Hyperspace : A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension Micho Kaku
How many dimensions do you live in? Three? Maybe that's all your
commonsense sense perception perceives, but there is growing and
compelling evidence to suggest that we actually live in a universe of ten real dimensions. Kaku has written an extraordinarily lucid and thought-provoking exploration of the theoretical and empirical bases of a
ten-dimensional universe and even goes so far as to discuss possible practical implications--such as being able to escape the collapse of the universe. Yikes. Highly Recommended. (From Amazon.com)
Parallel Universes : The Search for Other Worlds by Fred Alan Wolf
Wolf's readers should get ready for a wild intellectual ride through the convoluted realms of quantum mechanics, relativity, black holes and imaginary time. The physicist ( Starwave ) is a strong proponent of the ``many-worlds'' interpretation of quantum mechanics, and he launches a ferocious assault on conservative scientists who espouse the ``Copenhagen'' interpretation. Essentially, the debate hinges on the role of consciousness in measuring quantum events: Copenhagenists argue that a quantum measurement causes the ``collapse'' of a particle's probability
wave, while Wolf claims the act of measuring actually causes the
universe to split in two. The equations of relativity and quantum physics support both interpretations. Wolf describes what it would be like to travel through a black hole to a parallel universe; claims that the future must communicate with the present; answers the question of whether the universe had a radius before we started to measure it; and argues that schizophrenics may be in touch with parallel universes. Physics is becoming metaphysics. An enthralling, if somewhat wacky, read.
(From Publishers Weekly)
Black Holes and Time Warps : Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip S. Thorne
In what seems an attempt to join the ranks of bestselling science writers like Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, Thorne (Physics/Caltech) turns out a whopper covering everything from ``The Warping of Time and Space'' to ``Ripples of Curvature'' and ``Wormholes and Time Machines.'' Throughout, he remains resolutely chipper, chirpy, and personably anecdotal. The strange, folksy drawings here contribute to the effect of familiarity, which sometimes does its job and sometimes does not. It is undoubtedly useful to find yourself chatted through a potted history of 20th-century physics in so charming and lucid a manner: the problem, though, is to whom the volume is addressed. Hawking's book had plenty of theory, but it was short and elegantly elliptical, letting you think that you grasped its contents even if you didn't--a delusion that may lie at the heart of many a popular science book's success. Here, however, the reader has to wade through many, many pages of theory and diagrams--obvious to the expert but to difficult for the lay reader. Thorne in fact is strongest for the novice reader when dealing with the history of the physics community, which he presents entertainingly and clearly, allowing its peculiar personalities to emerge living and breathing--perhaps as much as a book of this kind can do within its audience's limiting parameters. Even so, in choosing a compact mini-encyclopedia of 20th- century physics, one could do far worse than this one, with its breadth of information even including exactly how it is that time does hook itself up to a wormhole. (From Kirkus Reviews)
Other Worlds by Paul Davies
Paul Davies explains the significance of the amazing quantum universe, where fact is stranger than any science fiction. He takes us into a world where commonsense notions of space, time, and causality must be left behind as the realm of solid matter dissolves into vibrating patterns of ghostly energy, and where mind and matter are interwoven in a subtle and holistic manner. An Australian physicist and author of GOD AND THE NEW PHYSICS, Davies writes for the lay reader in simple language.
The Fabric of Reality : The Science of Parallel Universes-And Its Implications by David Deutsch
"Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense," writes physicist David Deutsch. In The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch traces what he considers the four main strands of scientific explanation: quantum theory, evolution, computation, and the theory of knowledge. "The four of them taken together form a coherent explanatory structure that is so far-reaching, and has come to encompass so much of our understanding of the world, that in my view it may already properly be called the first Theory of Everything." Deutsch covers some difficult material with unusual clarity. Each chapter ends with a summary and definitions of important terms, which makes the work an invaluable sourcebook. (From Science Editors)
Who's Afraid of Schrodinger's Cat : An A-To-Z Guide to All the New Science Ideas You Need to Keep Up With the New Thinking
by I. N. Marshall and Danah Zohar
Quantum theorist Erwin Schrvdinger invented his now-famous cat to
illustrate the apparently impossible conundrums associated with quantum physics. The cat lives in an opaque box with a fiendish device that randomly feeds it either food, allowing it to live, or poison, which kills it. But in the quantum world, all possibilities coexist and have a reality of their own, and they ensure that the cat is both alive and dead, simultaneously.
Who's Afraid of Schrodinger's Cat? is a clear, concise explanation of the new sciences of quantum mechanics, chaos and complexity theory, relativity, new theories of mind, and the new cosmology. It studies worlds beyond the realm of common sense, and the new kinds of thinking that we need to understand ourselves, our minds, and our human place in the larger scheme of things. (From Amazon.com)
The Eagle's Quest : A Physicist's Search for Truth in the Heart of the Shamanic World by Fred Alan Wolf
An acclaimed physicist takes us on a fascinating journey as he examines shamanism in the light of modern science. "Breaks down barriers between modern science and a mystical worldview."--Publishers Weekly. Wolf is the author of the American Book Award-winning Taking the Quantum Leap. (From Amazon.com)
The Dreaming Universe : A Mind-Expanding Journey into the Realm Where Psyche and Physics Meet by Fred Alan Wolf
In The Dreaming Universe author Fred Alan Wolf examines the
psychological and scientific elements of this most personal yet most enigmatic of human processes. By linking research ranging from the ancient Greek "dream temples" and modern experiments in telepathy, REM, and lucid dreaming to his own research on human consciousness, he theorizes that dreaming is the basis for consciousness, and that it is through dreaming that we are able to manifest a sense of ourselves. (From Amazon.com)
Visions : How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century
by Michio Kaku
Take it easy: that's Michio Kaku's motto. Given the extraordinary
advances science has thrown up in time for the millennium, the only way you could possibly fit them into a single volume is by a correspondingly massive simplification.
Subtitled How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond, Visions assumes that, by and large, scientists get to do whatever they like, that all technologies are consumer technologies, and that consumers welcome anything and everything science throws at them. Kaku gets away with this frankly dodgy strategy by dint of sheer hard work. He has based his predictions on interviews with more than 150 renowned working scientists; he integrates these interviews with a huge body of original journalistic material; and, above all, he roots that mass of information on an entirely reasonable model of what the purpose of science will be in the third millennium. Up until now, science has expended its efforts on decoding most of the fundamental natural processes--"the dance," as Kaku puts it, of elementary particles deep inside stars and the rhythms of DNA molecules coiling and uncoiling within our bodies. Science's task now, Kaku believes, is to cross-pollinate advances thrown up by the study of matter, biology, and mind--modern science's three main theaters of endeavor. "We are now making the transition from amateur chess players to grand masters," he writes, "from observers to choreographers of nature." Then again, he also believes that "the Internet ... will eventually become a 'Magic Mirror' that appears in fairy tales, able to speak with the wisdom of the human race." Kaku, in short, deserves a good slapping--but he also deserves to be read. (From Amazon.com)
About Time : Einstein's Unfinished Revolution by Paul Davies
Ever since Einstein overthrew the Newtonian concept of time as a rigid entity, flowing past us in constant, measurable units, physicists like Davies have molded the fantastic, warpable space time into speculative theories about the origin, direction, and end of time. Davies has a popular leg up on his comrades, being the prolific author of a dozen general-interest works, lately the delightfully grim The Last Three Minutes. Though more complicated than the run of the physics genre, Davies' topics still are comprehensible, even if their implications strain our ordinary comprehension of time. To help, Davies introduces an Everyman skeptic, who interrupts the text whenever the matter at hand--for instance, time travel, as when "psychic" photons "know" of events in the past--approaches the threshold of weirdness. Scarcely less challenging are the passel of related questions, such as whether time exists within black holes. With his customary clarity, Davies delineates the questions left open by Einstein's theories and the controversial "cosmological constant" that makes his equations work. Good essays best housed in heavily used physics collections. (From Booklist)
The Mind of God : The Scientific Basis for a Rational World
by Paul Davies
Are we but ideas in the mind of God? Platonic forms in one of many infinite universes? Davies (Theoretical Physics/Univ. of Adelaide, Australia; co-author, The Matter Myth, p. 1510, etc.) increasingly assumes the mantle of metaphysician as he probes once again theories of origin and destiny, space and time, and creation by design or chance. Some of this tracks familiar Davies ground: a reprise of Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Newton, Hoyle and Hawking. Quarks and GUT theories are revisited, as are chaos theory and quantum cosmology. But what makes this exercise different is the extent to which Davies probes computer science and mathematics to develop extraordinarily rich concepts of the nature of complexity. These chapters deal not only with the paradoxes inherent in self- reflecting systems and G”del's proofs of undecidability in mathematics but relate these famous theorems to Turing's universal machines and the nature of ``computable'' vs. ``noncomputable'' numbers. The upshot of all this lofty discourse is the idea that the laws of physics (or nature) are ``computable'' and that the universe lends itself to simulation, given a universal computer. The more enthusiastic mathematicians exploring these ideas are prepared to say that such computers reveal the organized complexity of the universe, are capable of self-replication, and are therefore alive. Davies concludes that maybe the ultimate answer cannot be obtained through reason but only through mysticism, and he again states his conviction that we are truly meant to be here.... That's not necessarily the conclusion all readers will reach, but the mathematical excursions make this latest Davies volume of more than passing interest. (From Kirkus Reviews)
Elemental Mind : Human Consciousness and the New Physics by Nick Herbert
A physicist's daring investigation of mind and its relation to matter. According to Herbert (Quantum Reality, 1985, etc.), the famous ``Turing test''--in which a computer is considered to be conscious if it can talk like a human being--``misses the point.'' The true measure of consciousness is ``inner experience,'' which robots and computers just don't have. But what is inner experience--and how does it arise? In this wide- ranging study, Herbert looks at consciousness from ``inside'' (our felt experience of sensations, emotions, memory, etc.) and ``outside'' (how scientists perceive the brain). Two basic models arise: monism (matter and mind are one) and dualism (matter and mind are separate). Although Herbert never baldly states his position, he enthuses at length over a new twist on dualism that he calls ``quantum mind.'' Drawing on subatomic physics, he finds the mind to possess free will and ``connectedness'' with other minds. A fistful of odd experiments back up his argument, ranging from the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment--which seems to demonstrate the reality of nonlocal connections--to his own invention of a ``metaphase typewriter'' driven by quantum events, through which ``discarnate beings'' can send messages to the human sphere. Future experiments, Herbert suggests, might include telepathy machines and spirit communicators--all logical, if startling, extensions of the basic premise that mind is as fundamental and free as matter. Leading edge or lunatic fringe? Opinions will differ, but Herbert proves to be a reliable guide on this journey through the looking glass. (From Kirkus Reviews)
The Spiritual Universe : One Physicists Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter, and Self by Fred Alan Wolf
Why do we believe in the soul? It is simply the fact that each of us is aware that we are aware, and, even more, aware that we are responsible for our lives and the lives of others. This responsibility that we may call the "essential goodness of
humanity" is reflected to us by the incessant knowledge of
our own mortality. We know that our actions can heal, harm, enliven, or destroy other life forms. In brief, we are aware of our souls because we are aware of our impending deaths and our
sense of "goodness." Unlike other scientists who write
about the subject of the soul but miss dealing with the essential mysteries of death and goodness the book addresses them directly and in a new light. Faced with many moral and ethical dilemmas, including the right to life and the death penalty, it offers a new vision, based on quantum physics and modern science in general, of evidence for the physical presence of the soul. It shows that the gap separating modern science and current spiritual thinking is actually mistaken. It shows, how the soul, the self, and the personality while related conceptually, are actually different. (From the Author)
From the Big Bang to Planet X : The 50 Most-Asked Questions About the Universe...and Their Answers by Terence Dickinson
What exactly is the Big Bang theory? What came before it? What is a black hole? How do we know the universe is expanding? These are only five of 50 questions leading North American astronomer Terence Dickinson answers here from the many asked during his lectures and interviews. In his bestselling, down-to-earth style, Dickinson unravels the mysteries of the cosmos. (From Amazon.com)
