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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
informative
medium-paced
The book is very well researched which should not be a surprise since the author is a physicist/ cosmologist who studies the universe. The book had a really good impact on my perspectives - I did have some background knowledge regarding big bang and interesting tidbits about our universe. This book helped me to see the universe in a different way.
Science is weird. The more you read the more fascinating it gets and at one point you're like well this can't be possible, how can something arise out of nothing but the evidence is quite strong. This book is one of those that you definitely need to reread as there's lot of dense complex stuff. Laurence does an excellent job of explaining it but still I feel another read would give me more clearer understanding. The last few chapters focus more on the philosophical, theological perspectives regarding the book's premise but I wanted more of physics.
Overall a good book and I have learned a lot.
Overall a good book and I have learned a lot.
This was an easy-to-read book on the latest in cosmology and related parts of physics, theology, and philosophy, but mainly the former two. I've read a few books on the "latest developements," but Krause is very good at explaining such deep subjects in under standable ways.
A decent physics book, but not detailed enough for my tastes. Also it's marred by his frequent references to religion, which serve no illustrative purpose and are a great distraction from the greater theme.
"Something came from nothing, because nothing is highly unstable."
Could hardly follow this from one page to the next: like trying to grasp the size of the universe by looking at a sequence of ever-wider-scale pictures, his ideas kept expanding until they were simply too big to fit in my brain. Still, it was fun to try.
Krauss has written a book for the lay reader about the latest developments in theoretical physics, explaining how the big bang was created from nothing, and has gone onto create all the things that make up the visible universe.
He goes on to explain how the universe is expanding, and the methods that they use to ascertain its size, and some of the latest theories, but quantum physics has always been a bit beyond me, and this book has confirmed that I am out of my depth with a lot going on in theoretical physics at the moment.
He goes on to explain how the universe is expanding, and the methods that they use to ascertain its size, and some of the latest theories, but quantum physics has always been a bit beyond me, and this book has confirmed that I am out of my depth with a lot going on in theoretical physics at the moment.
The author reads his own work. He sounds like Anderson Cooper but does not always articulate clearly, instead slurring or eliding syllables. Being mealy-mouthed my own self, I sympathize, but I'm not an audiobook reader for a reason.
The universe is flat. It exists because nothingness is unstable. There was something about the total gravity or total energy in the universe equaling zero too but my brain glazed over like a doughnut.
The universe is flat. It exists because nothingness is unstable. There was something about the total gravity or total energy in the universe equaling zero too but my brain glazed over like a doughnut.
Sadly, the book immediately starts off by saying "Why" is not as interesting as "How" and goes on to make fun of theologists for never agreeing on the definition of "nothing" -- which is certainly true as far as it goes, but still doesn't address the actual teleological problem.
What he does do effectively is discuss the various physical phenomena underlying "nothing" -- virtual particles, quantum foam lattices and the Higgs field. He goes write back to the Big Bang and points out the quantum fluctuations at the point of Big Bang expansion could have "created" energy in the sense that the total energy is zero, but getting to the resting zero state is effectively impossible.
I felt a bit cheated after reading Brian Greene and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, but he does get to the essential point that the Big Bang may have happened because "quantum nothingness" is unstable, but it still doesn't get to the question of why or how "nothing" can be "unstable" at all. Oh well.
What he does do effectively is discuss the various physical phenomena underlying "nothing" -- virtual particles, quantum foam lattices and the Higgs field. He goes write back to the Big Bang and points out the quantum fluctuations at the point of Big Bang expansion could have "created" energy in the sense that the total energy is zero, but getting to the resting zero state is effectively impossible.
I felt a bit cheated after reading Brian Greene and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, but he does get to the essential point that the Big Bang may have happened because "quantum nothingness" is unstable, but it still doesn't get to the question of why or how "nothing" can be "unstable" at all. Oh well.