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The Infinity Puzzle
- Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's summary
The second half of the 20th century witnessed a scientific gold rush as physicists raced to chart the inner workings of the atom. The stakes were high, the questions were big, and there were Nobel Prizes and everlasting glory to be won. Many mysteries of the atom came unraveled, but one remained intractable: what Frank Close calls the "Infinity Puzzle".
The problem was simple to describe. Although clearly very powerful, quantum field theory - the great achievement of the 1930s - was making one utterly ridiculous prediction: that certain events had an infinite probability of occurring. The solution is known as renormalization, which enables theory to match what we see in the real world. It has been a powerful approach, conquering three of the four fundamental forces of nature, and giving rise to the concept of the Higgs boson, the now much-sought particle that may be what gives structure to the universe.
The Infinity Puzzle charts the birth and life of the idea, and the scientists, both household names and unsung heroes, who realized it. Based on numerous firsthand interviews and extensive research, the book captures an era of great mystery and greater discovery. Even if the Higgs boson is never found, renormalization - the pursuit of an orderly universe - has led to one of the richest and most productive intellectual periods in human history. With a physicist's expertise and a historian's care, Close describes the personalities and the competition, the dead ends and the sudden insights, in a story that will reverberate through the ages.
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- The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time-and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything
- By: George Musser
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally stop to ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time. The phenomenon - the ability of one particle to affect another instantly across the vastness of space - appears to be almost magical.
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Rambling but Asks Good Questions
- By Michael on 12-19-15
By: George Musser
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Our Mathematical Universe
- My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality
- By: Max Tegmark
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy, and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist.
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Wow!
- By Michael on 02-02-14
By: Max Tegmark
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Einstein's Cosmos
- How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time: Great Discoveries
- By: Michio Kaku
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A dazzling tour of the universe as Einstein saw it. How did Albert Einstein come up with the theories that changed the way we look at the world? By thinking in pictures. Michio Kaku, leading theoretical physicist (a cofounder of string theory) and best-selling science storyteller, shows how Einstein used seemingly simple images to lead a revolution in science. With originality and expertise, Kaku uncovers the surprising beauty that lies at the heart of Einstein's cosmos
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Mix of science and the man
- By B. Ruple on 11-03-13
By: Michio Kaku
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Quantum Enigma
- Physics Encounters Consciousness
- By: Bruce Rosenblum, Fred Kuttner
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics, the most successful theory in science and the basis of one-third of our economy. They found, to their embarrassment, that with their theory, physics encounters consciousness. Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all this in nontechnical terms with help from some fanciful stories and anecdotes about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, emphasizing what is and what is not speculation.
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Wow. Very Informative and mind boggling.
- By Kevin Harper, Realtor on 08-11-17
By: Bruce Rosenblum, and others
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Warped Passages
- Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
- By: Lisa Randall
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Warped Passages is an altogether exhilarating journey that tracks the arc of discovery from early 20th-century physics to the razor's edge of modern scientific theory. One of the world's leading theoretical physicists, Lisa Randall provides astonishing scientific possibilities that, until recently, were restricted to the realm of science fiction. Unraveling the twisted threads of the most current debates on relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity, she explores some of the most fundamental questions posed by Nature.
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Physics textbook without the math
- By Victor on 05-13-18
By: Lisa Randall
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Significant Figures
- The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians
- By: Ian Stewart
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In Significant Figures, acclaimed mathematician Ian Stewart introduces the visionaries of mathematics throughout history. Delving into the lives of twenty-five great mathematicians, Stewart examines the roles they played in creating, inventing, and discovering the mathematics we use today. Through these short biographies, we get acquainted with the history of mathematics.
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Beware
- By Anton Kurtz on 12-08-18
By: Ian Stewart
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Euclid's Window
- The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace
- By: Leonard Mlodinow
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Through Euclid's Window Leonard Mlodinow brilliantly and delightfully leads us on a journey through five revolutions in geometry, from the Greek concept of parallel lines to the latest notions of hyperspace. Here is an altogether new, refreshing, alternative history of math revealing how simple questions anyone might ask about space -- in the living room or in some other galaxy -- have been the hidden engine of the highest achievements in science and technology.
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Wow!
- By Eric on 08-13-10
By: Leonard Mlodinow
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The Cosmic Cocktail
- Three Parts Dark Matter
- By: Katherine Freese
- Narrated by: Tamara Marston
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The ordinary atoms that make up the known universe - from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars - constitute only 5 percent of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The rest is known as dark matter and dark energy, because their precise identities are unknown. The Cosmic Cocktail is the inside story of the epic quest to solve one of the most compelling enigmas of modern science - what is the universe made of? - told by one of today’s foremost pioneers in the study of dark matter.
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I was looking for a book about science....
- By Jeff on 03-27-15
By: Katherine Freese
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Paradox
- The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics
- By: Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, scientists have come up with theories and ideas that just don't seem to make sense. These we call paradoxes. The paradoxes Al-Khalili offers are drawn chiefly from physics and astronomy and represent those that have stumped some of the finest minds. With elegant explanations that bring the listener inside the mind of those who've developed them, Al-Khalili helps us to see that, in fact, paradoxes can be solved if seen from the right angle.
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Almost Useless
- By Michael on 06-19-19
By: Jim Al-Khalili
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How the Hippies Saved Physics
- Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival
- By: David Kaiser
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In the 1970s, amid severe cutbacks in physics funding, a small group of underemployed physicists in Berkeley decided to throw off the constraints of academia and explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” they pursued a freewheeling, speculative approach to physics. Some dabbled with LSD while conducting experiments. They studied quantum theory alongside Eastern mysticism and psychic mind reading, discussing the latest developments while lounging in hot tubs.
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Finally, I understand entanglement
- By Gary on 05-27-12
By: David Kaiser
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Interesting but not Convincing
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Physics textbook without the math
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Quite nice
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Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
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In Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin provides an accessible overview of the attempts to build a final "theory of everything." He explains in simple terms what scientists are talking about when they say the world is made from exotic entities such as loops, strings, and black holes and tells the fascinating stories behind these discoveries: the rivalries, epiphanies, and intrigues he witnessed firsthand.
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Physics still in trouble
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Quantum Entanglement
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Quantum physics is notable for its brazen defiance of common sense. (Think of Schrödinger's Cat, famously both dead and alive.) An especially rigorous form of quantum contradiction occurs in experiments with entangled particles. Our common assumption is that objects have properties whether or not anyone is observing them, and the measurement of one can't affect the other. Quantum entanglement rejects this assumption, offering impeccable reasoning and irrefutable evidence of the opposite. Is quantum entanglement mystical, or just mystifying?
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gappy and devoid of rigor
- By Anonymous User on 05-03-20
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This short, smart book tells you everything you need to know about "nothing". What remains when you take all the matter away? Can empty space - "nothing" - exist? To answer these questions, eminent scientist Frank Close takes us on a lively and accessible journey that ranges from ancient ideas and cultural superstitions to the frontiers of current research, illuminating the story of how scientists have explored the void and the rich discoveries they have made there.
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Understood by an average person.
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Quantum Space
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Today we are blessed with two extraordinarily successful theories of physics. The first is Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes the large-scale behavior of matter in a curved spacetime. The second is quantum mechanics. This theory describes the properties and behavior of matter and radiation at their smallest scales.
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Interesting but not Convincing
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Warped Passages
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Warped Passages is an altogether exhilarating journey that tracks the arc of discovery from early 20th-century physics to the razor's edge of modern scientific theory. One of the world's leading theoretical physicists, Lisa Randall provides astonishing scientific possibilities that, until recently, were restricted to the realm of science fiction. Unraveling the twisted threads of the most current debates on relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity, she explores some of the most fundamental questions posed by Nature.
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Physics textbook without the math
- By Victor on 05-13-18
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The Age of Entanglement
- When Quantum Physics was Reborn
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A brilliantly original and richly illuminating exploration of entanglement, the seemingly telepathic communication between two separated particles - one of the fundamental concepts of quantum physics.
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Quite nice
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Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
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In Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin provides an accessible overview of the attempts to build a final "theory of everything." He explains in simple terms what scientists are talking about when they say the world is made from exotic entities such as loops, strings, and black holes and tells the fascinating stories behind these discoveries: the rivalries, epiphanies, and intrigues he witnessed firsthand.
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Physics still in trouble
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Quantum Entanglement
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Quantum physics is notable for its brazen defiance of common sense. (Think of Schrödinger's Cat, famously both dead and alive.) An especially rigorous form of quantum contradiction occurs in experiments with entangled particles. Our common assumption is that objects have properties whether or not anyone is observing them, and the measurement of one can't affect the other. Quantum entanglement rejects this assumption, offering impeccable reasoning and irrefutable evidence of the opposite. Is quantum entanglement mystical, or just mystifying?
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gappy and devoid of rigor
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Nothing
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This short, smart book tells you everything you need to know about "nothing". What remains when you take all the matter away? Can empty space - "nothing" - exist? To answer these questions, eminent scientist Frank Close takes us on a lively and accessible journey that ranges from ancient ideas and cultural superstitions to the frontiers of current research, illuminating the story of how scientists have explored the void and the rich discoveries they have made there.
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Understood by an average person.
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The Universe in the Rearview Mirror
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A physicist speeds across space, time, and everything in between showing that our elegant universe from the Higgs boson to antimatter to the most massive group of galaxies is shaped by hidden symmetries that have driven all our recent discoveries about the universe and all the ones to come. Why is the sky dark at night? Is it possible to build a shrink-ray gun? If there is antimatter, can there be antipeople? Why are past, present, and future our only options? Are time and space like a butterfly's wings? No one but Dave Goldberg, the coolest nerd physicist on the planet, could give a hyper-drive tour of the universe like this one.
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Good, but for whom?
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An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means - and what it doesn't. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience.
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A difficult listen
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In Calculating the Cosmos, Ian Stewart presents an exhilarating guide to the cosmos, from our solar system to the entire universe. He describes the architecture of space and time, dark matter and dark energy, how galaxies form, why stars implode, how everything began, and how it's all going to end. He considers parallel universes, the fine-tuning of the cosmos for life, what forms extraterrestrial life might take, and the likelihood of life on Earth being snuffed out by an asteroid.
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Crank alert: rejects modern cosmology
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Throughout history, scientists have come up with theories and ideas that just don't seem to make sense. These we call paradoxes. The paradoxes Al-Khalili offers are drawn chiefly from physics and astronomy and represent those that have stumped some of the finest minds. With elegant explanations that bring the listener inside the mind of those who've developed them, Al-Khalili helps us to see that, in fact, paradoxes can be solved if seen from the right angle.
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Almost Useless
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From Eternity to Here
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Time moves forward, not backward---everyone knows you can't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today's hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointing resolutely from the past to the future, owes its existence to conditions before the Big Bang itself---a period of modern cosmology of which Einstein never dreamed.
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Great Book For Cosmology Lovers
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The Particle at the End of the Universe
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Scientists have just announced an historic discovery on a par with the splitting of the atom: The Higgs boson, the key to understanding why mass exists has been found. In The Particle at the End of the Universe, Caltech physicist and acclaimed writer Sean Carroll takes readers behind the scenes of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to meet the scientists and explain this landmark event.
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A History of Modern Particle Physics
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Our understanding of nature's deepest reality has changed radically, but almost without our noticing, over the past 25 years. Transcending the clash of older ideas about matter and space, acclaimed physicist Frank Wilczek explains a remarkable new discovery: matter is built from almost weightless units, and pure energy is the ultimate source of mass. He calls it "The Lightness of Being." Space is no mere container, empty and passive. It is a dynamic Grid, modern ether, and its spontaneous activity creates and destroys particles.
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WHY is he WHISPERING???
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The Elephant in the Universe
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In The Elephant in the Universe, Govert Schilling explores the fascinating history of the search for dark matter. Evidence for its existence comes from a wealth of astronomical observations. Theories and computer simulations of the evolution of the universe are also suggestive: they can be reconciled with astronomical measurements only if dark matter is a dominant component of nature.
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the astronomers
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Rules of the quantum world seem to say that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time and a particle can be in two places at once. And that particle is also a wave; everything in the quantum world can described in terms of waves - or entirely in terms of particles. These interpretations were all established by the end of the 1920s, by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and others. But no one has yet come up with a common sense explanation of what is going on.
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Captures difficult concepts with tongue in cheek
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Black holes, predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity more than a century ago, have long intrigued scientists and the public with their bizarre and fantastical properties. Although Einstein understood that black holes were mathematical solutions to his equations, he never accepted their physical reality - a viewpoint many shared. After introducing the basics of the special and general theories of relativity, this book describes black holes both as astrophysical objects and theoretical "laboratories".
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Great read/listen
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Ripples in Spacetime
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Ripples in Spacetime is an engaging account of the international effort to complete Einstein's project, capture his elusive ripples, and launch an era of gravitational-wave astronomy that promises to explain, more vividly than ever before, our universe's structure and origin. The quest for gravitational waves involved years of risky research and many personal and professional struggles that threatened to derail one of the world's largest scientific endeavors.
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Absolutely Loved it.
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Just Six Numbers
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There are deep connections between stars and atoms, between the cosmos and the microworld. Just six numbers, imprinted in the "Big Bang", determine the essential features of our entire physical world. Moreover, cosmic evolution is astonishingly sensitive to the values of these numbers. If any one of them were "untuned", there could be no stars and no life. This realization offers a radically new perspective on our universe, our place in it, and the nature of physical laws.
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Old Fine-Tuning Book
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What listeners say about The Infinity Puzzle
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael
- 07-06-12
The other side of Science
The Infinity Puzzle is about science, but much more about the politics, personalities, and history of science, and only a little about the theory and technology of science. This is largely an analysis of history associated with the theories of renormalization and the Higgs boson. This book seems intended for an audience consisting mainly of those who will decide who should get the next few Nobel prizes. This was not uninteresting, but was not at all what I expected. It is illuminating to see the minutia of who said what to whom and when. No matter how many people are involved with the development of a theory, only three may be included for a single Nobel prize. Scientist, as a theory develops, sometimes years before any Nobel will be awarded, begin to subtlety position themselves for consideration for those three spots. There was not very much about the details of renormalization or the Higgs field. This was interesting but not my favorite cup of tea.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Teeg
- 10-22-24
Physics, with the drama of an Opera
Professor Close clearly explains how quantum physics, in its quest for answers about the the universe, is at its foundation a story about questions and personalities. At the most advanced levels of professional study, the competition for publication and prizes takes on collaboration, conflict, and at times ego struggles that are similar to those found in the most compelling operas. All this, and then, as often happens, politics "makes or breaks" scientific advancements. Professor Close wrote this shortly before the existence of the Higgs Boson particle was experimentally proven, decades after Peter Higgs theoretically identified the existence of the fundamental particle.
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- Diane Walter
- 06-02-17
Terrific overview of QED, QCD, and QFD
Oxford physicist Frank Close carefully traces the advance of our understanding of matter and the forces they feel, from the ideas of Newton to the development of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He describes in clear language the problems arising in the accepted physical models and how they were solved. He deftly explains complex ideas using easy to understand analogies. I've listened to several books that delve into these topics, and I think Close has done the best job of clarifying, at least for me, the bewildering concepts behind symmetry breaking, and gauge invariance. I thought this book was fascinating and I recommend it very highly to young physicists or oldsters like me who are interested in finding out more about the cosmos.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-09-12
read this only if you know the history
If you could sum up The Infinity Puzzle in three words, what would they be?
I would recommend this first and formost to journalists. It delves in to the politics of the nobel almost as much as the science. It may be hard to follow without prior reading. "The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Reborn" really is the best source on audible. It is long but complete.
Overall I really liked this book as it filled in parts of the story from another person's perspective, sometimes firsthand.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Infinity Puzzle?
"Feynman cut in: “When I invented all this 25 years ago ." awesome.
Which character – as performed by Jonathan Cowley – was your favorite?
huh?
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
who writes these questions?
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle me this:
- 05-30-14
Excellent
Any additional comments?
Listened to it on audio -very good - starting to understand the whole attempt to join the very large with the very small, including quantum gravity, and the "perturbatively non-renormalizable" (or asymtoptically unsafe) infinities involved.
I am re-reading it on Kindle, bits at a time, to try to understand and retain it better.
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- MrNickA
- 04-20-17
A bit slow for my tastes
After finishing "The Big Picture" by Sean Carroll, I was left wanting a better understanding of QFT so I went looking for a good book on the subject. Weinberg's 3 volume set is apparently the de facto standard, but I wasn't able to find an audio version. This was one of the few titles on QFT here on audible and was well reviewed by other listeners. It's on me that I was surprised to find that this is not a book of explanation through analogy and investigation of mathematics or experiment, but rather a scientific history. I found it boring overall, and a bit of a slog to get through due to the pace and content. It was more interesting to me from chapter 20 on, but overall, I feel I could have completely skipped this title.
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- Fred271
- 02-05-23
An informed view of an important period in physics
Frank Close, as a particle physicist who was starting his career when the Standard Model was beginning to come together, is an ideal choice to write about how things happened at the time. He's done the legwork and reports in an honest and objective way, doing his best to bring non-physicists along with him. It's solid work, written before the Higgs was discovered, though whether it's for you depends partly on how interested you are in the field of physics as a profession, and issues such as priority and who deserved a Nobel Prize.
One caveat. While Close's discussions of the scientific material are excellent, it isn't possible to really explain these ideas without getting more technical, and, in particular, using equations. If you didn't already know something about renormalization and effective field theories, or about gauge theory, the book isn't in a position to give you more than a general idea. Nor is it really the point of the book.
Jonathan Crowley was probably not the right choice to narrate this, since it doesn't suit his style, and he's unfamiliar with some of the vocabulary and tries to wing it. He mispronounces "boson," which comes up a lot, and "meson," and spells out SLAC every time he says it, rather than saying it as "slack," as is standard. He's plainly guessing about the pronunciation of Gerard 't Hooft's name, though there are online references that would clear it up. Rather embarrassingly, he refers to "Tiny" Veltman. (Veltman's first name is Martinus, and Tini is a nickname,) It's always odd anyway to hear an actor standing in for a scientist in a first-person account, and Crowley's somewhat leaden performance isn't remotely plausible at that level.
On the other hand, the narration does have the virtue that it presents the material plainly and directly, without trying to punch up the material as many readers of nonfiction do. The mispronunciations are a little annoying, but there's never any confusion about what Crowley's referring to. And he does get points for getting the name "Göteborg" about right. (For some reason Close uses the native Swedish name for the city most of the way through, though he calls it by its English name, Gothenburg, at one point. It's like using the name Roma in some places and Rome in others.)
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- Ken
- 11-20-12
Get the WhisperSync version
I listen to books while doing other things that are generally boring or repetitive (think lawn mowing or leaf raking), but no task is completely mindless, so I found this one tough going in those few sections where graphs that I could not see were being described. There were many times when I would have preferred to actually read this book, or re-read certain sections, and I wish I had known about the WhisperSync system that allows one to switch modes in the Kindle version. I would definitely have bought it in that format. Otherwise my only real complaint is that the book was a bit lighter on the science than I expected. Like many of my favorite science books, this one reviews a lot of the history of the process of discovery, but I wish Close had tilted a bit more in the direction of the actual research and theory, perhaps by writing a longer book so as not to give up the interesting contextual material.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Peaceful Cyborg
- 10-11-17
Well-crafted quantum journey
Mental adventure that provides atomic context and cognitive sustenance. Read nicely. Writing ambiance is pleasant, complex, neighborly.
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- Tracy L. C. Popey
- 10-29-24
Wonderful summary of the development of quantum mechanics theory
This is a great review of the personalities and theories that went into developing quantum mechanics. The combination of genius and luck is astounding. Valuable history for anyone with an interest in science.
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