Customer Reviews

Our Superstring Universe: Strings, Branes, Extra Dimensions and Superstring-M Theory

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

An excellent introduction to string theory and the ideas and the problems that led up to it. The book starts off with basic concepts of time, space, matter, and energy and then develops a timeline of the universe from the big bang onward to the present that incorporates these concepts and speculates on the ultimate fate of the universe using the ideas of dark matter and dark energy. In addition, Mr. Lewis goes into the fundamental incompatibility between quantum mechanics and general relativity at the atomic scale and how string theory might resolve this. He also puts forth a unique and (as far as I know) original idea on a possible afterlife and how string theory could be used to preserve essential information about a person's life (which the author calls humanessence) through the holographic principle. Mr. Lewis develops his ideas very logically and concisely and provides plenty of illustrations which clarify his explanations. As a bonus, he even provides a glossary at the end of the book for the beginner. I would strongly recommend this book to anybody who has an interest in science and ideas and who wants to be introduced to what may be the ultimate theory of our universe.

The pictures and tables are so poor in quality and printing that would have been wiser not to include them.
To make matters worst, the author attempts but completely fails to explain anything in this booklet.

There are websites built and maintained by amateurs and enthusiasts that are far better sources.

If you're looking for good books on M-Theory and related subjects, buy "The Elegant Universe" and "The Fabric of the Cosmos".

This little book has 128 pages of text. After some cosmology and particle physics, discussion of string theory commences on pages 53-57, conintuing on 73-102, 110-111, and 115-125, for a total of 48 pages. Subtract maybe another 25% for amateurish diagrams that do nothing but repeat the text, massive white space, and constant repetition, and you end up with about 36 pages of content on the subject of the title of this book.

I'm not sure who the target audience is for this work. It contains no mathematics beyond addition. It contains sentences such as this: "The nine planets of our solar system, in order of distance from the sun are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto." Or: "Dividing by a number greater than one yields a smaller number." What do you think, maybe 5th graders?

The content is necessarily shallow, tossing out buzzwords, with no continuity, no real explanations. Branes are never actually defined. M-theory is never defined beyond being the theory that ties together all the other string theories. Somehow. I wonder what the "M" stands for.

Probably a fair book for somebody's first book on String Theory, but definitely not for the advanced reader who is looking for new news. The author covers a lot of areas of quantum physics, but not in any real depth or background. In his first section on string theory he barley talks about strings. He introduces the concept well, and discusses the mathematical challenges of the string theory revolutions in more-or-less, introductory terms. Makes use of diagrams, but seemingly to take up space, rather than visual aids.

I read the entire book in about three hours.

This book is very well written and it gets right down to the point. It is, also, very clear in concept with only a few points here and there that might have needed a better explanation. This is only an introductory edition, and if more in-depth knowledge is needed I recommend: The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. Overall: VERY GOOD.

Normally I wouldn't bother wasting any time or effort even mentioning such a pathetic excuse for a book, but then I realized that maybe the one small, positive thing could come out of the mistake I made in ordering this garbage is that I could warn others against making the same error.
I came across this thing while clicking around Amazon searching for books about the universe and particularly string theory. Fascinated by the implications of string theory, I wanted more info, and when "Our Superstring Universe" crept out of the shadows, it actually seemed like a decent choice: a concise, understandable summary of string theory that was up-to-date and professionally done. I emphasize: this is what it SEEMED to be. So I took a chance and ordered it, and when it arrived, the only lesson I got was in how appearances can be deceiving.
First off, I don't know if the author even truly understands the concepts he's writing about. Inventing his own (highly suspect) terminology and glossing over several things he should be explaining in detail (as other reviews have noted), I immediately got the sense that this was not a trustworthy source for information on string theory. Instead, I got the sense that this author realized that string theory is a "hot" field, and he wanted to get in on the action... a lot of science writers have made names for themselves (not to mention getting their books on bestseller lists) in this area.
But wait! As if that isn't bad enough, it gets even worse. The diagrams and illustrations are not only pointless filler material, they look like something a 4th-grader might have printed out from a mid-1980's home computer for a school paper. I am 100% serious. It would be hilarious if not for the fact that I paid good money for what was billed as a cutting-edge book.
The bottom line is this: there are so many excellent books on this subject, as well as webpages devoted to it, that spending good money on "Our Superstring Universe" would be a very foolish move. Buyer Beware!