Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #4293818 in Books
- Published on: 2006
- Binding: Hardcover
By Leonard Susskind
2 used and new from $14.00
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First tagged "astronomy" by Paul W. Pohwat
Customer tags: astronomy
Customer Reviews
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212 of 224 people found a following examination helpful.
A sharp sales pursuit with a vast side of information
By Royce E. Buehler
Unlike a physicists who wrote a initial dual reviews, we don't know many 'bout fibre theory. Which is since we spin to books like this, or Greene's _The Elegant Universe_. Let me try to explain what this book is perplexing to do, and how, for one self-evident intelligent layman, it stacks up.
Susskind is a male with a mission. What he's describing here is not staid science, nonetheless his possess perspective of a instruction elemental prolongation should be perplexing to go. In sequence to report that properly, of course, he has to explain a good bargain of staid prolongation along a way. He does this engagingly and sincerely clearly, nonetheless he doesn't have a truly conspicuous expository gifts of Brian Greene, and we strongly suggest that anyone who wants to tackle this book should examination _Elegant Universe_ first.
The book has dual firmly intertwined categorical theses. The initial has to do with a Anthropic Principle: a regard that a vast series of earthy constants are compulsory to tumble within a surprisingly slight operation of values, in sequence for a apparatus of biology ever to appear. Slight tweaks to any of them would make galaxies, stars, atoms, chemical elements heavier than helium, to contend zero of CO shaped life forms, impossible. Susskind's topic here is that a AP is neither, as many theists would like to claim, justification for a Designer who tailored a star to make us possible; nor, as earthy physicists would like to claim, an uninteresting verbiage requiring no explanation. Rather, a reason is to be found in a final decades' developments in fibre theory.
His second topic is that these developments - generally a approach in that fibre theory, that was creatively hoped could infer mathematically that a several earthy constants could have usually one singly dynamic set of values, incited out to be a family of five, afterwards many, afterwards mind bogglingly many, graphic theories - are not a egghead disaster some have felt them to be. Rather they are an evidence in preference of a law of fibre theory, since a countless variations in a laws of prolongation available by a several fibre theories provides a naturalistic reason for a Anthropic Principle. To wit: vast acceleration creates countless new universes all a time, any with a possess set of earthy constants, and it is not startling that some of them should have laws (and in sold a value for Einstein's cosmological constant, that is some-more intensely compelled than any of a others) that assent life to arise. The collection of all these probable universes, by analogy with a "fitness landscapes" of evolutionary speculation in biology, is what Susskind designates as "the vast landscape" of a title.
There are a lot of problems with this indicate of view. Susskind considers them, and argues enthusiastically, subtly and sincerely that nothing of them is a uncover stopper. In a end, we felt he unsuccessful to tighten a sale. Until someone solves what he calls a "measure problem", a whole intrigue is passed in a water. Further, we are never given a certain reason to trust in a law of fibre theory, other than a fact that no other unchanging speculation unifying sobriety and quantum mechanics has flush yet.
In his final chapter, Susskind tries to promulgate a manifold attitudes of a dozen vital vital theorists toward this rising Landscape picture. The dual many revelation criticisms come from physicist David Gross. The book gives them a flattering satisfactory conference , and doesn't explain to dispose of them.First, if we adopt a thought that a earthy constants have incidentally combined values, a craving of perplexing to explain since they have a sold values they do comes to a passed hindrance - maybe prematurely. "Quantum fluctuations did it" puts a kibosh on serve exploration as positively as "God did it" would. Second, we don't unequivocally know how far-reaching a operation of earthy constants could furnish life and comprehension in *some* form.
Those who are looking for a authority on fibre theory, or on a latest truths that scientists have schooled and concluded on, won't find it here. But if we are meddlesome in a Anthropic Principle, or in a perturbation of controversies during a corner of a currently knowable, we won't have to determine with Susskind to take delight, as we did, in colorfully articulated, intriguing, and frequently educational read.
54 of 61 people found a following examination helpful.
A unequivocally engaging book about a properties of reality
By Jill Malter
Is this book usually what we wanted? Well, what we consider we unequivocally wanted was for Einstein to lapse to us currently and write a book on a truth of complicated prolongation shaped on today's bargain of things. Yes, that would have been usually great! But Einstein is dead. Luckily, of course, there are some glorious physicists around, such as a author of this book.
This book, combined by an venerable String Theorist, has some excellent explanations for a layman of some topics in complicated physics, including String Theory. But a many engaging partial is advertised in a title, namely a inlet of a vast landscape.
The vast landscape refers to a mathematical space that has as a elements a values of a "fields" that consecrate a earthy laws and constants that request to a sold "universe" (with a small u) or "pocket universe" if one prefers that term. The thought is that there competence be many probable sets of earthy laws and constants. The some-more we learn about physics, a some-more it seems that there are copiousness of probable universes. But do they unequivocally exist? That is, is a landscape populated by some-more than a famous universe? Is it heavily populated? The author argues that it is. And that positively creates clarity to me.
We're told about a anthropic principle. At a simplest, this element merely states that we have to live in a star that permits intelligent life. That's not unequivocally profound. But this element also suggests that there is indeed a landscape of probable universes, and it encourages us to determine that usually a unequivocally small fragment of them would assent a kind of complexity compulsory for intelligent life. And in fact, Susskind gives us a good instance of this. It turns out that a Cosmological Constant (which causes a concept nauseating force, arrange of a conflicting of gravity) we observe is about 120 orders of bulk reduction than an unassuming speculation competence predict. That leaves us with a unequivocally small series to explain, a series that is elemental to a laws of a universe. Well, certain enough, there appears to be an anthropic reason. Susskind tells us that Steven Weinberg distributed that a unchanging even 10 times bigger would outcome in adequate abhorrence so that a clumpiness of a early star would have been reduced so many that no galaxies, stars, or planets would have formed. Similarly, a vast cosmological unchanging with a conflicting pointer would have caused a early star to collapse.
Given that there competence be a vast multiplicity of tangible universes, how do they originate? Since we seem to be in a rather surprising universe, it is tantalizing to suppose that there's some arrange of preference element during work. But what? We get into questions about a probable expansion of universes. But this could be utterly opposite than expansion in biology. Are there incremental changes between generations of universes, and if so, how? Susskind doubts that changes are incremental. Are there universes that furnish vast numbers of other universes, given that there are no apparent preference advantages to carrying fewer offspring? As Susskind says, we see no resource to means foe for resources. Are we in a constructed universe, a producing universe, or both? If a star is a producer, do diverse black holes any furnish new universes? Well, according to Susskind, they don't: a prolongation resource he suspects is widespread is a cloning of space due to a metastability of a vacuum.
I consider it helps to remind ourselves that if there is a vast complement of flattering many pointless entitites, that complement will be dominated by a biggest ones. If time exists, that complement will shortly be dominated by not usually a biggest, nonetheless a many fast and longest-lived ones. And those objects that produce, get produced, or are reproducing (or even better, reproducing in a demeanour than permits improvements) have a outrageous advantage. That relates to a Earth's biosphere, and presumably it relates to Reality as a whole.
Susskind discusses a "many-worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. In this version, when there is a pointless choice of polarizations for a molecule (or a pointless choice of that cut a photon trafficked through), both possibilities indeed occur, nonetheless in opposite aspects of reality! That works mathematically, nonetheless it does furnish a truly outrageous series of swap realities. Susskind does contend that this is a small like a outrageous series of swap realities of a vast landscape. But there is a disproportion that he admits. The many-worlds alternatives all have a same earthy laws, while a vast landscape does not.
The book includes a unequivocally good contention of a doubt about probable information detriment in a black hole. Stephen Hawking used to disagree that such an information detriment indeed occurs. Susskind and `t Hooft argued that information has to be conserved, and that it contingency somehow be stored outward a black hole, and Hawking now has conceded this point. And we also learn about black hole complimentarity, that helps explain all this by origination it transparent that information has no clear plcae in space.
I truly enjoyed this book, and we strongly suggest it.
49 of 58 people found a following examination helpful.
Folks, a about physics, not theology. Given that, it is a good book.
By R. Kaiser
I a bit confounded as to since so many book reviews core around God. This is a book about physics, about regulating a systematic process to find out how a star works. Indeed, it even discusses a latest indeterminate views about many probable universes (an gigantic series of them?) competence work.
This book does hold on sacrament during one vital point. Most normal theists, including Jews, Christians and Muslims, assume that this is a usually probable universe, combined by God. Modern day scholarship - that physicists entirely acknowledge is deficient - shows that a sold star has a series of constants, a change of that would expected make life as we know it impossible. This has been seized on by theists as explanation of God's existence and origination of a universe. Unfortunately, this is both bad scholarship and bad theology. we don't have time to entirely explain why, nonetheless we can promulgate a problem: It is a "God of a Gaps" argument, that creates God smaller and some-more insignificant with each successive discovery.
As for a tangible prolongation calm of a book, it is great. It is not meant to concentration on fibre speculation alone (for that see "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene), nonetheless it does plead fibre speculation in some detail, with useful diagrams. Susskind also discusses cosmology, branes, M-theory and other associated ideas.
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6:06 AM Tuesday, February 28, 2012