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Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
Author: Lisa Randall
Amazon info

An excellent addition to the physics reading library! This book is deeper than Brian Greene's Elegant Universe, but quite accessible. Like most books in this genre, Warped Passages covers the 20th century revolutions in physics - the emergence of relativity and quantum mechanics - and the lack of coexistence between the two. Randall then moves on to one of her specialities as a "model builder" - the standard model. At this point she veers into more complex territory (but it is always marked as optional and there are always metaphorical introductions). But it is this more complex territory that is the most interesting and challenging - including the Higgs particle/field and detailed discussions of symmetry breaking that must occur for particles to have mass. From there we move to some of the big questions - like why is gravity so weak. And, Randall covers string theory in a fair amount of detail, as well as branes and M-theory.

But just as you think the book is about to end, it is really just beginning as the first 300 pages or so are merely introduction for Randall's extensively cited theories of warped space, namely RS1 - the theory that there universe might consist of two branes, separated by a very small amount, but such that all the standard particles are on one brane (the Weakbrane) and gravity resides on the other brane (the Gravitybrane). These branes are separated along a fifth dimension of spacetime (e.g. a fourth physical dimension), but the key is that because this dimension is warped or curved, the gravitational forces drop off exponentially with distance - thus a small physical separation leads to a huge difference in the power of gravity. Randall then extends this to RS2, which allows for an infinitely big extra dimension of space, but one that wouldn't be noticed in our world (again, due to the warped nature of this extra dimension).

Beyond the intellectual achievement of this book, I also saw Randall as uniquely capable of bridging the philosophical gap between string theorists (this string theory stuff is so beautiful it just has to be write) and particle physicists (if we can't test it, then it is a philsophy, not a science). Randall seems to avoid being an idealogue (although she is a particle physicist/model person, not a string theorist) and is interested in finding ways to bring the two groups together.

And this book also struck me on a personal note as the author went to the same math camp that I attended (I think she was there two years later).

My only criticism of the book is that there are times when the writing is a bit repetitive - e.g. mentioning the same point several times in the space of a paragraph of two.

Highly recommended to all those interested in recent advances in the world of physics - no math is required, but you will have to think deeply at times.