Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universe, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension by Michio Kaku
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Science tends to be a bit dry, but Dr. Kaku manages to make it interesting; with just a small boring spell during the discussion of Kalusa-Klein and introductory string theory. This is to be expected, though. You just can’t make multi-dimensional imagery and vibrating strings very exciting to the lay person. It looses something without the excitement of its underlying mathematical foundation.
Dr. Kaku tries his hand at a bit of futurist prognostication, too… very LONG, LONG term future, I mean. The discussion of Type I, II, and III societies and their respective technical and scientific prowess was quite interesting. Sadly, though, the discussion about the impending death of our universe was a bit depressing. Good thing it’s a very, very long way off.
All in all, this 1994 book was chocked full of interesting scientific history and understanding of the amazing things around us. We’ve only just begun. Just a few thousand years ago, we could barely manage to keep ourselves warm and fed. Today we’re sending probes to other planets, asteroids, the sun, etc. Imagine what we’ll be doing in 5000 more years. I can’t wait to see. 😉
Read it. Science is fun.
I also read the book. Certainly, a good book. Available as an ebook.
Hey, I read this one a long time ago. I also enjoyed it, and it’s a classic in the realm of cosmology books written by working physicists for the general reader. AFAIC it’s been superseded by Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Universe, but that came something like 10 years later and includes insights worked out after Hyperspace was written.
I’ve skimmed Greene’s at B&N in the past. It’s bit heavy on String Theory for my tastes, if I remember correctly. String Theory is heavy. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it when I first started reading about it twenty years ago. I’ll really have to brush up on my math before I can begin to even grasp the fundamentals of it, I think.
I hope my brain isn’t getting to old for stuff like this. I’m going to be diving in to Kip Thorne’s old book Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy sometime in the next few weeks.
By the way, nice to “see” you, Psi! 🙂
Hi Eric, I see you’re still reading a lot, perhaps more than ever. At the expense of mucking around with computers and ‘the internet’. All good and well. Have fun!
Myeh… phooey on computers. I’m getting old nowadays. I’m just happy when the damned thing turns on and works right. 😉
Good to “see” you, Bernard!