Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes [Hardcover]

Charles Seife (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 067003441X | ISBN-13: 978-0670034413 | Publication Date: February 2, 2006 | Edition: First Edition 3rd Printing

As Charles Seife reveals in this energetic new book, information theory, once the province of philosophers and linguists, has emerged as the crucial science of our time, shedding new light on the mysteries of physics, the nature of space and time and the creation and destruction of the universe itself.

With his gift for making cutting-edge science accessible and entertaining, Seife explains how theorists came to understand that information is not a construct of the mind but a fundamental element of the physical world, something that sits inside every living cell and surrounds every black hole in the cosmos. It exists, like energy, even if there is no life to observe it. Starting with the breaking of the Enigma code during World War II and building momentum with the computer revolution, information theory has taken its place at the forefront of theoretical physics as scientists begin to use it to reconcile the paradoxes of relativity and quantum mechanics that have puzzled theorists since Einstein. Lucid and exhilarating, Decoding the Universe probes the mind-boggling advances that are taking us to the brink of a new understanding of the universe.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In a book that's all but impossible to put down, science journalist Seife (Alpha & Omega) explains how the concepts of information theory have begun to unlock many of the mysteries of the universe, from quantum mechanics to black holes and the likely end of the universe. Seife presents a compelling case that information is the one constant that ties all of science, indeed all of the universe, together. His skill with language permits him to do what many have tried and few have accomplished—making complicated concepts of quantum mechanics accessible to the average reader. Seife demonstrates how quantum oddities so alien to classical physics actually are consistent with the same physical laws that govern the world we see. For example, the fact that entangled particles half a universe away can instantaneously communicate with one another (what Einstein called "spooky action" at a distance), apparently violating the law that nothing can exceed the speed of light, can be understood through information theory. Seife takes all of this to a most bizarre, but logical, conclusion reached by many cosmologists: the universe as we know it is but one of an infinite number of universes, all brought into being through information transfer. (Feb. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Bit by bit, cutting-edge physicists are acclimatizing themselves to the notion that the universe is like a computer, its events akin to information processing. Seife treks through the thinking that implies humanity's final demotion from emanation of godhead to binary digits. An excellent popular science author (Alpha and Omega, 2003), Seife opens with the history of thermodynamics and the equation of entropy. This equation is the foundation of information theory, which was formalized in 1948 by Claude Shannon, who also coined the term bit. The author then delves into why the idea of the universe-as-information appeals to theorists, resting his presentation on the weirdness of wave-particle duality. Challenging but rewarding fare for attentive general science readers, who might also be interested in Programming the Universe (2006), by information theorist Seth Lloyd. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition 3rd Printing edition (February 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067003441X
• ISBN-13: 978-0670034413
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #833,607 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Seife is a correspondent for Science, a London--based international weekly science magazine. He has written for Scientific American, The Economist, Wired UK, The Sciences, and numerous other publications. He has a masters degree in mathematics from Yale.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If there ever was a Mother-of-All Theories...., September 26, 2006

By 

Andrew Jennings (Bay Area, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes (Hardcover)

In reviews thus far of "Decoding the Universe," both formal and informal, there is a pattern of confusion and disorientation about the book's real topic.

Take Laura Miller's review on Salon.com for example. Though it is largely a positive review, she introduces the book as a book on cosmology and compares it, as a few other reviewers have, to Seth Lloyd's book on quantum computing, "Programming the Universe."

Yes it is true, Charles Seife does write about the universe and he does have a chapter on quantum computing, but there is more to the book than multiverses and quantum computing.

In fact, the very reason for this general sense of disorientation may be the real central concept of the book - Information. For most of us, information is, dates, faces, or names of places. It is an abstract concept. Contrast that to the concept of "Information" Seife introduces, a concept that is physical, a concept that is probabilistic and one that governs the behaviors of atoms, black holes and all living beings.

The word "Universe" in the title may have been a bit misleading, conjuring a, somewhere `out there' in a subatomic realm, far far away, image. The universe in Seife's title is not just about the universe out there in the dark sky, it really alludes to a `Universal Law' that applies to all things in our universe. Seife's book is really about an emerging law, that may well become, once all the debates come to an end, the most fundamental law of the universe.

"Information can neither be created nor destroyed."

The book begins with three important figures, Alan Turing the English mathematician who is considered as the father of computer science, Ludwig Boltzmann, who formalized the statistical concept of thermodynamic entropy and engineer Claude Shannon, whose Information theory is the reason we have such mainstays today as the internet and cell phones.

In the first three chapters Seife introduces the works of these three men and the happenstance way in which, the exorcism of a demon (Maxwell's theoretical demon) establishes a fundamental connection between Boltzmann's entropy and Shannon's information. As a result, thermodynamics, the field in physics that describes the behaviors of mass and energy became "a special case of information theory," and along with it, information itself became, according to Seife, a quantifiable and concrete property of mass and energy.

As Seife goes on to tell us, the laws of thermodynamics are not the only ones to be subsumed by the concept of information. Even Einstein's theory of relativity, Seife insists, is really, "a theory about information." Specifically, the theory dictates the maximum speed at which information can be transferred in the universe: speed of light.

He doesn't stop there; he takes us to the subatomic realms where he introduces the information character of quantum behavior. "In fact," he says, "all the absurdity of quantum theory - all the seemingly impossible behaviors of atoms, electrons, and light - has to do with information: how it is stored, how it moves from one place to another, and how it dissipates."

While the book does heavily tend towards physics and cosmology, there is one chapter often overlooked by readers and reviewers, that makes it more than just a book about the `universe as a giant computer.' This is the chapter about the information characteristic of life. Almost half a century ago, even before the discovery of the structure of the DNA, quantum theorist Erwin Schrödinger, realized that life is a, "delicate dance of energy, entropy, and information, " and said as much in his book "What is Life?"

The discovery of the DNA's structure and our subsequent understanding of its information role in living systems have only reaffirmed Schrödinger's intuition about the information character of living systems themselves. Today, as Seife explains, all living beings, ourselves included, are understood as, "incredibly complex information-processing machines, ones capable of tasks that no other such machine is capable of, but information-processing machines nonetheless."

For at least a quarter century now, the information concept has been cropping up in different disciplines and specialists in different fields have been writing about information theory's influence within their fields, whether it is molecular biology or black hole theory. Therefore it is true that many popular science books written by specialists have addressed much of what Seife relates. However, most specialists, though aware of information theory's influence in their own fields of expertise, are often oblivious to the theory's influence in disciplines other than their own. This gives Seife, as a non-specialist a unique vantage point of sorts, and sets his work apart from other books that may have addressed many of these concepts before. Unhindered by the usual blinders of specialization, Seife is able to weave together, what has so far been considered disconnected stories, with one thread - the concept of information. Perhaps the most important thread of all.

It is nothing short of extraordinary that one set of rules (the rules of information), which dictate the behavior of gigantic exotic unseen objects like black holes, and the behavior of our modern computing machines could also dictate how our own minds and bodies function.

Seife's book is the first truly comprehensive treatise on the information concept in all its dimensions. It is an ambitious, necessary, and timely book that is a harbinger of things to come. It is the leading edge of a wave. As the realization of information theory's importance begins to take hold, there will be a deluge of books on this topic. If you want to be ahead of the curve, read this book.

By Andrew Jennings, author "The Invisible Matrix: The Evolution of Altruism, Culture, Human Behavior and the Memory Network"

92 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but a little annoying, November 3, 2006

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes (Hardcover)

Seife begins with an introduction to information theory. He talks about redundancy and the relationship of entropy and probability to information. He recalls the work of Turing and Shannon. Then he reviews relativity as he leads us to quantum mechanics. He recalls the paradox of Schrodinger's cat and other peculiarities of QM.

In general what he tries to explain to the general reader is how science is reinvestigating the fundamentals of physics from the standpoint of information theory, which apparently is going to replace physics. If Seife is correct, professors of physics are going to become professors of information theory, if that hasn't already happened. To me replacing matter and energy with information is not helpful. But to physicists apparently it is not only helpful but something splendid.

Consequently, there is a kind of "gee whiz" quality to Seife's expression, a quality that I found somewhat off-putting. Enthusiasm is fine and the ready acceptance of new ideas is agreeable when the ideas have experimental backing. For example he writes (speaking of a hypothetical creature inside the event horizon of a black hole): "...no matter how hard it tried, the creature would be utterly unable to send us a message...The pull of the black hole is too strong. Even if there were a huge population of these creatures swirling around the black hole, all screaming and signaling as loud as they possibly could, Earth would never receive a single bit or qubit of information about them." (pp. 242-243)

Considering the physical conditions inside a black hole, the image of creatures "screaming and signaling" is absurd to say the least, and frankly ludicrous.

Also there is this from page 248: "Indeed, most cosmologists think that the universe is infinitely large...that it has no borders--and that it doesn't have a funky shape that curls around on itself, as a handful of scientists have unconvincingly argued. If you take a rocket ship and travel in one direction for years and years and years, you will never come across an uncrossable boundary and you will never revisit the place you set off from."

This is news to me. The universe is infinite? It used to be the case that the one thing that physicists wanted banished from their equations was any notion of infinity! All kinds of absurdities, paradoxes and incomprehensibles would pop up when infinities were allowed. Speaking of which, Seife also champions the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics over the standard Copenhagen interpretation put forward by Bohr and Heisenberg.

Personally, I've always liked the many worlds interpretation because it is so audacious and because it expands the mind so wonderfully. However, if, as Seife seems to imply, most physicists believe in the many worlds interpretation, I must say I am astounded. What is going on? The many worlds interpretation leads to parallel universes! universes that cannot be detected by any means we know of. They actually cannot be part of any real physics since there is no experimental method that allows us to search for or detect parallel universes.

Has physics come to this? Are the postmoderns right? Is physics now no more than a cultural construct that doesn't even care whether its theories are falsifiable or not? Are Newton and Einstein and James Clerk Maxwell rolling over in their graves? To me the "spooky action at a distance," and particles being in the same place at the same time, and the startling fact that an observation of any kind will always disturb a quantum event to an uncertainty, etc., is nowhere near as benumbing as the idea that a new universe is created with every tick of a quantum divergence. I mean I love it, but how can I believe it?

There's also a superficial quality to this book that is hard to get away from. It's as though Seife does not understand such things as entanglement and superposition well enough to explain them to the general reader. However he's not alone in this. Even the best books on QM for the general reader (e.g., The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone (2004) by Kenneth Ford), have left me feeling dissatisfied. Perhaps it is impossible to convey the reality of quantum mechanics to non-physicists. However, there is no excuse for falling into such an expression as this: "Parallel universes reveal how superposition works, and how distant entangled particles can instantly 'communicate' with each other over vast distances." (p. 242) This is like saying "vampires reveal how blood nourishes cells in the body." You start with a imaginary entity (a parallel universe, a vampire) and you conclude that this entity reveals something. Parallel universes may exist but nobody has seen one yet, and almost by definition nobody ever will, so it is specious to claim they reveal anything.

Here's yet another example of this sort of fuzzy writing to which Seife--a professor of journalism, by the way, and the author of the acclaimed Zero (2000) and Alpha and Omega (2003)--is inexplicable drawn: "The mysteries of quantum mechanics become much less mysterious--once you believe that information creates the structure of space and time." (p. 242) I have no idea how information might create the structure of space and time, and I certainly cannot comprehend how my belief in such a notion might make QM less mysterious. Seife really needs to explain how this might work. No doubt the failing is mine. However, I suspect I'm not alone.

Bottom line: this book is fun to read, but exasperating because of its fuzzy superficiality. The superficiality may be unavoidable, but the fuzziness is not.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well written, but only for the true layperson, March 30, 2007

By 

John Gossman (Seattle, wa USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes (Hardcover)

This is a gentle introduction to a fascinating subject: that information actually has a physical basis in the universe and that information theory (based on the work of Shannon to determine how much information can theoretically be transmitted across phone lines, but carried by Shannon and his successors far, far further)may actually be fundamental in explaining quantum mechanics and indeed our entire universe.

The book starts with basic description of entropy and definitions of information and proceeds to discussions of quantum mechanics, quantum computing, and such interesting topics as whether Black Holes destroy information or not (Hawkings bet they did, but ultimately conceded...as Seife notes, Hawkings may be the only one who actually changed his mind).

Seife is a clear writer and great at creating an argument step-by-step.

However... I was a math major, a physics minor and am a working computer scientist with years of coursework in automata and complexity theory. Though there was new material in this book for me, vast swathes were way too introductory for me. I really didn't need a 20 page description of how bits are the fundamental element of information and strings of bits can encode anything, or for that matter to rehash special relativity or the selfish gene theory. Though it mostly succeeds, this book may be a little too ambitious. It tries to start with first principles for the layman, but spans so many fields (thermodynamics, information theory, quantum mechanics, biology, cosmology, special and general relativity) that providing basic introductions to all of them greatly dilutes the new and interesting material.
I really wish I knew what to read next. From here it appears most things are other popularizations or deeply technical works for specialists in quantum computing. Hopefully somebody will write a "Selfish Gene" or "Elegant Universe" that goes into more detail while remaining popularly accessible for the scientifically trained.