rating: **    C    saggistica

Descrizione

"As modern physics has developed a better understanding of how the universe operates at its most fundamental levels, one thing has become increasingly clear: we're damned lucky to be here at all. The laws of physics are precariously balanced, and were the value of one constant slightly different, life as we know it wouldn't exist. To explain the ridiculous improbability of it all, some physicists have turned to the "Anthropic Principle": the universe seems perfectly tailored to us because if it weren't, we wouldn't be here to observe it. The underlying rationale for this argument involves the "landscape" of potential laws of physics (which, it turns out, aren't so immutable after all), a whole bunch of extra dimensions and lots of particle physics. Luckily, Susskind—the father of string theory—does the job right, guiding readers through the current controversy over the Anthropic Principle. Make no mistake: this is the cutting edge of physics as described by one of the sharpest scientific minds around. While the subtitle is a bit misleading (this isn't about intelligent design in the Kansas Board of Education sense, but actually a controversy at once bigger and less prominent), persistent readers will finish this book understanding and caring about contemporary physics in ways both unexpected and gratifying." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"Physicist Susskind is a founder of string theory, and his first popular work will be of utmost significance to science readers. They will be challenged throughout by Susskind's ideas, of which strings are but a part; his driving curiosity is to discover why the laws of physics are what they are and so finely poised to permit life. Susskind discusses how slight alterations of physical values would destroy atoms and, hence, life. Deeming unscientific any proposition of a supernatural agency in setting the physical dials so exactly, Susskind advances a radical concept he calls the "landscape." Valiantly explaining it to his lay audience, Susskind, after introducing the moving parts of his theory (general relativity, quantum mechanics, vacuum energy), compares our universe to a rolling ball on an undulating landscape. Its place of rest equates to our laws of physics. In this extraordinary work, Susskind ushers us to the mind-bending edge of a possible paradigm shift." Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Commenti

Visioni cosmologiche, illusioni teiste e riflessioni epistemologiche sulla scienza contemporanea e sui suoi assi di ricerca, con particolare riguardo all'interpretazione e portata del principio antropico

Keywords

quantum jitters, black hole complementarity, inflating space, eternal inflation, inflating universe, pocket universes, string theorists, universal repulsion, thropic principle, small cosmological, string theory, anthropic reasoning, vacuum energy, compact directions, right slit, quantized orbits, vertex diagram, cosmic horizon, quark theory, proton lifetime, recessional velocity, infinite room, black hole horizon Standard Model, Big Bang, Calabi Yau, General Theory of Relativity, Rube Goldberg, Quantum Electrodynamics, Holographic Principle, Hubble's Law, New York, String Theories, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Quantum Chromodynamics, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Physics Department, Steven Weinberg, Ickthropic Principle, Stephen Hawking, Brer Rabbit, cosmologia, epistemologia, ricerca, scienza,