- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books (9 Feb 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 046503828X
- ISBN-13: 978-0465038282
- Product Dimensions: 25.4 x 17 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,208,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"I started reading, and cliche though it be I couldn't stop... A Different Universe should be required reading for physics researchers, teachers and students..." New Scientist "An important, brain-tickling new book.' New York Times"
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Why everything we think about fundamental physical laws needs to change, and why the greatest mysteries of physics are not at the ends of the universe but as close as the nearest ice cube or grain of salt Not since Richard Feynman has a Nobel Prize-winning physicist written with as much panache as Robert Laughlin does in this revelatory and essential book. Laughlin proposes nothing less than a new way of understanding fundamental laws of science. In this age of superstring theories and Big-Bang cosmology, we're used to thinking of the unknown as being impossibly distant from our everyday lives. But we haven't reached the end of science, Laughlin argues - only the end of reductionist thinking. If we consider the world of emergent properties instead, suddenly the deepest mysteries are as close as the nearest ice cube or grain of salt. And he goes farther: the most fundamental laws of physics - such as Newton's laws of motion and quantum mechanics - are in fact emergent. They are properties of large assemblages of matter, and when their exactness is examined too closely, it vanishes into nothing. A Different Universe takes us into a universe where the vacuum of space has to be considered a kind of solid matter, where sound has quantized particles just like those of light, where there are many phases of matter, not just three, and where metal resembles a liquid while superfluid helium is more like a solid. It is a universe teeming with natural phenomena still to be discovered. This is a truly mind-altering book that shows readers a surprising, exquisitely beautiful and mysterious new world.
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First Sentence
MANY YEARS AGO, WHEN I WAS LIVING NEAR NEW YORK, I attended a retrospective of Ansel Adams, the great nature photographer, at the Museum of Modern Art. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
MANY YEARS AGO, WHEN I WAS LIVING NEAR NEW YORK, I attended a retrospective of Ansel Adams, the great nature photographer, at the Museum of Modern Art. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 42 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I really wanted to like this book. I admire the author's achievements and am very interested in the topic of emergence. But I'm afraid the book is quite poorly written. There is far too much in the way of irrelevant personal anecdotes, including one whole chapter of them (14). The attempts at humour fall completely flat. And when the author does get to talk about emergence, there is little or no connection with what has gone before. Definitely one to avoid I'm afraid.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'A Different Universe' really is a complete waste of time.
Most of the anecdotes are dull. The book has no direction,
and you can find all of the 'science' and more in the
three and a half page article:
Laughlin and Pines, PNAS vol. 97 pp.28-31 (2000)
Most of the anecdotes are dull. The book has no direction,
and you can find all of the 'science' and more in the
three and a half page article:
Laughlin and Pines, PNAS vol. 97 pp.28-31 (2000)
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Like one of the other reviewers I was very much looking forward to reading this book. Given that the author is a Nobel prize winning physicist I thought it was quite possible that it would have something to say as to 'why everything we think about fundamental physical laws needs to change'. Unfortunately Professor Luaghlin seems to think he is the Kurt Vonnegut of popular science writing and even more bizarrely seems to think his readers might be interested in learning a bit more about Professor Laughlin along the way.
No thanks.
This book really is a stinker.
So it goes!
No thanks.
This book really is a stinker.
So it goes!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Fascinating Ideas Drowned by Platitudes
The author presents several aspects of the so-called "emergence" - the self-organized occurence of "new" laws if as system exceeds a certain degree of complexity. Read more
Published on 11 Mar 2009 by Michael Schmid
Different and Fascinating
This book is a surprise in the way it is written but I find it good in a fascinating way. I think that this is how popular science books should be written. Read more
Published on 16 Aug 2008 by Milan Novkovic
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