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Title: Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything by F. David Peat ISBN: 0-8092-4257-5 Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Books Pub. Date: September, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Introduction!
Comment: I found this book to be an excellent introduction to some fascinating fields in theoretical physics. It is easy to read and was hard for me to put down. I am not a Mathematician or a Physicist but this book has done a lot to pique my interest and motivate me to tackle the Math required for a deeper inquiry into these fascinating subjects. I look forward to reading more books by this author.
Rating: 2
Summary: For neither the scientist or the layman
Comment: As a scientist familiar with quantum theory, but not a physicist, this book was very frustrating to read. I felt satisfied neither as a layman or a physical chemist. The book quoted several key concepts of superstring theory but did not really explain them in a way that I felt gave me more than a very superficial overview of the field. The digression into twistors was made at a point where more space could have fruitfully been spent adding flesh to the concepts presented early in the book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Exposes frontier issues & jargon in particle physics
Comment: This book is non-technical -- it has almost no equations, but is well-illustrated. Just having finished it, I feel it gave a good sense of the major issues involved in this still highly speculative and uncertain field. Readable summary of the state-of-the-art in 1988. Author condescends nicely to the reader: he takes pains to repeat over and over, in slightly varying words, the technical points; this made book wordy; but it was a good strategy since, w/o equations, these esoteric ideas come across vaguely at best. Repetition allows at least "ear knowledge" of the jargon. Please don't expect much more at this level.
Like another reviewer, I was not happy with one-third of the book being devoted to twistors, since these strike this outsider as higher on mathematical elegance than on physical content. I will not fault Peat, however, for doing this since: A) due to his friendship with the Penrose Twistor group he is specially qualified to popularise this subject, and B) the Twistor program, a child of Penrose's brain, is rich in guiding principles, and provides therefore a healthy antidote to the superstrings, which grew up higgeldy-piggeldy by a sequence of "accidental" discoveries -- "It seems to work, but, heck, we don't really know why." Twistors have been less a matter of trial and error. At least they work well for massless particles. (Sidelight: In a blackboard discussion w/ Penrose at Cal Tech that I chanced to overhear about 25 yrs. ago, Feynman told Penrose that no one had succeeded in making massless fields cohere together so as to act like massive fields.)
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Title: The Elegant Universe : Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene ISBN: 0375708111 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Hyperspace : A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension by Michio Kaku ISBN: 0385477058 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 February, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, And the Theory of Everything by John Gribbin ISBN: 0316326143 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Superstrings : A Theory of Everything? by P. C. W. Davies, Julian R. Brown ISBN: 052143775X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 31 July, 1992 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: GOD AND THE NEW PHYSICS by Paul Davies ISBN: 0671528068 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 16 October, 1984 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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