Einstein's Cosmos: Have You Read It?

[Greg Bernhardt]

Which books have you read?

 

[selfAdjoint]

I read hyperspace and liked it - of its kind.

I have his quantum field theory book and it's interesting, when I was trying to learn QFT by myself, I didn't like the book since, as I see now, it was aimed over my head. Now that I have learned some QFT, I like it a lot better. It's got the breadth to be a useful book on your shelf - you can find something in it about almost any question in QFT that comes up. Admittedly it doesn't go very deep, but usually that's not a problem, I don't want a deep explanation, just a point in the right direction.

 

[Mentat]

I read Hyperspace, Visions, and Beyond Einstein. I like Beyond Einstein and Visions, but I couldn't really get into Hyperspace. Don't get me wrong, it was a fine book, but I think that The Elegant Universe covers M-Theory in a way that appeals to me more, and that a lot of what was said in Hyperspace - both what was said about the author and what was said about hyperspace itself - I had already either heard in Michio Kaku's lecture, "Journey Through the Tenth Dimension", or read in Beyond Einstein.

 

[guitarusa2001]

i read visions and hyperspace... id read more but my stinky library doesn't carry all his books anyways... my fave was visions, i luv thinking about the future
hyperspace was really good too, it got me into quantum physics, now i can point out all the broken laws of physics on stargate thank you michio kaku!

 

[Beren]

Only Hyperspace and Visions as of yet, and I'm not even through with the Visions. But WOW, do I love the book so far. It's got to be one of the best "prediction" type books I've ever read.

 

[Deca-of-CD]

Only Hyperspace...

But I am about to order some more of his books off of Amazon in a day or so... I think I'll pick up Visions, Beyond Einstein, Nuclear Power: Both Sides, and maybe one or two others...

I've been saving up my money for weeks

 

[sol2]

Hyperspace was a revelation For me

As I was learning about things with regards to the Friedmann equation and the curvature parmeters, Michio explanations help to solidify the vision of the world of movement in regard to things hyperbolic, spherical, and flat.

This vision is very dynamical, and my exchanges with some here, helped me to see what happen when Einstein looked at Reinmann. Grossman's help here, and with people like Gauss, the world changed, from the early days of Giralamo Sacherri. This is part of the consistency of geometry.

The fifth postulate made sense then from this perspective and the departure from Euclidean to non-euclidean. I am very glad to have such people who can guide us with very lucid and clear explanations as Michio does.

Soon after the work of Bolyai and Lobachevsky, others constructed models of hyperbolic geometry within Euclidean space. By renaming certain geometric objects from Euclidean space as the lines and circles, people developed systems in which all of Euclid's postulates hold except that there were infinitely many non-intersecting lines, violating the parallel postulate. These models, all isometric, verify the existence of hyperbolic geometry. As Courant and Robbins state in "What is Mathematics," "This must, eo ipso, be just as consistent as the original Euclidean geometry, because it is presented to us, seen from another point of view and described with other words, as a body of facts of ordinary Euclidean geometry."[C]

http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/docs/forum/hype/hype.html

 

[hitssquad]

Nuclear Power - Both Sides

I read at least some of Nuclear Power: Both Sides, since it had a chapter by Bernard Cohen. I don't think I read the whole thing, though.

This points to another question, however: why would people read books when they can just read writings on the internet? What is special about a book? Are books not like audio record albums, where once people have the option of downloading the tracks (or chapters) individually, the concept of albums (or books as collections of chapters) is abandoned?

 

[Deca-of-CD]

Because books you can read at school.. And if the book is small enough, it fits perfectly well inside your grammar textbook

I mean, I guess you could take each printed out chapter individually to school.. But then people would be asking you what you're reading.. And that already happens enough when ever I take my Hyperspace book to school..

 

[hitssquad]

Discrete head-mounted displays

Because books you can read at school.. And if the book is small enough, it fits perfectly well inside your grammar textbook

Not a problem -- computer displays fit discretely http://www.microopticalcorp.com/OEM/kitEG-8.html the palm of one hand.

I mean, I guess you could take each printed out chapter individually to school.. But then people would be asking you what you're reading

I would ask you why you destroyed perfectly good text by printing it out instead of reading it on an electronic display.

 

[Deca-of-CD]

As cool as that option seems.. I don't have the money to use it...

And I'd just prefer to use the actual book...

 

[Chrono]

I've only read Hyperspace, unfortunately. But, I do plan on reading more of his stuff, since he's the one that got me into it in the first place. I'm not exactly sure as to what I should start with. Perhaps Visions or Beyond Einstein, is what I'm thinking.

 

[Deca-of-CD]

Woohoo..

I just ordered Visions, Einstein's Cosmos (both by Kaku), The Universe in a Nutshell (Hawking), and The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene, I think) off of Amazon.com

 

[selfAdjoint]

Wow! Be sure to tell us how you like them.

 

[Chrono]

I just ordered Visions, Einstein's Cosmos (both by Kaku), The Universe in a Nutshell (Hawking), and The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene, I think) off of Amazon.com

I just want to know how Einstein's Cosmos and The Elegant Universe are. Try to read them first.

 

[Deca-of-CD]

I plan on reading the books in this order:

Einstein's Cosmos
The Elegant Universe
Visions
The Universe in a Nutshell

 

[Deca-of-CD]

wootniss.. my books came in... The Elegant Universe ... Einstein's Cosmos ... The Universe in a Nutshell ... and ... Visions ... plus i bought The Illustrated Theory of Everything yesterday at Books A Million..

 

[Chrono]

wootniss.. my books came in... The Elegant Universe ... Einstein's Cosmos ... The Universe in a Nutshell ... and ... Visions ... plus i bought The Illustrated Theory of Everything yesterday at Books A Million..

Sounds like you're going to be busy for a while.

 

[speg]

Im reading The Elegant Universe right now. Pretty good so far, but it's my first ever science book that I've read. Hehe, yeah I'm a newb ;) My first post too btw. Hi :)

 

[selfAdjoint]

You've made one swell start.

 

[speg]

Was that sarcastic? :P

 

[Janitor]

And if the book is small enough, it fits perfectly well inside your grammar textbook- Deca

So that still goes on?

A kid who sat one seat in front and to the left of me in sixth grade was a big fan of science fiction books, especially Heinlein. When we were supposed to read our texts in class, he would usually sneak a paperback into position and hold the books upright so the teacher would not be able to tell. I noticed he did this for weeks without getting caught. Then a girl sitting behind him squealed on him to the teacher, much to his annoyance. {Heya Dave R., whose father worked for Motorola, if you should by some miraculous chance stumble upon this.}

 

[Deca-of-CD]

It still goes on somewhat.. Though my english teacher was cool enough so that I didn't have to hide the book...

I barely passed that class, though

 

[Janitor]

Our sixth-grade teacher did not look kindly upon Dave's little trick.

 

[Deca-of-CD]

That was (what I am guessing) more than a decade ago (?)... And my english teacher would have probably GIVEN that guy a book--the teacher likes sci-fi a LOT.. I've borrowed a few books from him (mainly Dean Koontz)..

 

[Janitor]

It was back when Nixon was in his first term as president. His second term seemed to go by in a flash.

 

[selfAdjoint]

It was back when Nixon was in his first term as president. His second term seemed to go by in a flash.

Not as fast as Agnew's, though...

 

[Olias]

Which books have you read?

Embarassed to say I have not read a single book from your list! shame on me

But I have read:
BOOK------------------------AUTHOR

Electric Waves - Hertz
Atomic Physics - Born
Physical WOrld - Eddington
Frontiers of Astronomy-Hoyle
Brownian Motion - Einstein
Restless Universe - Born
Theory of Relativity - Eddington

To name but a short few early works..but as your list shows my later readings are not Mainstream!

 

[Loren Booda]

Einstein's Cosmos is one of the most easily read and personable biographies of a physicist that I have encountered. Last night Prof. Kaku gave a talk at the Smithsonian where I purchased this book. He is a superior lecturer.

For Prof. Kaku's editor, some errata (up to page 100):

Page 70, should read "...3.03 x 10²³ atoms..."

On page 80, the last paragraph contains an extraneous parenthesis.

Page 96 contains three references to $$\pi$$ using the English letter "p."

 

[selfAdjoint]

My only objection to the book is that he touts string physics as the realization of Einstein's dream. True, string physics claims to unify gravity with the other quantum forces, but as it has developed, gravity turns out to be the ONLY force it has really described. String theory has not successfully described in adequate terms the three forces of the standard model. Aside from this it's irretrievably quantum, uncertainty and all. That doesn't bother me, but it would certainly have infuriated Einstein.