Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World - Hardcover

Randall, Lisa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006172372X ISBN 13: 9780061723728

Publisher: Ecco Press, 2011

Synopsis

"Science has a battle for hearts and minds on its hands....How good it feels to have Lisa Randall's unusual blend of top flight science, clarity, and charm on our side."
--Richard Dawkins

"Dazzling ideas....Read this book today to understand the science of tomorrow."
--Steven Pinker

The bestselling author of Warped Passages, one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World," and one of Esquire's "75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century," Lisa Randall gives us an exhilarating overview of the latest ideas in physics and offers a rousing defense of the role of science in our lives. Featuring fascinating insights into our scientific future born from the author's provocative conversations with Nate Silver, David Chang, and Scott Derrickson, Knocking on Heaven's Door is eminently readable, one of the most important popular science books of this or any year. It is a necessary volume for all who admire the work of Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, Simon Singh, and Carl Sagan; for anyone curious about the workings and aims of the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest and most expensive machine ever built by mankind; for those who firmly believe in the importance of science and rational thought; and for anyone interested in how the Universe began...and how it might ultimately end.

About this title

Review:

"Lisa Randall is the rarest rarity--a theoretical physics genius who can write and talk to the rest of us in ways we both understand and enjoy. This book takes nonspecialists as close as they'll ever get to the inner workings of the cosmos."--Lawrence H. Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University

"Randall's witty, accessible discussion reveals the effort and wonder at hand as scientists strive to learn who we are and where we came from."--Publishers Weekly

"Written with dry wit and ice-cool clarity. . . . "Knocking on Heaven's Door" is a book that anyone at all interested in science must read. This is surely the science book of the year."--Sunday Times (London)

"Valuable and engaging. . . . Randall's generous cornucopia of ideas, her engaging style, and above all her deep excitement about physics make this a book that deserves a wide readership."--American Scientist

"[Randall's] eloquent book details the trials and tribulations of the [Large Hadron Collider], from conception to implementation, and takes us on a grand tour of the underlying science."--Nature

"[V]ery accessible, readable, and appealing to a broad audience. . . . Randall's passion and excitement for science and physics is infectious and welcome in our digital age."--New York Journal of Books

"Explores some of the biggest ideas in contemporary physics and how they undergird such everyday matters as risk assessment, logic and even our understanding of beauty."--Time magazine

"[Randall is] one of the more original theorists at work in the profession today. . . . She gives a fine analysis of the affinity between scientific and artistic beauty, comparing the broken symmetries of a Richard Serra sculpture to those at the core of the Standard Model."--New York Times Book Review

"Beautifully written. . . . An impressive overview of what scientists (of any kind) get up to, how they work and why science is an inherently creative endeavor."--Times Higher Education (London)

"Randall manages to transform . . . experiments at distant and unfamiliar scales into crucial acts in a cosmic drama."--Daily Beast

Book Description:

One of the most illuminating science books in years, Knocking on Heaven's Door makes clear the biggest scientific questions we face and reveals how answering them could ultimately tell us who we are and where we came from.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 006172372X
• ISBN 13: 9780061723728
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464