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novombre's review against another edition
4.0
A book I will recommend to my juniors to make them interested in Physics.
slytherinlastheir's review against another edition
4.0
A rollercoaster ride through parallel universe, multi dimensions, black holes, and beyond the time.
onecrab's review against another edition
5.0
Fantastic book that moves between science and science fiction. It manages to be technical and readable. It was a bit of a slow read for me, a couple of pages would have me pondering for hours.
"Instead of being overwhelmed by the universe, I think that perhaps one of the deepest experiences a scientist can have, almost approaching a religious awakening, is to realize that we are children of the stars, and that our minds are capable of understanding the universal laws that they obey. The atoms within our bodies were forged on the anvil of nucleosynthesis within an exploding star aeons before the birth of the solar system. Our atoms are older than the mountains. We are literally made of star dust. Now these atoms, in turn, have coalesced into intelligent beings capable of understanding the universal laws governing that event."
"Instead of being overwhelmed by the universe, I think that perhaps one of the deepest experiences a scientist can have, almost approaching a religious awakening, is to realize that we are children of the stars, and that our minds are capable of understanding the universal laws that they obey. The atoms within our bodies were forged on the anvil of nucleosynthesis within an exploding star aeons before the birth of the solar system. Our atoms are older than the mountains. We are literally made of star dust. Now these atoms, in turn, have coalesced into intelligent beings capable of understanding the universal laws governing that event."
sequelmage's review
What I read was interesting and informative, but I just wasn’t really in the mood for it right now.
radina's review against another edition
2.0
I love popsci books, especially ones about physics and astronomy, so this was an easy pick to read. This book is all about space, fundamental forces and the physics behind them.
I can’t help but compare it to The Elegant Universe, which is a bit unfair since Elegant Universe came out almost 10 years later - the edition I have of Elegant Universe is from 2003, and this edition of Hyperspace is from 1995. However, I think it’s interesting to see what the state of research was like back then!
The writing was slow sometimes, and Dr. Kaku’s use of metaphor isn’t the best. There were way too many references to matter/energy vs spacetime as “wood vs. marble” for my taste. It’s not quite annoying enough to ruin the book, but by the end of it I was pretty ready to put the book down.
Overall, this book is OK. If you want a popsci physics book to learn the basics, this is not the one I’d recommend. But as an addition to an existing library I think it deserves its spot.
I can’t help but compare it to The Elegant Universe, which is a bit unfair since Elegant Universe came out almost 10 years later - the edition I have of Elegant Universe is from 2003, and this edition of Hyperspace is from 1995. However, I think it’s interesting to see what the state of research was like back then!
The writing was slow sometimes, and Dr. Kaku’s use of metaphor isn’t the best. There were way too many references to matter/energy vs spacetime as “wood vs. marble” for my taste. It’s not quite annoying enough to ruin the book, but by the end of it I was pretty ready to put the book down.
Overall, this book is OK. If you want a popsci physics book to learn the basics, this is not the one I’d recommend. But as an addition to an existing library I think it deserves its spot.
alexandrapaul's review
3.0
I thought this books was just okay.
The topic of hyperspace and physics is extremely interesting to me and I thought that Kaku did a pretty good job of explaining it in the first part of the book. However as the book went on, he introduced a bunch of different theoretical concepts that are difficult to understand if you don’t really know anything about physics, and I had trouble seeing how they were connected to the idea of hyperspace.
This book is well written, and you can tell that Kaku knows what he is talking about, but I found after awhile that reading this started to feel a bit tedious because the explanations were very science heavy and I didn’t really know what was going on (although this may be my own problem as I have never done well in math or physics classes - I knew going into the book that I would likely not grasp everything but thought I’d try it anyway because I was interested).
Even though I kind of had to power through to finish this book, I would not describe it as boring because some of the anecdotes (especially at the end about wormholes and space travel) are interesting. Overall, this book may be more suited for people who have a better understanding of physics to begin with, but it definitely made me want to learn more about current developments in science and made me think about the universe which is always a good thing.
The topic of hyperspace and physics is extremely interesting to me and I thought that Kaku did a pretty good job of explaining it in the first part of the book. However as the book went on, he introduced a bunch of different theoretical concepts that are difficult to understand if you don’t really know anything about physics, and I had trouble seeing how they were connected to the idea of hyperspace.
This book is well written, and you can tell that Kaku knows what he is talking about, but I found after awhile that reading this started to feel a bit tedious because the explanations were very science heavy and I didn’t really know what was going on (although this may be my own problem as I have never done well in math or physics classes - I knew going into the book that I would likely not grasp everything but thought I’d try it anyway because I was interested).
Even though I kind of had to power through to finish this book, I would not describe it as boring because some of the anecdotes (especially at the end about wormholes and space travel) are interesting. Overall, this book may be more suited for people who have a better understanding of physics to begin with, but it definitely made me want to learn more about current developments in science and made me think about the universe which is always a good thing.
charliemudd's review against another edition
2.0
I'm not sure if it because the book seemed out-of-date (written in 1995), or if the explanations were over-simplified (like A Brief History Of Time), or I just couldn't understand some of his points, but whatever it was, I didn't like parts of this book. This happens to me sometimes when I read books about physics: either they seem so dumbed-down that the are leaving out the important bits, and I can't buy into what they are explaining; or they are not dumbed-down enough and I can't quite grasp the concepts. Of course, the perfect book walks that fine line. This was not that perfect book and I feel like it fell into the over-simplified category. However, I do understand now why we need more than 4 dimensions to unify or different laws of physics -- it was just the other stuff in the book that was a bit tiresome.
savaging's review against another edition
3.0
Yeah pop physics books! This was one of the first books written on superstring theory for a lay audience. Though it was written in the 90s, if you add one more dimension to make it eleven, the fundamentals still hold (as far as I can tell, but my brain's only three dimensions after all).
Two quibbles:
1) The author could have cut out some sections, which seemed redundant and served more to increase book length than to explain.
2) Physicists, who are careful to allow incredible complexity and nuance in the physical world, write about the human social world like it's obvious, simple, and heading toward some clear goal. When Kaku writes about our likely future, I find his ideas both naive and unimaginative.
Two quibbles:
1) The author could have cut out some sections, which seemed redundant and served more to increase book length than to explain.
2) Physicists, who are careful to allow incredible complexity and nuance in the physical world, write about the human social world like it's obvious, simple, and heading toward some clear goal. When Kaku writes about our likely future, I find his ideas both naive and unimaginative.