Dennis Christie
A perfect book for cosmology enthusiasts. This book has a perfect balance of coarse and detailed explanations, that is, this book is not exactly for laymen but also not for people with physics degrees (well, this is subjective, but you need at least a background knowledge of high school math and physics). It is rare to find a book like this.
It is bold of the author to write a book that will convey the reader, through a logic ladder, one step at a time, from understanding how to determine the age of the Earth, to the mechanism of how our universe starts. Nevertheless, I would say, the author is successful to bring us to the beginning of the universe.
I love the fact that there are some parts of the book (they called it boxes) where the author gave a more detailed explanation. It is up to the reader to read this part or not; you can basically skip it if you are not interested in the greater details, but if you want to understand more about what was described in the main text, it is necessary to read it. Sometimes the author presented a few equations to support the flow of explanation, which I really appreciate.
On top of it, the illustration and the graphs are top-notch. Real photos and real graphs from real data are presented in this book. Moreover, they are there not only for aesthetics, but the author explains them in detail. I was overwhelmed when the author explains how to read the CMB power spectrum (which supports inflation theory and confirms past energy-matter distribution observation) for pages, including boxes; things that are missed in most cosmology books.
One thing to note that confuses me half of the book: the term Big Bang that is used by the author is not the time of ‘creation', but rather the time when photons start to escape the primordial plasma, i.e. when recombination happened. It is actually emphasized in the first chapter, but silly me, I missed that sentence, and find out when I reread the first chapter.
I really enjoy how the author tells us the brief history of the discovery of elementary particles. It was very clear and simple enough for a layman. The illustrations are cute and very intuitive. I love the part when the author starts explaining how the generic particle accelerator works and how the sensing works. It was very descriptive without talking in too much detail. I can also feel the enthusiasm of the author throughout the book.
This book was originally written in Dutch, and it is refreshing to read a book from his point of view as a Dutch. He introduced a lot of Dutch people who had a big influence on discovering the law of physics of elementary particles which was often forgotten by a lot of science books.
It is a fun book. I am always fascinated by numbers; and reading a book, that tells a story about how to create numbers and how to exploit them to tackle more and more complex tasks, for sure excites me like a child getting candies.
I could see if read this in my high school or college life, my mind must be thrilled. However, i read this after a finished all of my engineering degrees, so the book seems very shallow and simple. Some assumptions and reasoning are explained too weak for strong facts that will describe ahead.
Overall, it is an enjoyable book. Would recomend to people who likes math but in the early stage of their education major. Probably my nephews or nieces.
If you're into physics but don't want to be a full-time physicist or study it in college, this book is just right for you. It's like a mix of a fun science book and a serious study guide. The writer makes hard theories easy to understand and shows you the math that explains them. Most simple science books only cover the basics, but sometimes you might want to see the actual math and learn how to read it—without having to solve it yourself.
This book is just what I was looking for. It takes you from understanding how things move to the deep ideas of general relativity. The math helps make everything clearer. But I have to say, towards the end, things get a bit complicated. When it starts talking about Tensors in general relativity, it's pretty tough. The writer is not always consistent with how hard things are. Sometimes they explain really simple math, but other times they expect you to know a little more, like basic calculus.
If math makes you nervous, this book might not be your cup of tea. But overall, I had a great time reading it!
Now I understand why the book is titled in such a way. At first, I thought it was just a catchy title to attract readers. But, by the end of this book, you will understand, why black holes are indeed the key to understanding the Universe.
The author starts from a simple theoretical eternal non-spinning black hole, Schwarzschild's solution of Einstein's General Relativity. This is a bit unusual start (at least for me, a nonphysicist who learn only from popular science book), because I always learn about a black hole from a physical process (the collapse of a star), not a purely theoretical one like Schwarzschild's. But it is intriguing, to learn purely theoretical black holes derived only from Einstein's General Relativity. And, I didn't expect that I would learn the Penrose diagram to understand the infinities of spacetime.
With this book, we will explore the possibilities of the interior of a black hole, starting from Schwarzschild's eternal and non-spinning black hole, Kerr's eternal and spinning black hole, Hawking's non-eternal (radiating) black hole, until the duality of our reality: the Holographic Principle. I can't hold my excitement when the author introduces Quantum Computing with its relationship with the Holographic Principle to simulate our spacetime reality. It is new information for me, and it is mind-blowing.
This book, however, requires you to trust the math behind all the black hole physics and their interpretation. The author did write some equations but it is in the simplest form. There is no detail on the derivation (of course, because this is not a textbook), so we need to trust what the author said. As weird as it may seem, they did the math, experiment, and research more than I did. Hence, I trust them.
Just finished this great book that dives into the details of Galileo's discoveries, and it was exactly what I was looking for. It's not a biography of his entire life, but rather a focused look at a particular period when he made his groundbreaking observations of the heavens and earth.
The author, with a background in cosmology, really understands the significance of Galileo's work and explains it in a way that makes the implications clear. There's a lot of effort put into documenting how people interacted with Galileo, which helps to paint a vivid picture of the context in which he was working.
Although at times the narrative gets a bit crowded with characters, which can overshadow the main events, it's still a great read for anyone interested in learning about Galileo's work and its impact on modern science
Imagine stumbling upon a book that turns the daunting world of abstract mathematics into a playground of ideas. This book is exactly that—a fun journey through complex concepts, presented in such a light and engaging manner that you won't even realize you're learning. he author explains complex ideas in a way that's simple to grasp, so you don't have to work too hard to get it. But sometimes, I feel the explanations are a bit too basic. They could go a little deeper into the topics while still keeping things clear and straightforward.
Review to be written, but i will definitely suggest this to my family member who is number one supporters of untested, unproven, unsafe “alternative” medicines.
What a beautiful book. It feels like i was on a journey to discovering Riemann's work. It is quite a challenging book; it is obviously far from a real text book (math people would probably find this book trivial) but it contains math enough for my brain to process. And i love it! This short review is some kind of form of a burst of excitement, longer review will be written soon.
From understanding why our sun shines until the death of a black hole. The book truly brings you to a journey of our understanding about black holes, a short documentary of humanity, trying to understand one of the most misterious, fascinating objects in the universe; hence, the title of the book: The Brief History of Black Holes.
The author is able to balance the trade-off between simplicity of the concept and complexity of the details. The passages are easy to understand and yet the physics behind are actually not a trivial things to follow. In some chapters, you can feel the excitement of the author through her words; it is contagious and excites me too! I trully enjoyed reading this book.
Only a partial of it (80% of the full book) as the Master course was not covering the whole chapter. But this book is wonderful! full of aesthetic graphs with a detailed explanation! Never in my life have I gotten engaged by a textbook like I am reading a regular non-fiction book. Very recommended for a newcomer who wants to learn the musculoskeletal model of the human body.
A lot of information needs to be processed by my brain while reading this book. First, I am no physicist, but I love being updated on significant discoveries. This book keeps me busy for more than 1 month. I am trying to not rush the reading process as I want to digest all the concepts as much as possible. (I am pretty sure I still miss a lot though).
This book will bring you to the journey to, as the title is, the origin of time. Starting from the Big Bang, the evolution of physical laws, anthropic principles in the multiverse and how Stephen is against that principle (I am on Stephen's side before I read the book, and I am happy to discover that Stephen also shares the same view).
The goal of this book is to inform the reader of his new framework of physics, which bound dynamics, boundary conditions, and observership together into one. In this view, instead of searching for a final theory that describes the law of physics from a bottom-up approach (that is predicting the law of physics in the current time, through the evolutionary process from the beginning of time), he proposes that we should look them from a top-down view (that is tracing the law of physics back in time by our observation). The most remarkable new mindset that he proposes is, inspired by Everett's many world interpretations, our history is somewhat a superposition of multiple histories. We “create” our history by observation.
By this chapter, my brain is already smoking. But then, he continues to explore the concept of the holography principle (especially a duality between quantum mechanics and gravity), to understand the beginning of time itself. That is super interesting, but my mind is already melting. I need to stop reading every 5 or 10 pages, just to digest what is all about.
Anyway, it was an enjoyable journey. Thanks to the author who patiently wrote something that is extremely complicated and high-level concept of physics to be readable by non-physicists like me. Would love to hear more about Stephen's new top-down approach more in the future.
In the other books I read, I always expect explanations about quantum mechanics, but most of the time, I only got the history of the discovery. This one, however, is the other way around, I expect more history than physics, but it turns out more about quantum mechanics interpretation (at least, only until part 3)
What is impressive, I didn't expect I got another (quite recent) description of quantum interpretation: Relational Interpretation. I was drowning in my mind thinking about this new interpretation.
I am not really interested in the last chapter, it is more philosophy than physics itself. I will return to read that last bit when I am interested.
First, there is nothing to do with Dark Matter, I would title the book as Superposition. But, I guess, if the title goes like that, it is a bit spoiler and is not as catchy as Dark Matter.
Second, the real review. I read Recursion first, then Dark Matter, and I would say I like Dark Matter more than Recursion. The two books have a similar theme. A protagonist invents a breakthrough, state-of-the-art machine, that when used, turns into dark outcomes. Dark matter has more technological consistency than Recursion.
What made me engaged in the story is the “thriller” feeling, it permeates throughout the book, and gets more and more intense towards the end. You can feel the desperation of the protagonist and you can't guess how he can solve his problem. To be honest, for me, the problem that is faced by the protagonist is literally impossible to solve, to the point that I still can feel the injustice with the solution at the end.
The author uses our current understanding of quantum mechanics, my favorite interpretation, to reveal the ultimate plot of the book. But, of course, one can't make the actual physics to be the foundation of the story, there are some parts that just don't make any sense, but it goes for the plot's sake. I don't mind since the author wrapped up the story smoothly.
What a journey of humanity. From a contact to an extra-terrestrial intelligence to the end of time. When i finished the book, my world seems so miniscule compared to grand universe introduced by Cixin Liu. All ideas presented in the book are just beyond imagination. Death's end is not your typical science fiction, it pushes what science fiction could be.
One critic: this book has a lot ups and downs. It is not like typical story: building up tension until climax arrives; it is more like a journal, describing grande events, memories of humanity in the universe. Some might don't like this type of story telling, but it is still enjoyable for me. All unimaginable brilliant ideas compansate the downside.
Amazing novel! I can't stop reading this, every time I go home from work, what comes to my mind is just I want to read this book. I didn't read any reviews about this book before I start reading it, and I am lucky I did that.
There is no spectacular dramatic action scene in the story, only problems, bigger problems, and even bigger problems. This book is all about problem-solving, it is about scientists doing scientific things. I really appreciate how Andy Weir tries to describe every problem and an intelligent way to solve it.
A nice summary of the options of how the universe will end. The explanation is easy to read for people who are not physicists like me. Some part of the chapter is really well explained and in-depth, while other chapters seem quite shallow.
The probable solution for Fermi Paradox; this book explores this concept and put it into a thrilling story. When the solution is revealed, this story is turning into “cosmic horror”, and this is really what I felt when I learned the logic derivations.
Well, the scary part is not about the supernatural and the unknowable like Lovecraftian stories, but it is the hopelessness and knowing that there is literally no way out. We are just tiny, powerless, helpless creatures inside the Dark Forest. Possibly there are millions of millions “hunters” scattered within our unlimited size of the universe, hiding, lurking, and ready for total annihilation of our fragile civilization.
While the main idea of the story is super interesting, however, the execution of the story is otherwise. First of all, the book can be shrunk in half (or even less!), there are sooo many “side” stories that don't really add value to the main story. You can literally skip them and the story is unchanged. Second, the story seems so slow; stark contrast with The Three-body Problem which has a very fast pace and dense story. So many up-and-down and it also less “hard-science” than the preceding.
Unpopular opinion, I like The Three-body Problem more than The Dark Forest.
First of all, it is a loop, not a recursion. As a programmer, the definitions of the two words are very different. But, if you use “Loop” as the title, it will be not as catchy as “Recursion”, so, that is okay.
It was starting with a very promising unique non-mainstream sci-fi story. A machine that can record and simulate the memory immersively where you can live and enjoy the moment and full sensory stimulation based on your memory. At the same time, there is a new disease called False Memory Syndrom, as the reader, we will try to guess what is the connection between these two phenomena. The story was very promising, until, somehow, it turns out to be another time-traveling story.
To be fair, Recursion still gives a unique non-mainstream time-traveling story. I define mainstream story as repairing the time paradox or multiverse creation (a very meh story). But Recursion, since the main theme is about memory, introduces a unique concept: a Dead Memory, that everybody can remember a timeline before the user goes back to “memory” (time) and changes the history. It gives fear and nightmare to people because from their perspective, they are living two lives and both memories are as real to each other.
There are several other rules, as this concept will give another implication. At first, I need time to adjust the concept as it never appears in another story. However, after you are used to this concept, the story flows as a usual time-traveling story.
I still enjoy the rest of the story, as the actions and the problem-solving are very intriguing. But I think I can't give more than 4 stars, 3.5 is the max.
One of the most interesting hard scifi world setup! I really love the idea about the struggle of humanity to save the earth from the dying sun. I remembered the first time i know the life cycle of the stars in highschool, i wondered how could humanity do to prevent their extinction. This novel satisfied all of my teenage wandering thoughts.
However, it is very unfortunate it is only a short novel. The author could expand the story even more. Keep the pace slow, so we can explore the unimaginable world.
I got a hard sci-fi book recommendation from Goodreads and another web online. One of my colleagues also recommended this book. At first, I found it difficult to follow. Not about the science, but the unfamiliar background that is introduced in the first few chapters (Chinese Cultural Revolution). But I am glad I continued the book. It will be relevant to one character's background in later chapters.
I love the concept of the story! It is not an action story about a character saving the world, it is really about humans realizing how f*cked up they are. The building up of the problem really intriguing, slowly but sure, the reader will piece together what is actually happening.
The physics described is logical physics (need some background to understand them), not just some purely fantasized technology as the usual “sci-fi” story described. The last few chapters are too far-fetched though, but it is still an area of the unknown for present knowledge.
Very enjoyable! Would love to continue to the next book.
An excellent book! A summarize of the history of cosmology. All of the story flows like a river, you cant stop reading it unless you force yourself to. The scientific explanation is simple and clear, perfect for people who has no background on cosmology.
Simon Singh really knows how to bring the readers to enjoy the journey. He brings you from how human understand earth is round; distance to moon, sun, and stars; earth centered model and sun centered model; newtonian and einsteinian gravity; single galaxy and multi-galaxy universe; and finally steady state model of universe and dynamic evolving model of universe (big bang).
This book is not only about the scientific explanations, it includes the history and the developments of the theory, complete with intense debate between scientists when they defending their models.
I really enjoyed this book, as much as i enjoyed his other book: Fermat's Enigma. Easily put to my favorite shelves and would love to recommend this book to my friends and colleagues.
I was expecting that this book is about the explanation of Fermat's Last Theorem proof. It is not. It is more like the journey of mathematicians through centuries trying to solve this problem.
But to be honest. If this book is all about the proof, I will definitely can't follow. The math must be beyond my limit. So I am grateful the author chooses to put the story this way. I really love to learn the history of math. Things that are missing from my past education background. Would definitely read books like this.
Amazing book! I can't stop reading this book; in every single free time I have, I can't hold myself to opening my kindle and opening this book.
The confusion, the frustration, the anger, the thrill, I can feel all of those feelings when I read this book. In the last 5 chapters, when the point of view changes to a first-person (the author) is really thrilling.
I will definitely recommend this book to my colleagues.
I got recommendation of this book after i read Cixin Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past novel series. For people who love the first book, i believe will appreciate this book. It has eerily resemblance with one of the important plot of The Three Body Problem: the progress of fundamental physic is stuck and physicists are in panic.
Absolutely love this book. The author starts with the great problems of fundamental physics and describe the mystery why we can't find a theory that describe them, we basically stuck and there is no revolutionary progress till now.
Then he goes into details, explaining the leading theory, String Theory. He explains the reason why it still can't describe the nature of our reality. Finally, the last part, he explains the plausible explanation of why this phenomena emerged, which he argued it was because of how our science work.
Some part are quite though, especially the second part, when the author explains String Theory in depth. I am sure I miss some core explanations. Will reread again one day to complete my understanding.