Not quite the stuff of bedtime reading for your infant -
but very much a good quality primer for science-phobic or science-uninformed readers at virtuNot quite the stuff of bedtime reading for your infant -
but very much a good quality primer for science-phobic or science-uninformed readers at virtually any level of the basic tenets that underlie Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (which is generally anything BUT easy reading).
Higher dimensions of space should “come with a warning, scrawled in the margins of the ever-growing cosmic map: here be monsters”!
For those of us thatHigher dimensions of space should “come with a warning, scrawled in the margins of the ever-growing cosmic map: here be monsters”!
For those of us that are not Stockholm Syndrome slaves to the notions of organized religion and creationism, it seems accepted lore that the universe as we know it began with the Big Bang,
“a state of unimaginable density to an all-encompassing cosmic fireball to a simmering fluid of matter and energy”.
And, speaking of fluid, Katie Mack's book reminds us that it is obviously still a matter of very fluid discussion and ongoing development of competing notions as to whether the Big Bang was a one-off event; whether it’s a cyclic event that has happened before and will happen again; whether it’s an event that could happen again without any particular pattern or cycle; whether the universe we inhabit and can observe and measure stands alone; or whether it exists in the company of other universes embedded in an infinite meta-universe of possibilities. That plus the obvious question of how the development of the universe that we live in is driven and if, when and how it might come to an end forms the subject matter of THE END OF EVERYTHING (ASTROPHYSICALLY SPEAKING), an update to the current state of physicists’ expostulations on cosmology.
Given the depth and difficulty of the subject matter, it’s light-hearted and occasionally even irreverent and humorous but, make no mistake, the reading will take your full concentration and complete application of your proverbial “little gray cells”. I leave it to readers more informed than me to suggest that it is exhaustive as of the date of its publication.
THE END OF EVERYTHING is a veritable monster Texas grill fest of succulent meat to chew on and savour – the currently suggested five possible endings for this universe’s vale of tears - the Big Crunch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, the Bounce and the Vacuum Decay; the re-establishment of Einstein’s Cosmological Constant in the formulation of General Relativity (despite the fact that Einstein had once called it “his greatest mistake”); the robust nature of General Relativity and its almost uncanny refusal to be supplanted by a new Theory of Everything that seems to be needed so desperately; current thoughts on a multi-dimensional meta-universe in which our universe and others might be embedded; the possibilities for communication between universes via gravity waves; current efforts to defeat the almost complete lack of progress on the consolidation of general relativity and gravity with quantum mechanics and the other forces that govern the structure of the universe.
If you’re a patient, careful reader and the contemplation of how our universe began and might meet its ultimate close is of some interest to you, then THE END OF EVERYTHING will fall in your reading wheel house. Definitely recommended.
“Asking what came before the Big Bang is … like asking what is south of the South Pole?”
If he isn’t the greatest intellect of the last century, I’“Asking what came before the Big Bang is … like asking what is south of the South Pole?”
If he isn’t the greatest intellect of the last century, I’m certainly not certain who I’d put in front of him. In any event, his thoughts on some of the most pressing, most confusing, most challenging, and most urgent philosophical, scientific and cultural questions are certainly worth reading. Is there a God? What is inside a black hole and can we travel in time? Should we be pursing colonization of space? What is the future of artificial intelligence? How did the universe begin?
Eminently readable, compelling, provocative and informative, BRIEF ANSWERS TO THE BIG QUESTIONS belongs on the reading list of any well-informed and concerned citizen of planet Earth.
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