The Fabric of the Cosmos

I finished Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos. It was very good book, if you are at all interested in cutting edge physics and cosmology presented in a way that a person with little or no physics training can understand (i.e. no math), I highly recommend it. The first ¾ of the book is one of the best surveys of the history of the physics of space and time that I have read. Greene present the issues and questions in a clear an very understandable way, and does so in a historical timeline, such that each new discovery is placed into it context at the time. The result is that you get not only a good ideal of what the current views are, but also how these views were arrived at.

I though particularly interesting were Einstein’s repeated attempt to disprove Quantum Mechanics, which while they ultimately failed, were still an important part of the process in arriving at where we are today.

Also of value were the recent findings. The last such book I read on this subject was in the late 80s. Since there have been a lot of new and sometimes startling findings. For example, in the last book I read one of the big issues was whether or not enough matter would be found to slow the Big Bang so that there could be a collapse. A collapse was a necessary part for theories that the Universe cycles, i.e., that there is a Big Bang and expansion; then at some point the expansion would slow and stop and then being to collapse again until there was another Big Bang and the whole thing would start all over. The startling discoveries has been that not only is the expansion not slowing so that it could collapse, but it is in fact accelerating, which pretty much rules out all hope some future collapse.

The last quarter of the book moves beyond what is fairly well established and more into speculations. For example, he discussion not only the various current competing theories, but also the possibility of teleporters and time machines. This part was interesting, but was not as good as the first part of the book. And some of it, such as his discussions of the issue of freewill were somewhat lacking.

Still overall a very good book