Reviews - Piękno Wszechświata. Superstruny, ukryte wymiary i poszukiwanie teorii ostatecznej

275 reviews for:

Piękno Wszechświata. Superstruny, ukryte wymiary i poszukiwanie teorii ostatecznej

I love this book! I am somehow really curious about string theory but I am not sure which book I should start to read. I am glad this is the starting point for me to read about string theory. I do enjoy all of the analogies that Brian Greene uses, I know it is not really representing the real scenario, but for a non-physicist like me, it is already more than enough. However, the last 2 chapters before the epilogue were quite exhausting. My reading speed is significantly slower when I enter these chapters. But, it is a nice journey from Brian Greene. I will definitely read the other books from him.

lukre's review against another edition

5.0

NonFiction2023 Book 2
To say that I understood half of this would be a lie, but wow was it fun trying to follow the strings (hi hi). This man knows how to write a science book. He is also well aware who his readers are - on several occasions he says to us that if we "skipped" a certain section here's a summary, or that it's ok not to get the following section on our first read. Thanks, that was a nice addition.
I will try and hunt down more of his books in the future... maybe next book the 1/2 understood will not be a lie ;)
Also, for some reason my brain was surprised by the fact that a black hole is a heavenly body. How? after so many years of reading and watching stuff about space.... why was that a surprise? How the hell did my brain think this was a revelation? I don't know, I'll think on that one some more...

ex_dente_leonem's review against another edition

5.0

I thought I had as good a grasp of our current understanding of the universe as could be reasonably expected from a layperson, but Greene lays out not only the foundations of superstring theory, general relativity and quantum mechanics, but cosmology and physics itself in such a clear, lucid manner that certain concepts which had previously eluded me (like curled up extra dimensions) are now within grasp (as well as several that had never even occurred to me).

zmb's review against another edition

3.0

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the sections on relativity and quantum mechanics are really excellent. And while it might help that I have at least a passing familiarity with the subject, I can't believe nobody told me in my Modern Physics class in college that everything travels through spacetime at the speed of light, and so if you travel through space faster you travel through time slower. That's incredibly useful and a great way of understanding special relativity, and he makes similar helpful points about general relativity and quantum mechanics.

But the string theory stuff...I get that it's early days - string theory is but 50 years old - and he has an admirable amount of hedging. And he makes the point forcefully that a theory that unites general relativity and quantum mechanics is absolutely necessary. But the explanations of why that theory should be string theory, and just what the consequences of string theory are, are somewhat lacking. I don't think that's the fault of the author, really - it's early days - but it does sort of diminish the usefulness of the book.

I poked around a little bit to see if there was any more experimental confirmation of string theory - the author was excited about the LHC and supersymmetry - but there doesn't appear to be much in the ~15 years since the book was published. It seems like the LHC in particular has been reasonably good for the Standard Model but not especially good for string theory. So this seems like quite a while to go without experimental results or really convincing mathematics to me. Maybe I'm just impatient, but I can't help but wonder what string theory physicists are up to these days...

meganmme's review against another edition

5.0

This is my favorite "heavy" science book. The writing style is excellent--it describes high mathematical/physics concepts in a way a normal person can understand them without making a person feel like they are being talked to as if they were 4.

I've read this book twice and will probably reread it again at some point.