Brian Greene: The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

Brian Greene (born February 9, 1963) is an American theoretical physicist and one of the best-known string theorists. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi-Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point. He has become known to a wider audience through his books for the general public, The Elegant Universe, Icarus at the Edge of Time and The Fabric of the Cosmos, and a related PBS television special. Source: Wikipedia.





Official product description for the book: From the best-selling author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos comes his most expansive and accessible book to date—a book that takes on the grandest question: Is ours the only universe? There was a time when “universe” meant all there is. Everything. Yet, in recent years discoveries in physics and cosmology have led a number of scientists to conclude that our universe may be one among many. With crystal-clear prose and inspired use of analogy, Brian Greene shows how a range of different “multiverse” proposals emerges from theories developed to explain the most refined observations of both subatomic particles and the dark depths of space: a multiverse in which you have an infinite number of doppelgängers, each reading this sentence in a distant universe; a multiverse comprising a vast ocean of bubble universes, of which ours is but one; a multiverse that endlessly cycles through time, or one that might be hovering millimeters away yet remains invisible; another in which every possibility allowed by quantum physics is brought to life. Or, perhaps strangest of all, a multiverse made purely of math. Greene, one of our foremost physicists and science writers, takes us on a captivating exploration of these parallel worlds and reveals how much of reality’s true nature may be deeply hidden within them. And, with his unrivaled ability to make the most challenging of material accessible and entertaining, Greene tackles the core question: How can fundamental science progress if great swaths of reality lie beyond our reach? Sparked by Greene’s trademark wit and precision, The Hidden Reality is at once a far-reaching survey of cutting-edge physics and a remarkable journey to the very edge of reality—a journey grounded firmly in science and limited only by our imagination.

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Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow: The Grand Design

In December of 2010, the Lincoln Journal Star wrote this about the book and authors: "Scientists," in the words of "The Grand Design" authors Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, "have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge." This book is their attempt to give some answers in this quest for knowledge based on recent discoveries and theory. What they are seeking are the laws that govern the universe. Ultimately this knowledge would lead to a unified "theory of everything" that physicists, including Einstein, have sought for years. In the authors' view, this theory of everything is best described by M-theory, which is a model of string theory, basically that all particles are connected by vibrating strings. Read the rest of that review here.

"Voyager 1 Spacecraft Heads For The Outer Limits" from NPR's All Things Considered

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is moving through the very outer boundary of our solar system, and moving into interstellar space. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 accomplished its initial goals of exploring the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, and is continuing to send back interesting data. NPR's Melissa Block talks to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium about the spacecraft and the outer limits of our sun's influence. [...] Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson directs the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He's also author of the book "The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet."

Download the NPR All Things Considered podcast for this show, here. Read the transcript for the show here. See also: Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet, NOVA - Origins, The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Celebrating Carl Sagan And 'Cosmos' from NPR Podcast Science Friday

The television series Cosmos, which first aired 30 years ago this week, made a celebrity of science communicator Carl Sagan. In this archival 1994 Science Friday interview, Sagan discusses his book The Pale Blue Dot and shares his thoughts on manned space exploration.

Download the show here, it's an mp3 file.

The Grand Design of Physics from KERA's Think Podcast

[2010-09-28 12:00:00] Is the search for a unified theory a misguided effort? We'll talk this hour with physicist and science writer Leonard Mlodinow, co-author with Stephen Hawking of the new book "The Grand Design" (Bantam, 2010).

Download the podcast here. See also: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Vintage), Euclid's Window : The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace, Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life

Stephen Hawking's "The Grand Design" from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

Physicist Stephen Hawking and Cal Tech colleague Leonard Mlodinow weigh in on science, the ultimate questions, and God. Their new book is "The Grand Design."

Download the podcast here. The National Post also had this to say, about the book (read that article, here):

Aztecs would tell of the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes, Phoenicians about the Zophashamin, and Jews and Christians about the one true God—Jehovah. But there is one unfortunate group—the children of atheistic materialists—that has no creation myth to call its own. When an inquisitive tyke asks who created the sun, the animals, and mankind, their materialist parents can only tell them to read a book by Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins. But what sort of story are they likely to find? Should they be told, as famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking claims in his recent book The Grand Design that “the universe… create[d] itself from nothing”?

See also: Illustrated Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, New Theories of Everything, The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics