophy of physics book such as the relational v absolutist stance on space "newtons bucket", Mach's response, and Einstein's update, following which we get an overview on block space-time, and how this is reconciled with the relativistic views of different observers as different angled cuts of the single block. I have never seen this approach or metaphor thoroughly hammered out in any work on popular physics. Green also argues eloquently using the notion of "updating now moments of different observers" that SR discrepancies can be seen over extremely wide spatial separations at even extremely low velocities.Next we get overviews of entanglement and the implications for space, including some difficult ideas on the matter from eminent researches such as John Bell, David Bohm, as well as Alain Aspects results. While the mathematical details may not be all here in their full rigor, the essence of the ideas surly is.Right now I am learning that probabilistic reasoning applied with the time reversal invariance of the laws of physics entail that entropy should be higher in the past as well as the future!This is mind numbing stuff!I also like the humor and references to pop culture (simpsons, etc).Read it and enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      follow up to his prior book, The Elegant Universe. This one is a little more simplistic in some ways, using very imaginative analogies to explain complex theoretical physics principles. I found it very enjoyable and a nice companion book to The Elegant Universe.
    • 4/5
      Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, and a superstring theorist explains the stuff of reality. By skillful use of diagrams and analogies he succeeds even for non-mathematicians like me. He also goes on to explain of what the world might be made. In other words, what science knows by experimental proof and what has yet to be proved by experiment. And most puzzling is the experimental fact that the rules of movement for the big things in the universe, people, planets, stars and galaxies are quite different from the laws of the very small things in the universe, atoms and sub-atomic particles, which follow the rules of quantum mechanics.Humans experience three dimensions of space and one of time, and while we can go up or down, forward or backwards, left or right in space we can only travel forward in time. But are these dimensions the real stuff of the universe as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein insisted or just a linguistic expressions of relationships as Gottfried von Leibniz argued? Following time’s single direction Greene leads the reader back to the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang and then forward to a cosmos that may have as many as eleven dimensions. It’s quite a trip.
    • 5/5
      Greene, ein bekannter Physiker, gibt eine sehr verständliche Einführung in die Grundfragen von Raum und Zeit. Ohne Mathematik, die sich – wenn überhaupt – nur in den Fußnoten findet, dafür aber mit vielen Beispielen, Metaphern und Grafiken werden die komplexen Themengebiete der Relativitätstheorie und Quantenmechanik dargestellt. Besonders gut gefällt mir dabei, dass Greene vor allem auf die philosophischen Konsequenzen dieser Ergebnisse eingeht und die Frage nach der Beschaffenheit unserer Welt, der Realität stellt. Dabei werden auch die bisher ungelösten Probleme bzw. alternative Ansätze kurz dargestellt. Greene gelingt es, seine eigene Begeisterung so zu vermitteln, dass sie ansteckend ist. Das Buch macht süchtig, verlangt nach mehr und ist aus meiner Sicht nur zu empfehlen. Ich habe schon viele Bücher zu diesem faszinierenden Thema gelesen, das von Greene ist aber für mich bisher das Spannendste und auch Aktuellste davon.
    • 5/5
      Slightly worse than it's "predecessor", but then we all know that it would be hard to beat one of the best science books out there. More dense, the advances in the theories are really took into context without sounding too draconian to strangers like me.
    • 4/5
      Another fat book on the physics of cosmology and relativity, explaining, in some vague way, current theories and problems of grand unified theories and cosmology. Absorbing and pleasant to read, but leaves me with a curiously unfufilled feeling, as though I was window shopping rather than learning things. I read about the quantum measurement problem, about paradoxes of collapsing wave functions, and again about 11 dimensional strings as a way of unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics.
    • 5/5
      An unbelievable insight into the very fabric of what we consider to be "reality." This book will undoubtedly change the way you think about our "three dimensional" universe forever.