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A review by weaselweader
Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities, from Plato to String Theory (by Way of Alicei N Wonderland, Einstein, and the Twili by Lawrence M. Krauss
3.0
I’m still convinced that the anthropic principle is a meaningful cosmological outlook!
HIDING IN THE MIRROR is, first of all, a brief summary of the history and current status of physics' theoretical outlook at parallel universes, multiple dimensions, string theory, field theory and the manifestation of the forces - strong, weak, electromagnetism and gravity - we experience daily in the context of a visible three dimensional universe which might be described as a manifold embedded in a universe with a much larger but still undetermined number of dimensions. (Both the magnitude and the curvature of these dimensions is also far from locked down in these theories). Some very esoteric readers might also call it a primer on the subject but, even as a graduate of a university program in math and theoretical physics, I’m not sure that such a term has any meaningful application here. It’s pretty heady stuff and some of the reading is might tough sledding.
But, despite its difficulty, if you take your time you might be rewarded with some interesting insights. Consider, for example, this brief description of the Planck distance that conveys some idea of just how small it really is:
“Imagine you were looking at our galaxy through a distant telescope from another galaxy far, far away. Say your telescope could just barely resolve individual stars in the Milky Way, as the Hubble Space Telescope can in the nearby Andromeda galaxy, two million light years away. The problem of measuring extra dimensions on the Planck scale is for us, then, similar to the problem of trying to detect and probe individual atoms in that distant galaxy using your telescope!”
On multiple universes:
"… the principles [of inflationary theory] would in general imply that the entire visible universe is likely to be merely a part of an incredibly complicated “metaverse”of causally disconnected universes. Some of these may be collapsing, others expanding, some may only now be experiencing a big bang expansion … "
Interesting, enjoyable, informative but well beyond the difficulty level that might appeal to a casual reader of popular science.
Paul Weiss
HIDING IN THE MIRROR is, first of all, a brief summary of the history and current status of physics' theoretical outlook at parallel universes, multiple dimensions, string theory, field theory and the manifestation of the forces - strong, weak, electromagnetism and gravity - we experience daily in the context of a visible three dimensional universe which might be described as a manifold embedded in a universe with a much larger but still undetermined number of dimensions. (Both the magnitude and the curvature of these dimensions is also far from locked down in these theories). Some very esoteric readers might also call it a primer on the subject but, even as a graduate of a university program in math and theoretical physics, I’m not sure that such a term has any meaningful application here. It’s pretty heady stuff and some of the reading is might tough sledding.
But, despite its difficulty, if you take your time you might be rewarded with some interesting insights. Consider, for example, this brief description of the Planck distance that conveys some idea of just how small it really is:
“Imagine you were looking at our galaxy through a distant telescope from another galaxy far, far away. Say your telescope could just barely resolve individual stars in the Milky Way, as the Hubble Space Telescope can in the nearby Andromeda galaxy, two million light years away. The problem of measuring extra dimensions on the Planck scale is for us, then, similar to the problem of trying to detect and probe individual atoms in that distant galaxy using your telescope!”
On multiple universes:
"… the principles [of inflationary theory] would in general imply that the entire visible universe is likely to be merely a part of an incredibly complicated “metaverse”of causally disconnected universes. Some of these may be collapsing, others expanding, some may only now be experiencing a big bang expansion … "
Interesting, enjoyable, informative but well beyond the difficulty level that might appeal to a casual reader of popular science.
Paul Weiss