Post by mak2 on Oct 4, 2010 19:18:41 GMT 1
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinov is a relatively slim volume of 200 pages, aimed at the general reader. The publishers seem to have vetoed mathematical equations. There are none at all in the text....this is a good thing or a serious limitation, depending on your feeling about maths.
A few fairly harmless symbols have crept into the cartoons and one of the pictures. ( The illustrations are better than the cartoons.)
The book is partly an orthodox initiation into the mysteries of modern physics....relativity and quantum theory. Then it progresses...... if that is the right word, to M-Theory and cosmology. The second part is fairly speculative, rather than accepted science.
Nevertheless, the book is interesting and well worth reading. Whether you agree with Hawking's philosophising about why there is something rather than nothing, is up to you.
A few fairly harmless symbols have crept into the cartoons and one of the pictures. ( The illustrations are better than the cartoons.)
The book is partly an orthodox initiation into the mysteries of modern physics....relativity and quantum theory. Then it progresses...... if that is the right word, to M-Theory and cosmology. The second part is fairly speculative, rather than accepted science.
Nevertheless, the book is interesting and well worth reading. Whether you agree with Hawking's philosophising about why there is something rather than nothing, is up to you.