Amazon.com: The Search For Superstrings, Symmetry, And The Theory Of Everything: John Gribbin: Books

Amazon.com
In days of yore, educated men and women would avidly follow new developments in the world of science; these days it seems to be too much trouble--relativity was bad enough, but "N-dimensional space"? Fortunately for those of us who have trouble visualizing parallel parking, much less quarks and gluons, John Gribbin is back with an up-to-date primer on subatomic physics. The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Everything refers as much to the reader's search for understanding as to the physicist's search for clever theories and experimental evidence to back them up, and Gribbin's prose is up to both tasks.

While meeting luminaries from Einstein to Steven Weinberg, we are treated to clear explanations of what in the world they're talking about, whether it's the "collapse of the wave function" or "high-energy particle acceleration." This material is especially fascinating to those of us without much mathematical inclination, as Gribbin manages to show the state-of-the-art in modern physics without forcing us to go back to school for a few years. (There is an appendix, "Group Theory for Beginners," for interested parties.) Writers like Gribbin are helping us reclaim the time when a little learning was all it took to understand science--and The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Everything might just convince you that it's not so hard, after all. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
Ever since Einstein came up with the General Theory of Relativity, the Holy Grail of physics has been a "Theory of Everything" that would explain the behavior of all the particles and forces in nature in one set of equations. Popular science writer Gribbin tackles this quest in a thorough yet palatable primer geared to the serious reader. He starts with a clear introduction to the subatomic particle zoo (the subject of his last book, Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality). Where once protons, neutrons and electrons reigned, there is now a "periodic table" of particles, and physicists have to worry about a potentially infinite number of types of particles with names like W and Z bosons, red up quarks, blue down quarks, etc. From there, Gribbin moves on to supersymmetry, a theory that attempts to bring Einsteinian space-time back into the quantum-mechanical fold of contemporary particle physics. Many physicists now treat particles not as points but as strings, tiny one-dimensional entities vibrating in 10-dimensional space-time. Gribbin helps us get our bearings in a universe of 11 dimensions, and while he refrains from the cosmic speculations of, say, Paul Davies, diligent readers without any specialized knowledge of physics or mathematics will come away with a flavor of the latest ideas theorists are grappling with, including the six major rival contenders for the TOE (Theory of Everything). An appendix previews the experiments scientists are planning in their attempts to create "little bangs," particle-accelerator collisions that may reveal what types of matter arose during the primal Big Bang. Overall, this is an exciting tour de force. 23 drawings.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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The Search For Superstrings, Symmetry, And The Theory Of Everything (Hardcover)

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