Knocking on Heavens Door, Lisa Randall
Knocking on Heavens Door, Lisa Randall
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Knocking on Heaven's Door
How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World

Author: Lisa Randall

Narrator: Carrington MacDuffie

Unabridged: 14 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/27/2011

Categories: Nonfiction, Science, Physics


Synopsis

The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science.

There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall. The bestselling author of Warped Passages is an expert in both particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest). In Knocking on Heaven's Door, she explores how we decide which scientific questions to study and how we go about answering them. She examines the role of risk, creativity, uncertainty, beauty, and truth in scientific thinking through provocative conversations with leading figures in other fields (such as the chef David Chang, the forecaster Nate Silver, and the screenwriter Scott Derrickson), and she explains with wit and clarity the latest ideas in physics and cosmology. Randall describes the nature and goals of the largest machine ever built: the Large Hadron Collider, the enormous particle accelerator below the border of France and Switzerland—as well as recent ideas underlying cosmology and current dark matter experiments.

The most sweeping and exciting science book in years, Knocking on Heaven's Door makes clear the biggest scientific questions we face and reveals how answering them could ultimately tell us who we are and where we came from.

About Lisa Randall

Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University, where she is Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees. Professor Randall was included in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2007 and was among Esquire magazine's "75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century." Professor Randall's two books, Warped Passages (2005) and Knocking on Heaven's Door (2011) were New York Times bestsellers and 100 Notable Books. Her stand-alone e-book, Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space, was published in 2012.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David on February 27, 2014

Lisa Randall is a theoretical physicist at Harvard University. She is well known for her research in high-energy physics. You can view a video of Jon Stewart interviewing Randall on The Daily Show. She is a very articulate speaker, and her writing is crystal clear. The book is divided into five parts......more

Goodreads review by Andy on August 29, 2018

I found the writing style very off-putting with its chit-chatty name-dropping: I have a third cousin who knows an NBA player named Noah who is tall, and I will use that to talk about scale for the fiftieth time, because tallness is a good example of what scale is not about. ?????????????? If the ide......more

Goodreads review by Kara on June 25, 2012

I love physics. I love that we know so much about physics, and that we still have so much left to learn! I love reading about how far we have come from Ptolemaic ideas of geocentricity to mapping the cosmic microwave background radiation itself. And don’t get me started about the Large Hadron Collid......more

Goodreads review by Todd on March 14, 2012

I’m not sure how this book came about, but it’s the kind of mish-mash that suggests the work of a committee. First, there’s the title Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World, which bears no resemblance to the content of the book. Th......more