“A compelling, enjoyable, and widely accessible exploration of one of the most fundamental scientific issues of our age” (Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe).
In The Hole in the Universe, an award-winning science writer “provides an illuminating slant on physics and mathematics by exploring the concept of nothing” (Scientific American).
Welcome to the world of cutting-edge math, physics, and neuroscience, where the search for the ultimate vacuum, the point of nothingness, the ground zero of theory, has rendered the universe deep, rich, and juicy. Every time scientists and mathematicians think they have reached the ultimate void, something new appears: a black hole, an undulating string, an additional dimension of space or time, repulsive anti-gravity, universes that breed like bunnies. Cole’s exploration at the edge of everything is “as playfully entertaining as it is informative” (San Jose Mercury News).
“A strong and sometimes mind-blowing introduction to the edges of modern physics.” —Salon.com
“Comprising an expansive set of topics from the history of numbers to string theory, the big bang, even Zen, the book’s chapters are broken into bite-sized portions that allow the author to revel in the puns and awkwardness that comes with trying to describe a concept that no one has fully grasped. It is an amorphous, flowing, mind-bending discussion, written in rich, graceful prose. As clear and accessible as Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, this work deserves wide circulation, not just among science buffs.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Here we have the definitive book about nothing, and who would think that nothing could be so interesting . . . not only accessible but compelling reading.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Amazon.com Review
Most of science journalist K.C. Cole's journey into nothing is about
physical nothing. "In the quantum realm, even nothing never sleeps. Nothing is always up to something. Even when there is absolutely nothing going on, and nothing there to do it."
The nothingness of the vacuum is the background to space and time. Cole shows how physicists' ideas about time, space, and reality flow out of their ideas about nothing, whether vacuum or ether. She writes with a half-smile and a glint of humor in her eye, colliding metaphors like particles at Fermilab:
.... Both space and time, individually, are as elastic as bungee cords. It was a further step, still, to see that the fabric of spacetime itself could warp under the influence of matter like hot asphalt under the tires of a heavy truck.... And then, the last straw: Not only could spacetime bend under the influence of matter, it could take matter into its own hands.
Cole's book makes a wry, witty complement to Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. It's an exploration of string theory (among other things) that will leave your brain only lightly tied up in knots. Or in nots. After all, as Cole writes:
Nothing may be the single most prolific idea ever to plop into the human brain.... Understanding nothing matters, because nothing is the all-important background upon which everything else happens.
--Mary Ellen Curtin
--This text refers to an alternate
kindle_edition edition.
The vacuum is attracting physicists' attention lately. Henning Genz had a lot to say about it in
Nothingness (1999), and now
Los Angeles Times science writer Cole ventures upon the void, fortunately with a sensitivity well pitched to the level of complexity average readers can absorb. She explains that absence of stuff doesn't define a vacuum, since "empty" space is filled with fields--evanescent particle pairs that flash in and out of existence--and, further, that space-time itself is "something." But space-time, too, can vanish into a black hole or into the extra dimensions of the faddish postulations of string theory and membrane theory. Cole regularly reassures us that the theory-bred conjectural properties of nothingness she describes seem weird to her, too, and at the same time she clearly conveys why they thrill physicists: they could account for why the big bang began or why physical constants have the values they have (e.g., gravity may be weak because it "leaks" into other dimensions). An enthusiastic, companionable guide to the inner limits of the universe.
Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate
kindle_edition edition.
Review
PRAISE FOR THE HOLE IN THE UNIVERSE
As clear and accessible as Hawking's A Brief History of Time, this work deserves wide circulation, not just among science buffs."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Cole has plenty of experience making the most abstruse theories intelligible to
the lay reader. . . . A clever and readable investigation."-New York Post
--This text refers to an alternate
kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
K. C. Cole is a science columnist for the Los Angeles Times and teaches at UCLA. The award-winning author of the international bestselling The Universe and the Teacup and First You Build a Cloud, she lives in Santa Monica, California.
--This text refers to an alternate
kindle_edition edition.
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