The Fabric of the Cosmos

The Fabric of the Cosmos is the second popular book about physics written by Brian Greene.

Related Topics:
Physics - Brian Greene

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While The Elegant Universe focused on the search for the unified theory and space and time played a secondary role, they have become the main players in The Fabric of the Cosmos. Greene starts with some fancy philosophical questions (investigated together with Albert Camus) about the problem of suicide, but he quickly realizes that the workings of the Universe have always been more important.

Related Topics:
The Elegant Universe - Albert Camus

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The reader will learn nearly everything about our understanding of space and time and their history. The real story of space starts with Isaac Newton's thought experiments with an ordinary spinning bucket of water. How can one distinguish a spinning bucket from a bucket at rest? How does the water know whether it is spinning or not? Greene explains how Newton's rival Gottfried von Leibniz disagreed with Newton's main goal, which was to prove the existence of space, more precisely a kind of spirit that fills it. Leibniz's relational viewpoint was defeated, but Ernst Mach revived it for a while. Although Einstein liked Mach's principle, his theories of relativity have essentially killed it again and confirmed a new reincarnation of Newton's ideas. Each of us is cutting through spacetime like a loaf of bread, and each of us does it a bit differently. Greene reveals some of the shocking properties of this 'loaf of bread' that follow from relativity.

Related Topics:
Isaac Newton - Gottfried von Leibniz - Mach's principle - Relativity

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The fourth chapter is dedicated to quantum mechanics, as usual. But this time, you will learn something new and amazing. The agents Scully and Mulder from The X-Files receive some weird boxes from the aliens that are claimed to behave randomly, but nevertheless they know about one another (their flashes are correlated) even if they're far apart (and no detectable signals are being sent). Scully is skeptical and Mulder believes the aliens' fairytales. It turns out that Mulder can prove that he is correct, and moreover this story shows exactly how the real world works! Well, the physicists must confirm that Greene's story is not a mere analogy, but a description of a feasible experiment! In another chapter, Greene offers a very balanced and comprehensive summary of all major mental frameworks for interpreting quantum mechanics. Does the wavefunction collapse? What is decoherence? Does our Universe split into parallel Universes where the same events lead to different outcomes?

Related Topics:
Quantum mechanics - The X-Files

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One chapter or so is dedicated to a fascinating property of time: its asymmetry. All of us are getting older, but we never get younger. The laws of physics see virtually no difference between the past and the future, so where does this asymmetry come from? Greene follows Ludwig Boltzmann, and just on the verge of accepting an absurd interpretation of reality (in which you should never trust your memory), he reveals that this whole asymmetry may be blamed on a special, ordered character of the young Universe. You will understand what entropy and thermodynamics are all about.

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That's a good place for Greene to explain everything about the history of the cosmos: inflation, its symmetries, vaporization of vacuum, creation of the first lumps of matter, time's arrow, and entropy. Greene obviously doesn't neglect his own field either. Two large chapters are dedicated to string theory/M-theory. He exploits the opportunity to describe many recently found aspects of string theory that could not have been covered in The Elegant Universe. Two examples: the holographic principle means that one of the spatial dimensions we see may be an illusion, because all of us can be really living on a two-dimensional hologram. On the other hand, all of us may be stuck on a three-dimensional membrane floating in a higher-dimensional Universe, as the recent membrane-world scenarios suggest. A violent collision with another membrane might be vital for the evolution of our Universe.

Related Topics:
M-theory - String theory - Holographic principle - Hologram

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Greene describes the current and future experiments in particle physics and cosmology that are designed to test some of these dramatic ideas. He also talks about the wormholes and time travel. Although he admits that time travel is likely to remain in the realm of dreams, you won't be able to resist his thought experiments showing that some of the apparent paradoxes of time travel may be overcome. One also learns a lot of specific stuff about teleportation (a way to transport an object from A to B without its appearance in the middle). Although we're only able to teleport individual particles today, this can be taken as an encouragement for us to think bigger. A final chapter speculates about the future of all these ideas. Greene's language is witty and irresistible. The book has a preface, glossary, index, and extensive technical endnotes.

Related Topics:
Particle physics - Cosmology

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The Fabric of the Cosmos became the most popular science book among Amazon.com customers in 2004 and was a long-time feature on the New York Times bestseller list.

Related Topics:
Amazon.com - 2004 - New York Times

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