A User's Guide To the Universe 153
alfredw writes "Have you ever wanted to buttonhole a physicist at a cocktail party? Do you have the burning desire to sit down with a professor and ask a laundry list of 'physics' questions about time travel and black holes? Do you want to know more about modern physics, but want to do it with pop culture experiments instead of mathematics? If you answered 'yes' to any of those questions, then you're in the target audience for A User's Guide to the Universe: Surviving the Perils of Black Holes, Time Paradoxes, and Quantum Uncertainty." Keep reading for the rest of alfredw's review.
A User's Guide to the Universe (hereinafter "A User's Guide") is the physicist's answer to Phil Plait's Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End.... What Goldberg and Blomquist have created is a fun, light read about interesting areas of modern physics that will entertain while it educates. The book assumes very little scientific background on the part of the reader. Those with some knowledge (this is Slashdot, after all) will find the explanations of well-known concepts (the double slit experiment, for example) lucid, direct, brief and entertaining.
A User's Guide to the Universe: Surviving the Perils of Black Holes, Time Paradoxes, and Quantum Uncertainty | |
author | Dave Goldberg, Jeff Blomquist |
pages | 304pp |
publisher | Wiley |
rating | 8 |
reviewer | alfredw |
ISBN | 9780470496510 |
summary | A fun, light read about interesting areas of modern physics that will entertain while it educates. |
A User's Guide covers topics like relativity, time travel, the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and alien life. It does so with a very tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, and footnotes that act as the authors' very own peanut gallery. While this humor lightens up what could otherwise be a few dry areas of discussion, the littering of the text with pop-culture references is bound to make the book feel a bit dated in years to come. For now (March 2010), though, A User's Guide is so fresh you might call it ripe.
Unlike Death from the Skies, this book is well illustrated. The pen-and-ink cartoons are omnipresent, and serve to both illustrate the text, and to take every opportunity for a joke (cheap or otherwise) that presents itself. Overall, I felt that the cartoons were a strong addition to the book, as they can provide a needed laugh in a serious section, or can eliminate the proverbial thousand words when describing an experiment or concept.
The chapter on time travel is a stand-out. It presents several "practical" designs for time machines, which use black holes, cosmic strings or wormholes as components. I am an avid reader of pop-sci books, and I found designs that were new to me. The discussion of the Grandfather Paradox (if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, then you were never born and could never have committed murder) and ways around it are very helpful and present a solid physical framework for thinking about these issues. When the Grandfather Paradox is reformulated using pool balls, instead of thinking humans, it becomes clear that the issues are physical and not metaphysical. Also, the authors helpfully include a chart ranking sci-fi shows and movies for their time travel savvy.
You'll also find a strong and entertaining treatment of inflationary cosmology, including discussions of the evidence behind the theory and a look at some consequences. This book avoids both a heavy technical treatment and a historical look at the development of the theory (see, for example, Alan Guth's The Inflationary Universe for that) and instead dives right in to the juiciest parts. This style is well-suited to the reader who wants the funs bits without all of the baggage.
If you're curious about quantum mechanics, the second chapter contains a one of the best introductions in the field. By asking questions like "can we build a Star Trek transporter?" the authors drive a quick and satisfying tour through the weirdness of the microscopic world. This "evil genius hands-on" approach is this book's most important contribution to pop sci literature, and its most endearing feature. You'll start by looking at Star Trek, but end with the mysteries of the double-slit experiment, wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle.
Finally, at the end of the book, the authors helpfully include two sets of references: one to the pop sci literature, and one to the technical literature. Many of the best pop physics books of the past are listed, and the bibliography could serve as useful direction to more depth for the interested.
Overall, A User's Guide accomplishes what it sets out to do. It combines a hands-on, question-driven approach to physics with a tongue-in-cheek, pop-culture-based sense of humor. And then it throws on a layer of great cartoons to make the entire package something that most science books aren't: enjoyable. This book is fine, and you may well learn something in the process.
You can purchase A User's Guide to the Universe: Surviving the Perils of Black Holes, Time Paradoxes, and Quantum Uncertainty from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Re:Cosmos! (Score:3, Insightful)
>>but damn if that isn't the *most* inspiring show about the universe I have ever seen! Immediately after watching it I couldn't stop thinking about space travel. I haven't read an actual book for about 8 years
No offense, but I think these two things might be correlated. Books are so much better than TV... I tried watching Cosmos on Netflix, and it's just not that good. Poor video quality, content is Sagan's trademarked breathy high level wankery, etc. There's a lot of better stuff out there these days. In books. I've been reading The Fabric of the Cosmos by Greene, Physics of the Impossible (by the same guy that does the show on Science, Kaiko), but I'd really recommend Physics for the Rest of Us by Jones. It sounds like a For Dummies book, but it actually digs pretty deep into the structure of reality and the philosophical implications of science.
Again, not meaning to be a dick - I just think that Sagan is vastly overrated, and couldn't imagine going 8 years without reading a book.
That's fine. I knew I'd get people scoffing at my lack of reading - plenty of people do. I'm a smart guy and it blows people away that I don't read books, but its just how I work. I read all kinds of other things - like learning about programming and electronics from the web. In the past year I've taught myself c# programming (yes, programmers, I'm sure you all know a better language and blah blah... it works for stuff i do with it - mainly GUIs for robot control) and PCB design. I already know machining and embedded programming, so I've got a really good core set of skills for robotics, which is my real passion. I prefer learning practical things mostly, which I do best hands-on. That means I don't read much, because normally I am just too busy working on things to sit down and read. And I do study a great deal of stuff online for these projects, so its not like I don't take in new info. Still, I find learning about astrophysics astonishing, and lately my brain has been on such overload from all my projects, its nice to be able to zone out and read a book - though even that is hard... while reading I'll find myself thinking about other things still, and not really processing what I'm reading!
So basically, reading is cool, and everyone who reads always tells me its better, and they're probably right, i wouldn't really argue against it, but I'm still perfectly happy not reading much. And i know you're not trying to be a dick, and I'm not either when I say "I know, I've heard it many times before".
-Taylor
Re:Err I don't think that's correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, that worldview, yeah, it isn't perfect. It's not complete bullshit because the sun will rise tomorrow and a thrown rock still comes back down to earth. But it's not perfect. This little bit here with photons, yeah, you're getting it wrong.
So you're going to have to do a few things to avoid being a hard-headed imbecile:
a) Accept that you don't know how this portion of the world works, for now.
b) Learn how it does work from people smarter then you.
c) Update your worldview to incorperate what you've learned.
Re:its interesting they need to write books like t (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand particle physics appears to have stagnated the past couple decades
Maybe that's why they built the Large Hadron Collider?
Re:Good thing we have you! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, you DO know that the same was true at every point in history, right?
30 years ago, the then current theories were quite simply, the most accurate and comprehensive theories mankind had ever developed. Ditto 60 years ago. And 100. And 1000. And....