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The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality Paperback – February 8, 2005

by Brian Greene (Author)

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s leading physicists and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes “an astonishing ride” through the universe (The New York Times) that makes us look at reality in a completely different way.

Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly distant objects can instantaneously coordinate their behavior, Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.

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Print length

592 pages
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English
Publisher

Vintage
Publication date

February 8, 2005
Dimensions

5.15 x 1.04 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0375727205
ISBN-13

978-0375727207
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Send[s] the reader’s imagination hurtling through space on an astonishing ride. . . . He is both a skilled and kindly explicator. His excitement for science on the threshold of vital breakthroughs is extremely contagious.” —The New York Times

“The best exposition and explanation of early 21st-century research into the fundamental nature of the universe as you are likely to find anywhere.” —Science

“Perhaps the single best explainer of abstruse science in the world today. . . . Greene has a gift for finding the right metaphor.” —The Washington Post

“I recommend Greene’s book to any nonexpert reader who wants an up-to-date account of theoretical physics, written in colloquial language that anyone can understand.” —Freeman Dyson, The New York Review of Books

“As pure intellectual adventure, this is about as good as it gets. . . . Even compared with A Brief History of Time, Greene’s book stands out for its sweeping ambition . . . stripping down the mystery from difficult concepts without watering down the science.” —Newsday

"Greene is as elegant as ever, cutting through the fog of complexity with insight and clarity. Space and time, you might even say, become putty in his hands." —Los Angeles Times

“Highly informed, lucid and witty. . . . There is simply no better introduction to the strange wonders of general relativity and quantum mechanics, the fields of knowledge essential for any real understanding of space and time.” —Discover

“The author’s informed curiosity is inspiring and his enthusiasm infectious.” —Kansas City Star

“Mind-bending. . . . [Greene] is both a gifted theoretical physicist and a graceful popularizer [with] virtuoso explanatory skills.” —The Oregonian

“Brian Greene is the new Hawking, only better.” —The Times (London)

“Greene’s gravitational pull rivals a black hole’s.” —Newsweek

“Greene is an excellent teacher, humorous and quick. . . . Read [your friends] the passages of this book that boggle your mind. (You may find yourself reading them every single paragraph.).” —Boston Globe

“Inexhaustibly witty . . . a must-read for the huge constituency of lay readers enticed by the mysteries of cosmology.” —Sunday Times

“Relish this exhilarating foray into the alien terrain that is our own universe.” —Booklist, starred review

“Holds out the promise that we may one day explain how space and time have come to exist.” —Paul Davies, Nature

“Greene takes us to the limits of space and time.” —The Guardian

“Exciting stuff. . . . Introduces the reader to the mind-boggling landscape of cutting-edge theoretical physics, where mathematics rules supreme.” —The News & Observer

“One of the most entertaining and thought-provoking popular science books to have emerged in the last few years. The Elegant Universe was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. The Fabric of the Cosmos deserves to win it.” —Physics World

“In the space of 500 readable pages, Greene has brought us to the brink of twenty-first-century physics with the minimum of fuss.” —The Herald

“If anyone can popularize tough science, it’s Greene.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Greene is a marvelously talented exponent of physics. . . . A pleasure to read.” —Economist

“Magnificent . . . sends shivers down the spine.” —Financial Times

From the Back Cover

From Brian Greene, one of the world's leading physicists and author the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way.
Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? From Newton's unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein's fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics' entangled arena where vastly distant objects can instantaneously coordinate their behavior, Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.

About the Author

BRIAN GREENE received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He joined the physics faculty at Cornell University in 1990, was appointed to a full professorship in 1995, and in 1996 joined Columbia University where he is professor of physics and mathematics. He has lectured at both a general and a technical level in more than twenty-five countries and is widely regarded for a number of ground breaking discoveries in superstring theory. He lives in Andes, New York, and New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: Roads to Reality

SPACE, TIME, AND WHY THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE

None of the books in my father’s dusty old bookcase were forbidden. Yet while I was growing up, I never saw anyone take one down. Most were massive tomes–a comprehensive history of civilization, matching volumes of the great works of western literature, numerous others I can no longer recall–that seemed almost fused to shelves that bowed slightly from decades of steadfast support. But way up on the highest shelf was a thin little text that, every now and then, would catch my eye because it seemed so out of place, like Gulliver among the Brobdingnagians. In hindsight, I’m not quite sure why I waited so long before taking a look. Perhaps, as the years went by, the books seemed less like material you read and more like family heirlooms you admire from afar. Ultimately, such reverence gave way to teenage brashness. I reached up for the little text, dusted it off, and opened to page one. The first few lines were, to say the least, startling.

“There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide,” the text began. I winced. “Whether or not the world has three dimensions or the mind nine or twelve categories,” it continued, “comes afterward”; such questions, the text explained, were part of the game humanity played, but they deserved attention only after the one true issue had been settled. The book was The Myth of Sisyphus and was written by the Algerian-born philosopher and Nobel laureate Albert Camus. After a moment, the iciness of his words melted under the light of comprehension. Yes, of course, I thought. You can ponder this or analyze that till the cows come home, but the real question is whether all your ponderings and analyses will convince you that life is worth living. That’s what it all comes down to. Everything else is detail.

My chance encounter with Camus’ book must have occurred during an especially impressionable phase because, more than anything else I’d read, his words stayed with me. Time and again I’d imagine how various people I’d met, or heard about, or had seen on television would answer this primary of all questions. In retrospect, though, it was his second assertion –regarding the role of scientific progress–that, for me, proved particularly challenging. Camus acknowledged value in understanding the structure of the universe, but as far as I could tell, he rejected the possibility that such understanding could make any difference to our assessment of life’s worth. Now, certainly, my teenage reading of existential philosophy
was about as sophisticated as Bart Simpson’s reading of Romantic poetry, but even so, Camus’ conclusion struck me as off the mark. To this aspiring physicist, it seemed that an informed appraisal of life absolutely required a full understanding of life’s arena–the universe. I remember thinking that if our species dwelled in cavernous outcroppings buried deep underground and so had yet to discover the earth’s surface, brilliant sunlight, an ocean breeze, and the stars that lie beyond, or if evolution had proceeded along a different pathway and we had yet to acquire any but the sense of touch, so everything we knew came only from our tactile impressions of our immediate environment, or if human mental faculties stopped developing during early childhood so our emotional and analytical skills never progressed beyond those of a five-year-old–in short, if our experiences painted but a paltry portrait of reality–our appraisal of life would be thoroughly compromised. When we finally found our way to earth’s surface, or when we finally gained the ability to see, hear, smell, and taste, or when our minds were finally freed to develop as they ordinarily do, our collective view of life and the cosmos would, of necessity, change radically. Our previously compromised grasp of reality would have shed a very different light on that most fundamental of all philosophical questions.

But, you might ask, what of it? Surely, any sober assessment would conclude that although we might not understand everything about the universe–every aspect of how matter behaves or life functions–we are privy to the defining, broad-brush strokes gracing nature’s canvas. Surely, as Camus intimated, progress in physics, such as understanding the number of space dimensions; or progress in neuropsychology, such as understanding all the organizational structures in the brain; or, for that matter, progress in any number of other scientific undertakings may fill in important details, but their impact on our evaluation of life and reality would be minimal. Surely, reality is what we think it is; reality is revealed to us by
our experiences.

To one extent or another, this view of reality is one many of us hold, if only implicitly. I certainly find myself thinking this way in day-to-day life; it’s easy to be seduced by the face nature reveals directly to our senses. Yet, in the decades since first encountering Camus’ text, I’ve learned that modern science tells a very different story. The overarching lesson that has emerged from scientific inquiry over the last century is that human experience is often a misleading guide to the true nature of reality. Lying just beneath the surface of the everyday is a world we’d hardly recognize. Followers of the occult, devotees of astrology, and those who hold to religious principles that speak to a reality beyond experience have, from widely varying perspectives, long since arrived at a similar conclusion. But that’s not what I have in mind. I’m referring to the work of ingenious innovators and tireless researchers–the men and women of science–who have peeled back layer after layer of the cosmic onion, enigma by enigma, and revealed a universe that is at once surprising, unfamiliar, exciting, elegant, and thoroughly unlike what anyone ever expected.

These developments are anything but details. Breakthroughs in physics have forced, and continue to force, dramatic revisions to our conception of the cosmos. I remain as convinced now as I did decades ago that Camus rightly chose life’s value as the ultimate question, but the insights of modern physics have persuaded me that assessing life through the lens of everyday experience is like gazing at a van Gogh through an empty Coke bottle. Modern science has spearheaded one assault after another on evidence gathered from our rudimentary perceptions, showing that they often yield a clouded conception of the world we inhabit. And so whereas Camus separated out physical questions and labeled them secondary, I’ve become convinced that they’re primary. For me, physical reality both sets the arena and provides the illumination for grappling with Camus’ question. Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent. By deepening our understanding of the true nature of physical reality, we profoundly reconfigure our sense of ourselves and our experience of the universe.

The central concern of this book is to explain some of the most prominent and pivotal of these revisions to our picture of reality, with an intense focus on those that affect our species’ long-term project to understand space and time. From Aristotle to Einstein, from the astrolabe to the Hubble Space Telescope, from the pyramids to mountaintop observatories,
space and time have framed thinking since thinking began. With the advent of the modern scientific age, their importance has been tremendously heightened. Over the last three centuries, developments in physics have revealed space and time as the most baffling and most compelling concepts, and as those most instrumental in our scientific analysis of the universe. Such developments have also shown that space and time top the list of age-old scientific constructs that are being fantastically revised by cutting-edge research.

To Isaac Newton, space and time simply were–they formed an inert, universal cosmic stage on which the events of the universe played themselves out. To his contemporary and frequent rival Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, “space” and “time” were merely the vocabulary of relations between where objects were and when events took place. Nothing more. But to Albert Einstein, space and time were the raw material underlying reality. Through his theories of relativity, Einstein jolted our thinking about space and time and revealed the principal part they play in the evolution of the universe. Ever since, space and time have been the sparkling jewels of physics. They are at once familiar and mystifying; fully understanding space and time has become physics’ most daunting challenge and sought-after prize.

The developments we’ll cover in this book interweave the fabric of space and time in various ways. Some ideas will challenge features of space and time so basic that for centuries, if not millennia, they’ve seemed beyond questioning. Others will seek the link between our theoretical understanding of space and time and the traits we commonly experience. Yet others will raise questions unfathomable within the limited confines of ordinary perceptions.

We will speak only minimally of philosophy (and not at all about suicide and the meaning of life). But in our scientific quest to solve the mysteries of space and time, we will be resolutely unrestrained. From the universe’s smallest speck and earliest moments to its farthest reaches and most distant future, we will examine space and time in environments familiar and far-flung, with an unflinching eye seeking their true nature. As the story of space and time has yet to be fully written, we won’t arrive at any final assessments. But we will encounter a series of developments–some intensely strange, some deeply satisfying, some experimentally verified, some thoroughly speculative–that will show how close we’ve come to wrapping our minds around the fabric of the cosmos and touching the true texture of reality.

Classical Reality

Historians differ on exactly when the modern scientific age began, but certainly by the time Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton had had their say, it was briskly under way. In those days, the new scientific mind-set was being steadily forged, as patterns found in terrestrial and astronomical data made it increasingly clear that there is an order to all the comings and goings of the cosmos, an order accessible to careful reasoning and mathematical analysis. These early pioneers of modern scientific thought argued that, when looked at the right way, the happenings in the universe not only are explicable but predictable. The power of science to foretell aspects of the future–consistently and quantitatively–had been revealed.

Early scientific study focused on the kinds of things one might see or experience in everyday life. Galileo dropped weights from a leaning tower (or so legend has it) and watched balls rolling down inclined surfaces; Newton studied falling apples (or so legend has it) and the orbit of the moon. The goal of these investigations was to attune the nascent scientific ear to nature’s harmonies. To be sure, physical reality was the stuff of experience, but the challenge was to hear the rhyme and reason behind the rhythm and regularity. Many sung and unsung heroes contributed to the rapid and impressive progress that was made, but Newton stole the show. With a handful of mathematical equations, he synthesized everything known about motion on earth and in the heavens, and in so doing, composed the score for what has come to be known as classical physics. In the decades following Newton’s work, his equations were developed into an elaborate mathematical structure that significantly extended both their reach and their practical utility. Classical physics gradually became a sophisticated and mature scientific discipline. But shining clearly through all these advances was the beacon of Newton’s original insights. Even today, more than three hundred years later, you can see Newton’s equations scrawled on introductory-physics chalkboards worldwide, printed on NASA flight plans computing spacecraft trajectories, and embedded within the complex calculations of forefront research. Newton brought a wealth of physical phenomena within a single theoretical framework.

But while formulating his laws of motion, Newton encountered a critical stumbling block, one that is of particular importance to our story (Chapter 2). Everyone knew that things could move, but what about the arena within which the motion took place? Well, that’s space, we’d all answer. But, Newton would reply, what is space? Is space a real physical entity or is it an abstract idea born of the human struggle to comprehend the cosmos? Newton realized that this key question had to be answered, because without taking a stand on the meaning of space and time, his equations describing motion would prove meaningless. Understanding requires context; insight must be anchored.

And so, with a few brief sentences in his Principia Mathematica, Newton articulated a conception of space and time, declaring them absolute and immutable entities that provided the universe with a rigid, unchangeable arena. According to Newton, space and time supplied an invisible scaffolding that gave the universe shape and structure. Not everyone agreed. Some argued persuasively that it made little sense to ascribe existence to something you can’t feel, grasp, or affect. But the explanatory and predictive power of Newton’s equations quieted the critics. For the next two hundred years, his absolute conception of space and time was dogma.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (February 8, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375727205
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375727207
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.21 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 1.04 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #33,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #55 in Cosmology (Books)
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Brian Greene

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Brian Greene received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar. He is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

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Very interesting, highly recommended

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2008

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As an amateur interested in astronomy and astrophysics I enjoyed listening to Brian Green's the Fabric of the Cosmos very much, learned a lot and thought about fundamental questions about the universe in a different way. The questions below and many others are explored in a very interesting way. The explanations flow smoothly in a logical manner. Questions are raised in a way to get the listener thinking. This audio CD is relevant to both amateurs and professionals on the topic. As an amateur I was not able to understand everything on the CD yet. I am sure that as I listen to the CD several more times I will understand a lot more. These topics are sometimes explained in a boring way in high school physics and college astrophysics courses and therefore can kill interest in the topic. By contrast, this CD introduces them in a very curiosity raising manner. It uses a philosophical and yet at the same time a scientifc approach that is upto date. I have also watched DVDs on similar topics before. So before listening to this CD I was skeptical about whether a CD about the universe lacking the visual elements of a DVD could be interesting or not. My answer now is definitely yes ; the auditory explanations create very interesting mental images in the listener's mind.

Examples to some of the questions, among others, explored in the CD are : What is time ? What is space ? How are they related ? What is reality and how do we perceive it ? Does time always have to flow towards the future or can the direction of flow sometimes reverse ? Does time flow at the same rate in different parts of the universe or not ? How was the universe created ? How is it likely to end ? Is the big bang theory of the creation of the universe valid ? What has banged, how and how long ago? Could the universe actually be a giant brain ? How many dimensions are there in the universe ? Can we perceive all the dimensions or not ? What are matter and energy ? How are they related ? What are black holes ? What could be happening inside black holes ? How does Einstein's theory of general relativity explain the universe ? According to that theory, why is the velocity of light always constant ? What is light made of ? What are photons ? How does light travel in space ? What are the limitations in Isaac Newton's explanation of the universe ? Are objects that are billions of light years apart in the universe completely unrelated or can they affect one another despite those awesome distances ? How do we perceive movement ? Movement occurs with respect to what ? What are frames of reference ? Could we perceive movement in space if there were no other objects at all in the universe ? How did atomic theory start ? What are the smallest particles of matter ? What are quarks ? Are electrons matter or energy ? What is quantum theory ? How does it reconcile with the theory of general relativity ? What is the uncertainty principle ? Why can't the velocity and position of an object be simultaneously determined with absolute certainty ? What is gravity ? Are all forces in the universe such as gravity, electromagnetism etc. actually different manifestations of the same force or not ? What is string theory and how does it explain the universe ? Is a unified theory that explains everything possible ? How is the structure of the atom related to the structure of the universe ? What are the historical developments of various theories that attempt to explain the universe ? What are the contributions of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble and many other scientists and philosophers to the development of our understanding of matter, energy, space, time, the universe and the texture of reality ? As of today how much do we understand the universe ? What questions remain unanswered ? What are the likely developments in these theories in the future ? How do the various theories contradict and / or reconcile with one another ?

We may think that the answers to questions such as what is space ? what is gravity ? what is time ? what is reality ? what is movement ? are simple and that we already know the answers from our high school physics courses. So we may reason that there is no need for deep philosophical contemplation about them. However, this CD challenges this type of thinking and makes us aware that what we maybe taking for granted as known facts may not be ultimate answers at all. For example, if you think that space is equivalent to emptiness, to nothingness and if you think that time can flow only in one direction, that is towards what we call the future, think again. This CD challenges these concepts.

Thousands of years ago humankind thought that the Earth was carried on the backs of giant elephants or turtles. A few centuries ago humankind was debating whether the Earth was flat or round, if the Earth orbited the sun or the reverse. Humankind's vision of the universe was limited to the solar system and fixed stars. The only elements were air, soil, fire and water. With the contributions of many scientists including Galileo our understanding of the universe significantly developed to date. However, this CD demonstrates that despite these giant steps, and despite the sophistication of our current theories, we still have a long way to go before we can say that we fully understand the universe. This CD demonstrates that we do not yet have certain and final answers, but we have many questions that are being further explored. Fortunately, we have significant knowledge, that accumulates in the right direction towards the discovery of the " truth ".

So if these matters arouse your curiosity I strongly recommend that you listen to the CD titled " The Fabric of the the Cosmos " by Brian Green.

9 people found this helpful

Reality for Everyone

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2005

Verified Purchase

Brian Greene's latest (equation-less) book "The Fabric of The Cosmos", addresses why spacetime is not simply a metric but a real "something", and the overarching question, "Just what is reality?" My take is that everyone should read this book!!

Part I contains a magnificent overview of the development of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. This is both fully understandable to the layman and has fascinating new angles - new insights - that are spellbinding to this professional physicist (new views/descriptions of acceleration and gravity, Bell/Aspect vs. EPR, possible conflicts between Relativity and QM on large scales [not just quantum fluctuations at the Plank length], etc.).

Part II (what's time?) is absolutely fascinating! Greene's whole discussion of what time might be, its apparent "flow" as experienced by us, and his discussion of statistical mechanics and entropy and their insufficiency to define a classical "arrow of time" ("flowing" from past to future), absent something like the Big Bang, are super -AND CLEAR TO THE GENERAL READERSHIP. I loved his review of the whole business of quantum theory and reality, e.g., the so-called "delayed choice" and "quantum eraser" experiments, the various attempts to come up with some glimmer of understanding of "the measurement problem" (technically, the unpredictable collapse of the wavefunction by another system, e,g., a macroscopic instrument still composed of underlying quantum states) and progress on the proposition of "decoherence".

For non-cosmologists, Part III ain't for sissies but does have some wonderful word pictures, mainly towards the beginning and end, which are extremely worthwhile if one doesn't get too bogged down in the middle with unified quantum field theories and elementary particle physics. Towards the beginning of Part III is a terrific discussion of the curvature(s) of space, and towards the end are many fresh insights on repulsive gravity, the inflation field, dark matter and energy, wrinkles in the cosmic-ray background, etc. The real gem is Greene's description of the inflationary (vs. "standard") Big Bang model, with a great summary of our current understanding - and the potential limitation of our further understanding - of how this universe could have started in the first place. (For the serious student, I would note that Greene's enthusiastic description of how inflation impacts the problem of "fine tuning" is perhaps overstated. One important aspect of fine tuning is greatly relaxed, but there are many others that are not affected.)

I found Part IV (superstring theory) of Greene's book surprisingly easy going, especially re. the extra space dimensions, M-Theory, and Branes. It provides a far superior view of the "big picture" than is found in his earlier, more detailed and technical book on superstrings, "The Elegant Universe" (1999). I should add a note here for those who have not yet read books like The Elegant Universe. While string/M-theory provides a conceptual framework for reconciling quantum mechanics and general relativity (each being, individually, solidly proven theories but which don't work together), and therefore affords in principle some way to mathematically describe the origin and elemental constituents of spacetime, it is still a long, long way from being subject to experimental verification, due both to current inadequacies of the theory and to the lack of experimental equipment to conduct relevant experiments.

Part V, the final chapters, includes a summary of some future experiments that might confirm some of the stranger aspects of the theoretical constructs, some quantum teleportation phenomena (and their unlikelihood of being extended to macroscopic objects), time travel (including Kip Thorne's version of wormholes, which are also unlikely), and a final chapter described next. I particularly enjoyed Greene's introductory discussion of time travel where he explains a resolution of the common apparent paradoxes in a person's traveling backwards in time (e.g. to kill his parents before he was born) using only classical spacetime, i.e., without resorting to any quantum phenomena (pp. 451-455). The final chapter is titled "The Future of an Allusion" and deals with probable future changes to our ideas about spacetime. These concepts are very exotic and pertain to both the macroscopic and microscopic properties of spacetime. An example of the former and, of those presented, Greene's favorite, is one in which our everyday universe is a holographic projection of some surface around us upon which the "real" events are happening. The final pages of the book contain this comment: "...regardless of future discoveries, space and time will continue to frame our individual experience; space and time, as far as everyday life goes, are here to stay. What will continue to change, and likely change drastically, is our understanding of the framework they provide - the arena, that is, of experimental reality. After centuries of thought, we still can only portray space and time as the most familiar of strangers. They unabashedly wend their way through our lives, but adroitly conceal their fundamental makeup from the very perceptions they so fully inform and influence."

I would grade the drawings/illustrations in "The Fabric of The Universe" as top-notch aids to understanding. (I once complained that the drawings in a related general readership book by Stephen Hawking, "The Universe in A Nutshell" (2001), appearing after his best-selling "A Brief History of Time" (1998), were the greatest obstacles to understanding the book!)

Finally, I would note that an interesting step upwards in generalizing Greene's question, "what is reality?", can be found in the three physics chapters (Chapters 4-6) of another excellent (and easier) book, "The Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel (2004). There, the interpretation of many of the phenomena described by Greene is extended to metaphysics - metaphysics no longer being a stranger to science (a major paradigm shift sparked by scientific advances in the last two decades). A critical question in theism, "did the universe have a beginning?", is examined vis-à-vis concepts including Hawking's imaginary-time (no-boundary) proposal, Guth's inflation theory, and oscillating universes. Superb examples are given of "fine tuning" (for which hard data have been produced since the 1980s) and its arguments for "Intelligent Design" vs. multiple universes. (As atheist Nobel Laureate in Physics Stephen Weinberg said at one conference, these are the only two choices.) Instead of simply hypothesizing enough alternate universes (essentially infinite) to offset fine tuning, the dependence of a multiverse on superstring theory and inflationary cosmology is examined, including cyclical universes with Brane collisions.

Martin Fricke, Ph.D.

Del Mar, CA

1/17/2005

46 people found this helpful

Fantastic foray of physics

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2024

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Overall, this is a well-written and extremely accessible book that covers a wide array of concepts in classical and modern physics with great clarity. Dr. Greene's personality and experiences come through in his writing, which adds a unique touch. The section about time travel I felt was underdeveloped and seemed out of place; it wasn't bad, just compared to how excellent most of the book was, it stood out.
Definitely a good read and I recommend it.

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Thadeu Antonio Furtado

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

Reviewed in Brazil on July 2, 2021

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Brian Greene é um dos melhores escritores de divulgação científica em atuação.

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Rajesh Dighe

Well written

Reviewed in India on November 28, 2022

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My dad who is a physicist loved this book. Thanks a lot.

Sandra P.

One of the best books I read on the Universe

Reviewed in Spain on December 13, 2021

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What a wonderfully insightful book about time and the Universe. I couldn't put it down. It was very informative. I like that the author uses a lot of easy to understand examples to make sure the reader tries to visualize difficult concepts. It definitely helped me to grasp some of the toughest subjects. I learned a lot, I highly recommend it to whoever is into physics.

One person found this helpful

Ella

A découvrir .

Reviewed in France on November 30, 2020

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Parfait état .

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Philip M

Thought-provoking and informative, Greene's ability to explain complex theory is unparalleled.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 24, 2019

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I have many books explaining general relativity and string theory – none of which I actually finished. And none of which I actually understood! But Brian Greene’s book is a breath of fresh air. The Financial Times described it as “sending shivers down the spine” – and it did with me.

Greene has a unique ability to lead you by hand through the most complex, mind-bending and bizarre mysteries of our universe – gently and carefully coaxing you through unexpected layers of reality just beneath the surface of our everyday experiences. From dark matter to space warps, quantum mechanics and string wiggles through 11 dimensions, Greene is thought-provoking, highly informed and above all, completely grounded and witty.

Make no mistake; this is an extraordinarily complex subject which even particle physicists are still attempting to understand. So this is not going to be an easy read. But I actually finished it – and now at last I have a fair understanding of the theoretical physics of how space and time came to exist. You might consider reading Greene’s “The Elegant Universe” first - he simply is marvellously talented; these two books offer no better introduction to general relativity and quantum mechanics.

12 people found this helpful

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