The Hidden Reality, Brian Greene
The Hidden Reality, Brian Greene
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The Hidden Reality
Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

Author: Brian Greene

Narrator: Brian Greene

Unabridged: 24 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/25/2011

Synopsis

There was a time when “universe” meant all there is. Everything. Yet, in recent years discoveries in physics and cosmology have led a number of scientists to conclude that our universe may be one among many. With crystal-clear prose and inspired use of analogy, Brian Greene shows how a range of different “multiverse” proposals emerges from theories developed to explain the most refined observations of both subatomic particles and the dark depths of space: a multiverse in which you have an infinite number of doppelgängers, each reading this sentence in a distant universe; a multiverse comprising a vast ocean of bubble universes, of which ours is but one; a multiverse that endlessly cycles through time, or one that might be hovering millimeters away yet remains invisible; another in which every possibility allowed by quantum physics is brought to life. Or, perhaps strangest of all, a multiverse made purely of mathematics.

Greene, one of our foremost physicists and science writers, takes us on a captivating exploration of these parallel worlds and reveals how much of reality’s true nature may be deeply hidden within them.

About Brian Greene

Not many author bios begin with the author also being an American theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist, but such is the bio for Brian Randolph Greene. He is a full professor in Physics at Columbia University where he has worked on "mirror symmetry" and described the "flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology theory can change at the conifold point".

Greene was born in New York City in 1963 to a Jewish family. His father was a high school drop-out, performed in vaudeville, then became a voice
coach and composer. Greene earned his doctorate at Magdalen College, Oxford University in 1987. He also studied piano while there.

The public knows him through his books: The Elegant Universe, Icarus at the Edge of Time, The Fabric of the Cosmos and The Hidden Reality. For fun, he has appeared on The Big Bang Theory, and has been in the films Frequency and The Last Mimzy. He was also the voice reader of the U.S. version of the preschool television series, Maisy.

Currently, Greene is co-director of Columbia's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics. He joins fellow investigators on a project entitled "Arrow of Time in the Quantum Universe", through a FQXi large grant award.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Alex

So my buddy Ryan introduced me and Jo to his new girlfriend this past weekend and she's a mathematician (who is clearly not very good at it, because Ryan with a girlfriend doesn't add up - ZING!), so I was like "Do you think we're all avatars in a big futuristic game of The Sims?" and her face just......more

Goodreads review by Manny

I've now read three books about the multiverse in rapid succession: the first two were Rees's Before The Beginning (1996) and Davies's The Goldilocks Enigma (2007). This one came out just a few months ago, so I'm hopefully up to date for the moment. Well: I'm starting to feel quite familiar w......more

Goodreads review by Jason

Brian Greene really is one of the best popular science writers. His books give you a real sense of being guided by someone who genuinely knows what they're talking about, who uses metaphors effectively, and who effectively weaves the traditional material in with the new points he is making. He also......more

Goodreads review by Muhammad

নৃতত্ত্ববিদ্যা মতে মানব সভ্যতার জন্ম ২০,০০০-৪৪,০০০ বছর আগে। এই সময়টার ভেতর মানুষ খুব ধীরে ধীরে নতুন নতুন প্রযুক্তির উদ্ভাবন করেছে। মানুষ আগুন জ্বালাতে শিখেছে, হাড় দিয়ে হাতিয়ার তৈরী করেছে, পশুর সাথে হুটোপাটি না করেও স্রেফ বিষ দিয়েই যে অনেক কম ক্লেশে শিকার করে ফেলা যায় তা জেনেছে, পাথুরে গুহার গা......more

Quotes

“If extraterrestrials landed tomorrow and demanded to know what the human mind is capable of accomplishing, we could do worse than to hand them a copy of this book.”
—Timothy Ferris, The New York Times Book Review“Few living writers write so lucidly about such complicated stuff. In

Greene’s prose, cutting-edge cosmology and particle physics become something a plucky and well-rested reader can apprehend. . . Greene might be the best intermediary I’ve found between the sparkling, absolute zero world of mathematics and the warm, clumsy world of human language.”
—Anthony Doerr, Boston Globe
 
“Mr. Greene has a gift for elucidating big ideas . . . Exciting and rewarding . . . [The Hidden Reality] captures and engages the imagination.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
 
“It's impossible to summarize every step of Greene's balletic footwork, by which, like some multi-limbed Asian deity, he dances into being each different theoretical framework that could support multiple universes. . . His arguments are constructed like classical cathedrals, with intricate arches and buttresses that all uphold the central spire. Sometimes you think he's lost in the details of some sculpted gargoyle, only to realize how essential to the whole structure this particular feature is.”
—Paul di Filippo, Barnes and Noble Review
 
“[Greene] leads the general reader on an excursion to the farthest and most mind-bending reaches of speculative physics . . . An exhilarating—if sometimes vertigo-inducing—journey.”
—Alden Mudge, Bookpage
 
“An in-depth yet marvelously accessible look inside the perplexing world of modern theoretical physics and cosmology . . . Greene presents a lucid, intriguing, and triumphantly understandable state-of-the-art look at the universe.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred review)

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