Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos - Softcover

Brian Greene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141029811 ISBN 13: 9780141029818

Publisher: Penguin (2 Feb 2012), 2012

Synopsis

Review Brian Greene's book The Hidden Reality is a tour de force of one of the most controversial areas of modern science - the possibility that there are multiple universes... Greene's ability as a populariser has matured with each new publication and this latest offering is his best yet (Alastair Gunn Sky at Night ) Exciting and rewarding ... captures and engages the imagination ... Greene has a gift for elucidating big ideas (New York Times ) If extraterrestrials landed tomorrow and demanded to know what the human mind is capable of accomplishing, we could do worse than to hand them a copy of this book (New York Times Book Review ) The book serves well as an introduction to the multiverse and will open up many people's eyes (John Gribbin ) Every chapter opens level after level of previously unimaginable, mind-expanding realities (Oliver Sacks ) Product Description There was a time when 'universe' meant all there is. Everything. Yet, as Brian Greene's extraordinary book shows, ours may be just one universe among many, like endless reflections in a mirror. He takes us on a captivating exploration of parallel worlds - from a multiverse where an infinite number of your doppelgängers are reading this sentence, to vast oceans of bubble universes and even multiverses made of mathematics - showing just how much of reality's true nature may be hidden within them. About the Author Brian Greene is well known to many fans as a populariser of theoretical physics. He is the author of the bestselling books about string theory, The Elegant Universe, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and The Fabric of the Cosmos. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, he has taught at both Harvard and Cornell and has been Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University since 1996.

About this title

Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2011: Take any of physics' major theories of the fundamental nature of the universe, extrapolate its math to the logical extreme, and you get some version of a (so far unobservable) parallel universe. And who better to navigate these hypothetical versions of the "multiverse" than Brian Greene? Normally an unflinching apologist for string theory, the bestselling author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos here treats all viable alternate realities to a laudably fair shake. For a book exploring the most far-reaching implications of bleeding-edge mathematics, The Hidden Reality is surprisingly light on math, written as it is "for a broad audience ... its only prerequisite the will to persevere." Such perseverance pays off with a motley cast of potential universes featuring doppelgängers, strings, branes, quantum probabilities, holographs, and simulated worlds. The result is that rare accomplishment in science writing for a popular audience: a volume that explains the science and its consequences while stimulating the imagination of even the uninitiated.

Oliver Sacks on The Hidden Reality

Oliver Sacks was born in London and educated in London, Oxford, California, and New York. He is professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, and Columbia's first University Artist. He is the author of many books, including Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Musicophilia. His newest book, The Mind's Eye, was published in October, 2010.

Brian Greene is not only a profound cosmological thinker--a pioneer of string theory--but a writer of exceptional clarity and charm. His books--The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos among them--take one ever deeper into a universe stranger and more wonderful than anyone could have conceived a generation ago. The Hidden Reality takes us deeper still, and it has a special personal quality and warmth that is evident from the opening of the book, when Greene recollects how, as a boy, he was fascinated by the multiple reflections in parallel mirrors. He has never lost this childlike wonder at the world of physics, but he brings it now to examining theories of multiple universes, of the continual birth of universes, starting long before our own. . . and destined to continue, perhaps, to the end of time.

In the 1930s, as a boy myself, I read The Mysterious Universe by James Jeans. Jeans was, like Greene, a brilliant theoretical astronomer and equally mesmerizing writer. I thought Jeans's book was the most exciting, revelatory book I had ever read, and now, seventy years later, I feel the same excitement reading Brian Greene's new book, where every chapter opens level after level of previously unimaginable, mind-expanding realities.

About the Author

Brian Greene is well known to many fans as a populariser of theoretical physics. He is the author of the bestselling books about string theory, The Elegant Universe, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and The Fabric of the Cosmos. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, he has taught at both Harvard and Cornell and has been Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University since 1996.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin (2 Feb 2012)
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0141029811
• ISBN 13: 9780141029818
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384