Zusatztext 46739991 Informationen zum Autor Brian Greene Klappentext The bestselling author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos tackles perhaps the most mind-bending question in modern physics and cosmology: Is our universe the only universe? There was a time when "universe" meant all there is. Everything. Yet, a number of theories are converging on the possibility that our universe may be but one among many parallel universes populating a vast multiverse. Here, Briane Greene, one of our foremost physicists and science writers, takes us on a breathtaking journey to a multiverse comprising an endless series of big bangs, a multiverse with duplicates of every one of us, a multiverse populated by vast sheets of spacetime, a multiverse in which all we consider real are holographic illusions, and even a multiverse made purely of math--and reveals the reality hidden within each. Using his trademark wit and precision, Greene presents a thrilling survey of cutting-edge physics and confronts the inevitable question: How can fundamental science progress if great swaths of reality lie beyond our reach? The Hidden Reality is a remarkable adventure through a world more vast and strange than anything we could have imagined. Chapter 1 The Bounds of Reality On Parallel Worlds If, when I was growing up, my room had been adorned with only a single mirror, my childhood daydreams might have been very different. But it had two. And each morning when I opened the closet to get my clothes, the one built into its door aligned with the one on the wall, creating a seemingly endless series of reflections of anything situated between them. It was mesmerizing. I delighted in seeing image after image populating the parallel glass planes, extending back as far as the eye could discern. All the reflections seemed to move in unisonbut that, I knew, was a mere limitation of human perception; at a young age I had learned of light's finite speed. So in my mind's eye, I would watch the light's round-trip journeys. The bob of my head, the sweep of my arm silently echoed between the mirrors, each reflected image nudging the next. Sometimes I would imagine an irreverent me way down the line who refused to fall into place, disrupting the steady progression and creating a new reality that informed the ones that followed. During lulls at school, I would sometimes think about the light I had shed that morning, still endlessly bouncing between the mirrors, and I'd join one of my reflected selves, entering an imaginary parallel world constructed of light and driven by fantasy. It was a safe way to break the rules. To be sure, reflected images don't have minds of their own. But these youthful flights of fancy, with their imagined parallel realities, resonate with an increasingly prominent theme in modern sciencethe possibility of worlds lying beyond the one we know. This book is an exploration of such possibilities, a considered journey through the science of parallel universes. Universe and Universes There was a time when universe meant all there is. Everything. The whole shebang. The notion of more than one universe, more than one everything, would seemingly be a contradiction in terms. Yet a range of theoretical developments has gradually qualified the interpretation of universe. To a physicist, the word's meaning now largely depends on context. Sometimes universe still connotes absolutely everything. Sometimes it refers only to those parts of everything that someone such as you or I could, in principle, have access to. Sometimes it's applied to separate realms, ones that are partly or fully, temporarily or permanently, inaccessible to us; in this sense, the word relegates ours to membership in a large, perhaps infinitely large, collection. With its hegemony diminished, universe has given way to other terms introdu...

“Brian Greene has a gift for elucidating big ideas. . . Captures and engages the imagination. . . . It’s exciting and rewarding to read him.” —The New York Times

“A wonderful way to coax your brain into a host of strange and unfamiliar domains.” —The Boston Globe

“Exciting physics, wrapped up in effortless prose. . . . Greene has done it again.” —New Scientist

“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.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“The multiverse is an idea whose time has come. . . . The book serves well as an introduction . . . and will open up many people’s eyes.” —The Wall Street Journal
 
“Greene takes us down the rabbit hole yet again, this time setting a course for the terra incognita of parallel universes, hidden worlds, alternate realities, holographic projections, and multiverse simulations. Greene likes to drop you into the middle of the action first and then explain the backstory, but he has an elegant knack for anticipating questions and immediately dealing with any confusion or objections.” —The Daily Beast
 
“An accessible and surprisingly witty handbook to parallel universes…. Greene is immensely gifted at finding apt and colorful everyday analogies for the arcane byways of theoretical physics.” —The Toronto Star
 
“Mind-stretching. . . . [The Hidden Reality is] Greene’s impassioned argument ‘for the capacity of mathematics to reveal hidden truths about the workings of the world.’” —The New Yorker
 
“Like [Stephen] Hawking and [Roger] Penrose before him, [Greene] is an author who writes with the confidence and authority of one who . . . has seen the promised land of cosmic truth.” —Bookforum
 
“If you like your science explained rather than asserted, if you like your science writers articulate and intelligible, if you like popular science to make sense, even as it probes the heart of difficult theory, you are going to love The Hidden Reality and its author, Brian Greene.” —New York Journal of Books
 
“Greene’s forte is his amazing ability to give clear, everyday examples to illustrate complicated physical theories.” —The Globe and Mail
 
“Ambitious. . . . Entertaining and well-written. . . . Greene is a keen interpreter.” —The Christian Science Monitor
 
“A lucid, intriguing, and triumphantly understandable state-of-the-art look at the universe.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
 “With a slew of clever analogies, Greene communicates with uncommon clarity, intuition, and honesty.” —The Oxonian Review
 
“Greene’s success at explaining the patently inexplicable lies in the way he delightfully melds the utterly bizarre and the utterly familiar.” —Providence Journal
 
“Exotic cosmic terrain through which Greene provides expert guidance.” —The Oregonian
 
“Mind-blowing.” —The Sunday Times (London)
 
“Highly rewarding.” —Scotland on Sunday
 
“[Greene] has something fresh and insightful to say about pretty much everything”—ScienceFiction.com
 
“Vast, energetic and complex.” —The Easthampton Star
 
“The best guide available, in this universe at least.”—Science News
 
“Greene’s greatest achievement is that even as you grapple with these allusive concepts, you start falling in love with these mysteries.” —The Express Tribune