Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, from Plato to String Theory and Beyond 1st Edition

by Lawrence M. Krauss (Author)

30 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0670033959

ISBN-10: 0670033952

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Beginning well before Platos allegory of the cave and continuing to modern scientific breakthroughs from relativity to quantum mechanics, as well as to pop cultural icons like Twilight Zone and Star Trek, human beings have imagined, even longed for, alternate realities. Lawrence M. Krauss, one of the most gifted and engaging of writer-scientists today, examines why we have often believed that the answers to the great questions about existence lie in the possibility that we live in a universe more complex than we can see or otherwise sense. Drawing on work by scientists, mathematicians, artists, and writersfrom Einstein to Picasso to C. S. LewisHiding in the Mirror explores whether extra dimensions simply represent abstract speculation or hold the key to a deeper understanding of the universe. Krauss examines popular cultures embrace and misunderstandingof topics such as black holes, life in another dimension, string theory, and some of the daring new theories that propose that large extra dimensions exist alongside our own. This is popular science writing at its best and most illuminatingwitty, fascinating, and controversial.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There are few scientific ideas as captivating as the notion that our universe might have other dimensions than the three (plus time) that we experience. Physicist Krauss offers an erudite and well-crafted overview of the role multiple dimensions have played in the history of physics. This isn't an easy book, even with a writer as talented as Krauss (whom some will recognize as the author of The Physics of Star Trek and Beyond Star Trek) serving as one's Virgil. Long on science and short on its connections with culture, the book is essentially an introduction to the physics and mathematics of extra dimensions with a few more or less disconnected chapters that touch on how these ideas show up in art and popular culture; there's more on brane-world and the ekpyrotic universe than on Plato's cave, whose inhabitants could not perceive reality in all its dimensions, or Buckaroo Banzai. Those who are willing to put in the requisite effort will be amply rewarded with a unique and impressive survey of scientists' astonishing and evolving understanding of the nature of the universe in all its visible and hidden dimensions. (Oct. 24)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Lawrence M. Krauss, an internationally award-winning physicist and author, is the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics and director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of Atom, Quintessence: The Mystery of the Missing Mass, Beyond Star Trek, and The Physics of Star Trek. He is a frequent contributor to NPR and many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times.

Product details

Publisher : Viking Adult; 1st edition (October 20, 2005)
Language : English
Hardcover : 276 pages
ISBN-10 : 0670033952
ISBN-13 : 978-0670033959
Reading age : 18 years and up
Item Weight : 1.45 pounds
Dimensions : 6.32 x 1.1 x 9.52 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,614,097 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #584 in Physics of Time (Books)
- #1,603 in Astronomy & Astrophysics
- #3,955 in Astrophysics & Space Science (Books)

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Rock Hill Resident

He Shoots, He Misses

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2017

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I was very disappointed with this book. I have purchased (and read) two other books by this author -- the Star Trek and Beyond Star Trek Books. I enjoyed those because I had a frame of reference. This book reads like "the history of physics." I am an educated person. I have a post graduate degree, though not a scientific one. I'm smart, too. But this book made me feel dumb. I understood about 20% of it. The author would present a physics theory, then offer an analogy or example of the theory. The problem was, the analogy seemingly contradicted the theory. Reading this book made me feel like I was a slow learner in an advanced physics course. Unless you are a scientist with leanings toward physics, this book doesn't offer much. It's jargon-filled. It's not transparent. This is more of a text book than an entertaining learning vehicle. It is also outdated.The book refers to things in the future that have already happened many years ago.

4 people found this helpful

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Event Horizon

Wicked Fine

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2019

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One of those books if you take the time to read cover to cover you'll be glad you did. There are other dimensions we humans just don't see. Read this and think it through. Brilliance by Dr. Krauss.

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Regnal the Caretaker

Induction or deduction?

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2005

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Science is said to proceed on two legs, one of the theory, and the other of observation and experiment. What Lawrence Krauss conveys in a very gallant and respectful way is, that we have too much of induction going on in today's modern cosmology physics. He praises all involved scientists, but at the same time is gently dubious about strings.
Blame Kaluza for this, blame his theory of "extra dimension" for huge cohort of math-tweaking physicists trying to convince science and general population about Braneworlds and large number of other string related theories apparently solving so called "hierarchy problem".
The book is complete, I read it with pleasure. I will direct criticism to chapters 13 and 14 where text is less coherent. Second drawback: book "cries out" for just one drawing representing scale of different forces and their unification. Overall: decent read and good summary of strings/branes. It altered my opinion about it.
Many particles (supersymmetry) or many dimensions (strings)? - be your judge. But how possibly can we believe that our reality is based on theories ruled by weird mathematics of AB=-AB? I will not buy it now lightly, not since I have completed reading "Hiding in the Mirror".

11 people found this helpful

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Mike

Great book.

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2016

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Buy this book. It makes brains happy. Very interesting and well written.

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Ronald Adrian Baughman

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2016

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Excellent service and a very good book.

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AN EXAMINATION OF SCIENCE, WITH STRING THEORY AS EXAMPLE

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2020

Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (born 1954) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and director of its Origins Project.

He wrote in the first chapter of this 2005 book, “the central question becomes: To what extent do our imaginings reflect our own predilections, and to what extent might they actually mirror reality? If we can directly test out imaginings against the weight of observation and experiment, then the answer is easy. But what if we cannot? When certain notions persist… are they merely hardwired in our brains?... One such notion will be the focus of this book: the longstanding love affair of the human intellect with the idea that there is far more ‘out there’ than meets the eye. Science has, of course, validated this notion.” (Pg. 7-8) He continues, “This book will in part provide a timely snapshot of where we are now… In the course of this book I will also attempt to present a ‘fair and balanced’ treatment of string theory… But that should not obscure the important fact that string theory has yet to demonstrate any definitive connection to the real world and, in fact, is a theory that thus far has primarily succeeded in generating more complex mathematics as time proceeds, any hype notwithstanding.” (Pg. 12-13)

He outlines, “These revolutions in our picture of the universe at fundamental scales, from the existence of antimatter and virtual particles, to the apparent population explosion of particles and forces, and ultimately to the dynamic nature of space itself, completely transformed the landscape of physics and affected the very questions about nature that physicists might ask. Happily, many of the confusions raised by these unexpected discoveries have been resolved, as we shall see. But not all of them have been, and in the process other puzzles have arisen that have made the preliminary thrusts of physics at the beginning of the twenty-first century bear an odd resemblance to the philosophical speculations that so inspired …. [some scientists] at the beginning of the previous century.” (Pg. 119)

He notes, “wormholes, if they actually were able to exist, would allow not only distant regions of space to be connected, but also distant regions of time…both past and future! But, they probably don’t exist, so don’t get too excited about their potential… curved space itself neither implies nor requires the existence of any extra dimensions. Instead, black holes and wormholes demonstrate that even a seemingly pedestrian three-dimensional space can be far stranger than meets the eyes.” (Pg. 149)

He suggests, “the developments of GUTs [Grand Unified Theories] set the stage for far more ambitious theoretical speculations about nature. Once scientists were seriously willing to consider scales a million billion times smaller than current experiments could directly measure, why not consider scales a BILLION billion times smaller? This scale is the Planck scale, where … one must come face to face with the problems of trying to unite gravity and quantum mechanics.” (Pg. 169)

He summarizes, “by 1981 all the independent ingredients were now in the air: GUTs, strings, supersymmetry, and a newfound desire to unify ALL the forces in nature. It would take some years, and a few more miracles, before many people… would join in the harvest, but the seeds had been planted. A growing group of physicists began to seriously believe that our four-dimensional universe really might be just the tip of a cosmic iceberg, with six or seven hidden dimensions lying, ;literally, just beneath the surface. The new love affair with extra dimensions had begun.” (Pg. 172) Later, he adds, “the world of elementary particle physics underwent a sea change after 1984… The largely mathematical questions underlying the new theories became for a number of young physicists new to the field much more interesting then trying to figure out such ‘trivial’ low-energy details as grand unification might account for the actual physics that resulted in a universe full of matter instead of antimatter, or why the proton is two thousand times heavier than the electron. In short, the as-of-yet hypothetical world of hidden extra dimensions had, for many who called themselves physicians, ultimately became more compelling than the world of our experience.” (Pg. 187)

He argues, “String theory… must, if it is to be useful to physicists, address some concrete physical problems and make concrete physical predictions. It its original form, it had simply failed to do so, all the hype surrounding it notwithstanding. So, as mathematically remarkable as M-theory might be… unless all of these ideas eventually help resolve fundamental physical questions, it IS all just mathematics.” (Pg. 203)

He suggests, “you might want to … note a few of the hidden, but profound, problems with this model as it stands. First and foremost is an issue… Why are the extra dimensions small, and our three-brane possibly infinitely large? There has simply been no good answer to this question in the past ninety years… It is simply assumed that something happens so that the extra dimensions remain hidden, whether they curl up on the size of the Planck scale or are as large as a pebble on the road… This embarrassment is solved in the way other similar confusing aspects of string theory and M-theory are sometimes dealt with: Namely, it is assumed that when we fully understand the ultimate theory, everything will become clear.” (Pg. 219)

He summarizes, “Evidence for the existence or absence of extra dimensions is likely to come ultimately not from an attempt to understand the dynamics of objects within our universe, but rather from an attempt to understand the dynamics of our universe itself and to address the ultimate questions that have beset science since it first emerged from the fog of history; How did the universe begin? How will it end? And it is here… that string theory, too, must ultimately face the music. If it is really ever to provide an explanation of anything we see, much less everything we see, it must address the fundamental nature of that which we cannot see but which we know is there. It must explain the energy of nothing.” (Pg. 224)

He concludes, “I admit that… as I have written this book, I myself have run hot and cold. There have been moments when the remarkable depth of the mathematical insights being explored in the course of recent years has left me awed, and there have been times when the sheer hubris of the claims, and the lack of associated results has left me shaking my head in disbelief. But I want to make it clear that while I think it is certainly possible and… perhaps even likely that all of the formalism currently being explored is a mere house of cards, and that it might tumble as soon as the force of some new experiment or observation overwhelms it, this does not mean the effort is not worthwhile.” (Pg. 241)

This book will be of great interest for those seeking critical perspectives on string theory, and other current theories.

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Top reviews from other countries

RR Waller

The mysterious allure of dimensions

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 22, 2011

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Perhaps because the publishers realised it would have a limited readership, its editing leaves a little to be desired in places.
Written by a well-respected scientist and science writer, it tackles some of the most difficult aspects of physics and the universe surrounding us.
"You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted." So begins H.G. Wells' Time Traveller before his fictional journey; in many ways, it could have been Klauss's preface.
Probing into a world of the almost unbelievable in ways which make it seem believable and in an enjoyable, not too scientific style, it is an interesting but often puzzling read.

4 people found this helpful

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