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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
Richard Feynman, citado por Krauss, responde, de certo modo o prazer pela leitura desse livro: "As pessoas me perguntam, "você está procurando as leis definitivas da física?" Não, não estou. Só estou tentando entender mais sobre o mundo. E se tiver uma lei simples e definitiva lei que explica tudo,
então que seja. Seria uma descoberta muito agradável. Pode ser que você não ache uma resposta para aquela questão apenas estudando a Natureza. Mas eu não fico procurando... Meu interesse em ciência é apenas aprender sobre o mundo. Quanto mais eu aprender, melhor. Eu gosto de aprender."
então que seja. Seria uma descoberta muito agradável. Pode ser que você não ache uma resposta para aquela questão apenas estudando a Natureza. Mas eu não fico procurando... Meu interesse em ciência é apenas aprender sobre o mundo. Quanto mais eu aprender, melhor. Eu gosto de aprender."
This book definitely cleared up some things for me in regards to understanding the universe. The thing that stood out for me personally was the initial quantum vacuum of space that wasn't nothing in the way we typically understand it, but was a non-zero energy vacuum. Especially with the previous books I've read on relativity & quantum physics, this one helped pull a lot of it together even more. It's a very exciting book (if you find the subject of the Universe exciting) & was very well written for the layperson to grasp & enjoy. It also highlighted how the time in which we live is a very unique time to be able to uncover more facts about the universe as in the distant future, much & perhaps all that remains of the origins of our universe may no longer be. It clarified how we ask the questions "Why?" & "How?" & the latter is typically what is meant, even when we ask "Why?" This book has left me with an even deeper sense of wonder & curiosity. Understanding the nature of our universe is exciting & I would recommend this book the everyone!
Krauss, much like Stephen Hawking, is much better at discovering the mysteries of the universe than he is at explaining them.
I was never very good at science at school, but that didn't mean I wasn't plenty interested in questions of where the universe came from and how it all worked. So in my latest phase of interest in reading, I've taken to reading science books. "Pop science" I've heard them called, which makes me feel like a bit of an idiot, because it suggests science for people who only want to scratch the surface of science, in the same way that pop music is for people who haven't discovered real music yet. Well, as we've already ascertained, I'm not really smart enough to understand real particle physics and quantum theory, so the "pop" version is just going to have to do.
I'm hoping that the more of these I read, the more clear everything will become because so far, it's a case of "yeh... oh yeh... with you... got it... no, you've lost me. I'll just keep reading." And so it was with this book.
Here, Krauss seeks to explain where we are up to currently with our knowledge of the universe, and how we got there - without any difficult mathematical equations, but with a whole lot of complicated theory, and the acknowledgement that when it comes to where the universe came from and whether it came from nothing... we don't really know. But we're looking into it. So that's nice. Yes, I completely understand our current scientific knowledge... as long as there are absolutely no further questions.
In all honesty though, I'm getting there. I just need to keep picking up pop science books in charity shops.
So yeh, this was quite good. I've read a number of reviews where people make a lot out of Krauss' argument against God, and how you feel about that no doubt hinges upon your beliefs, but I will say; he makes some good points. Even if certain aspects of modern scientific theory are a little shaky, most of the rest is solid enough to suggest we do know how we got from the Big Bang to where we are now, even if we aren't certain about where the Big Bang came from. The bits we are certain about certainly suggest God wasn't the cause of it all. If he was, why not tell us about that in the Bible which is, after all supposed to be "The Word of God", instead of making up all that crap about creating the world in 7 days? Anyway, I'm not here to argue about creation. Make up your own mind.
If you are interested in science and big questions, this would be a decent choice.
I'm hoping that the more of these I read, the more clear everything will become because so far, it's a case of "yeh... oh yeh... with you... got it... no, you've lost me. I'll just keep reading." And so it was with this book.
Here, Krauss seeks to explain where we are up to currently with our knowledge of the universe, and how we got there - without any difficult mathematical equations, but with a whole lot of complicated theory, and the acknowledgement that when it comes to where the universe came from and whether it came from nothing... we don't really know. But we're looking into it. So that's nice. Yes, I completely understand our current scientific knowledge... as long as there are absolutely no further questions.
In all honesty though, I'm getting there. I just need to keep picking up pop science books in charity shops.
So yeh, this was quite good. I've read a number of reviews where people make a lot out of Krauss' argument against God, and how you feel about that no doubt hinges upon your beliefs, but I will say; he makes some good points. Even if certain aspects of modern scientific theory are a little shaky, most of the rest is solid enough to suggest we do know how we got from the Big Bang to where we are now, even if we aren't certain about where the Big Bang came from. The bits we are certain about certainly suggest God wasn't the cause of it all. If he was, why not tell us about that in the Bible which is, after all supposed to be "The Word of God", instead of making up all that crap about creating the world in 7 days? Anyway, I'm not here to argue about creation. Make up your own mind.
If you are interested in science and big questions, this would be a decent choice.
Great read for the layperson
As an engineer I would have been interested in seeing more underlying math to explain these concepts because I believe it would be easier to explain these complex concepts that way. But Krause does a great job explaining concepts in simple terms.
As an engineer I would have been interested in seeing more underlying math to explain these concepts because I believe it would be easier to explain these complex concepts that way. But Krause does a great job explaining concepts in simple terms.
Not entirely accessible. As an armchair scientist reading it, I was confused by many of the things Krauss was talking about. Overall, however, it was an informative and engaging read that opens up worlds and universes of thought, of which I now know the tiniest piece.
I'm not sure where I saw the recommendation to read this book, but I wish I hadn't.
Mind you, this book was way above my pay grade, if you know what I mean, because it was written by a physicist and it's about cosmology. (The universe and all it entails fascinates me, but when you get into the scientific reasons why there is what there is in the universe and how it works, then I'm somewhat lost.)
I had high hopes for this book when, within the first few chapters, the author wrote: "...stars don't explode [go supernova] that often, about once per hundred years per galaxy. But we are lucky that they do, because if they didn't, we wouldn't be here. One of the most poetic facts I know about the universe is that essentially every atom in your body was once inside a star that exploded. Moreover, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than those in your right. We are all, literally, star children, and our bodies made of stardust" and "Go out some night into the woods or the desert where you can see stars and hold up your hand to the sky, making a tiny circle between your thumb and your forefinger about the size of a dime. Hold it up to a patch of the sky where there are no visible stars. In that dark patch, with a large enough telescope of the type we now have in service today, you could discern perhaps 100,000 galaxies, each containing billions of stars."
The above two portions of the book so impressed me that I posted them on my Facebook page.
But then, the egotistical author kept denigrating those who believe in creation by a higher power (he is a scientist and feels superior to those who believe unlike him and perhaps feels the need to convey to his fellow scientists his total disbelief in anything that has to do with God or a god-like entity). If he had mentioned once or twice his belief that there is no God and He/She is not responsible for anything in the universe, I may have been able to overlook it. But Krauss goes on and on about it, mentioning it, I think, in just about every chapter of the eleven chapter book and the epilogue.
This I might have overlooked, too, but he actually--more than once--calls into question the intelligence of people who believe in creation by a higher entity even though, on page 139, he writes: "If we wish to draw philosophical questions about our own existence, our significance, and the significance of the universe itself, our conclusions should be based on empirical knowledge. A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa, whether or not we like the implications." He does not keep an open mind, but asks that others do. As for me, I believe in a combination of creation and science, and am willing to consider other opinions. The author believes his opinion is the only one. That just doesn't hack it for me.
The author's ego so undermined what he was trying to put forth in this book that I would not recommend this book to anyone.
Mind you, this book was way above my pay grade, if you know what I mean, because it was written by a physicist and it's about cosmology. (The universe and all it entails fascinates me, but when you get into the scientific reasons why there is what there is in the universe and how it works, then I'm somewhat lost.)
I had high hopes for this book when, within the first few chapters, the author wrote: "...stars don't explode [go supernova] that often, about once per hundred years per galaxy. But we are lucky that they do, because if they didn't, we wouldn't be here. One of the most poetic facts I know about the universe is that essentially every atom in your body was once inside a star that exploded. Moreover, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than those in your right. We are all, literally, star children, and our bodies made of stardust" and "Go out some night into the woods or the desert where you can see stars and hold up your hand to the sky, making a tiny circle between your thumb and your forefinger about the size of a dime. Hold it up to a patch of the sky where there are no visible stars. In that dark patch, with a large enough telescope of the type we now have in service today, you could discern perhaps 100,000 galaxies, each containing billions of stars."
The above two portions of the book so impressed me that I posted them on my Facebook page.
But then, the egotistical author kept denigrating those who believe in creation by a higher power (he is a scientist and feels superior to those who believe unlike him and perhaps feels the need to convey to his fellow scientists his total disbelief in anything that has to do with God or a god-like entity). If he had mentioned once or twice his belief that there is no God and He/She is not responsible for anything in the universe, I may have been able to overlook it. But Krauss goes on and on about it, mentioning it, I think, in just about every chapter of the eleven chapter book and the epilogue.
This I might have overlooked, too, but he actually--more than once--calls into question the intelligence of people who believe in creation by a higher entity even though, on page 139, he writes: "If we wish to draw philosophical questions about our own existence, our significance, and the significance of the universe itself, our conclusions should be based on empirical knowledge. A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa, whether or not we like the implications." He does not keep an open mind, but asks that others do. As for me, I believe in a combination of creation and science, and am willing to consider other opinions. The author believes his opinion is the only one. That just doesn't hack it for me.
The author's ego so undermined what he was trying to put forth in this book that I would not recommend this book to anyone.