Bikewer
25th April 2004, 09:03 AM
By Brian Greene. Rather than just tack this on to the end of the ever-growing "what are you reading" thread...hehe.
Greene also authored The Elegant Universe.
This one goes into cutting-edge cosmology, including the big questions as to inflationary Big Bang theory, Time, String Theory, "Branes", and so forth.
Greene's idea is to present these heady notions to the layman using illustrations, analogies, and so forth, realizing that the average reader will not have the heavy-duty math skills necessary for this material.
I think he succeeds quiet well. He uses pop-culture icons like the Simpsons to illustrate his points on Relativity and time, and goes into the history of much of the current thinking on these things.
Mind, this is still pretty heavy stuff. I think Greene handles it a bit more successfully than Hawking, for instance. Probably the best description of Inflation and it's implications (including the Dark Matter and Dark Energy) that I've seen.
He also covers the intruguing notion of the "brane"-universe idea, with it's implications for an eternal, cyclic procession of universes. (an excellent counterpoint to the ID believers, BTW)
In short, a worthwhile read for those like myself who are fascinated by cosmology, but rather math-deficient.
Greene also authored The Elegant Universe.
This one goes into cutting-edge cosmology, including the big questions as to inflationary Big Bang theory, Time, String Theory, "Branes", and so forth.
Greene's idea is to present these heady notions to the layman using illustrations, analogies, and so forth, realizing that the average reader will not have the heavy-duty math skills necessary for this material.
I think he succeeds quiet well. He uses pop-culture icons like the Simpsons to illustrate his points on Relativity and time, and goes into the history of much of the current thinking on these things.
Mind, this is still pretty heavy stuff. I think Greene handles it a bit more successfully than Hawking, for instance. Probably the best description of Inflation and it's implications (including the Dark Matter and Dark Energy) that I've seen.
He also covers the intruguing notion of the "brane"-universe idea, with it's implications for an eternal, cyclic procession of universes. (an excellent counterpoint to the ID believers, BTW)
In short, a worthwhile read for those like myself who are fascinated by cosmology, but rather math-deficient.