BRIAN GREENE: THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS: Space, Time, and the Textures

Synopsis:We are living in what is often referred to as 'the golden age of cosmology'. The study of string theory has led in recent years to fast and furious progress being made towards the discovery of the long-searched-for Theory of Everything. If it comes,this theory will describe a universe very different from that which common sense suggests - a quantum universe in which time and space can be measured only relatively, and nothing is certain. In THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS, Brian Greene shows why, explains how far we have come, amd speculates on how far we still have to go.Review:Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos with its questions about the limits of space and time and the texture of reality certainly looks a bit daunting to the uninitiated. Cosmic ripples, 11 dimensions to the universe and string theory that is somehow connected to a "Theory of Everything" are all a bit alien if you never really got to grips with Newton, let alone Einstein. It might look very heavyweight, but Greene is an excellent communicator and what he's writing about is perhaps the greatest intellectual challenge we face. There is no doubt that speculation about the nature of the heavens is very ancient. After centuries of thought "we still can only portray space and time as the most familiar of strangers". But enormous advances in understanding have been made especially over the last few decades. Whether we are high-flying city slickers or impoverished cattle-herders in the third world, speculation about space-time "takes on an almost mystical quality: we're considering the fate of the very things that dominate our sense of reality" according to Greene.Over the last century we have become much better acquainted with previously hidden features of the Universe, especially thanks to Einstein.Pismo: LatinicaStanje: Vrlo dobroUvez: TvrdiGodina: 2004