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Title: Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimens ion
ISBN: 0385477058
Author:
Michio Kaku
Publicate Date: 1995-02-01
Publish: 1995-02-01
List Price: $15.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $6.77
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.43
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.85
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Good for lay people
The book is a good introduction to hypersapce,parallel universes, supergravity, string theory and every other physics theory difficult to understand for the lay person. Dr. Kaku interests the reader to a new world of possibilities.
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2: A good read, albeit a bit dated and rambling....
Now almost 15 years old, this book is still an interesting read. An entertaining and well written introductory tour of superstrings and the quest for unification, with a little essential history of the evolution of physics and mathematics thrown in. (Mathematics is, after all, the language of physics, of which every modern student of physics is well aware.) It will take about the first 100 pages to get the experienced physics reader interested, and then it's a quick dash to the finish. Much of the text is on the speculative level, and there is a fair amount of redundancy. (Kaku repeats himself a lot, to the point of being periodically annoying.) One thing I found glaringly missing from the religious "logic" discussion was mention of either Rene Descartes or Blaise Pascal.
One amusing consequence of the "beauty" and "no empirical evidence" discussion concerning higher dimensional superstring theory is that these are precisely the arguments used by many theologists and lay religious adherents alike to justify the existence of God, as well as their faith. This suggests that modern (quantum) physics is in danger of becoming more religion then science, and its practitioners of becoming more a priesthood than a scientific community. But then this has happened before in physics - at least until the "test of time" transfigures faith into fact.
I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5 because of the redundancies, typos or misspellings that seem to occur every 20 pages or so.
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3: good read-non-genius friendly.
good book. explains details in a way that laymen can comprehend. i never took any physics- but i was capable of understaning dr. kakus book. he is well spoken and well versed in the modern beliefs of theoretical science.
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4: Postmodernism in physics
I really enjoyed this book when I was fresh out of high school. However, reflecting back on this work, it really is nothing more than a delightfully written book on a large collection of theories that have not been and probably cannot be verified through empirical observation. Sure, it might be amusing to hypothesize about parallel universes, superstrings, time machines and the like. Nevertheless, I do not see the utility in doing so until we have a compelling reason to believe that these things might exist.
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5: Very Understandable Treatise On The Search For The Theory of Everything
I truly enjoyed this book. Except for some off-topic ramblings in the middle about the relationship of art to modern science, and some of the author's conceptual aids to help explain or express complex physical theories, I was thoroughly engrossed and mentally stimulated. Kaku has a respectable command of his subject and prose, even if, at times, there was some repetition. (In this type of book, repetition is a given.)
The book is virtually free of mathematics. Consequently, there are places the reader has to take Kaku's explanations and descriptions at face value. Having no math to back up theory isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it leaves even the expert word smith (and I consider Kaku to be one) at a disadvantage. On more than a few occasions I was unable to rap my brain around literal or diagrammatical attempts to explain principles and theories of math and physics. Of course, this might be my failing as a reader instead of Kaku's. It's possible I just didn't get it for the simple reason I didn't want to take the extra time for conceptualizing. (I was more anxious to get to his discussion of multi-dimensional space.)
As opposed to some of the other reviewers, I found the last two sections most enjoyable and enlightening. In the final two sections 'Wormholes' and 'Masters of Hyperspace', Kaku skillfully addresses multi-versus, traveling through time, the death of the cosmos; he encompasses divergent opinions and arguments from various perspectives (math, physics, cosmology, religion), comments on the difference between a God of Order and a God of Miracles, and concludes with a reasoned and hopeful statement about man's ability to solve the mysteries of nature.
I plan on reading more from this author.
-seabgb
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