Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity - Hardcover

Rovelli, Carlo

4.33

12,073 ratings by Goodreads

9780241257968: Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241257964 ISBN 13: 9780241257968

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2016

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TELEGRAPH and OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016

'A global superstar... Professor Rovelli is making the grammar of the universe accessible to a new generation' (Channel 4 News)

From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics comes a new book about the mind-bending nature of the universe

Do space and time truly exist? What is reality made of? Can we understand its deep texture?

Scientist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. In this mind-expanding book, he shows how our understanding of reality has changed throughout centuries, from Democritus to loop quantum gravity. Taking us on a wondrous journey, he invites us to imagine a whole new world where black holes are waiting to explode, spacetime is made up of grains, and infinity does not exist -- a vast universe still largely undiscovered.

Translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre

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Review:

A global superstar... Professor Rovelli is making the grammar of the universe accessible to a new generation (Channel 4 News)

Surely Rovelli deserves the title 'world's most inspiring physics teacher' (Daily Telegraph)

A top-flight theoretical physicist with a rock star reputation (BBC Radio 4 World at One)

The physicist transforming how we see the universe (Financial Times)

The new book by Carlo Rovelli is an utter joy (Adam Rutherford, author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived)

The man who makes physics sexy... the new Hawking... His writing is luminous. By the time I had finished reading I was in serious awe of the author (David Aaronovitch The Times)

The latest thinking in physics is distilled in this primer... Why do you need yet another popularisation of theoretical physics? Because Rovelli writes with crystalline simplicity. And because he turns quantum physics into a coherent story, shaping it as a quest for a single, underlying "substratum" of reality - from Democritus's finite, indivisible atoms to Einstein (James McConnachie Sunday Times)

Rovelli writes with elegance, clarity and charm... A joy to read, as well as being an intellectual feast (Michael Brooks New Statesman)

Like all great thinkers, Rovelli has a talent for simplicity. His prose is lucid and poetic... It's not a scientific treatise. It's a paean to the wonder of the natural world... I scraped a C in my Physics O-level and haven't been near a physics textbook since. If I can understand - and even enjoy - Rovelli's book, then anyone can (William Cook Spectator)

A hugely engaging book, which leaves the head spinning... From evaporating black holes to quantum fields, Rovelli is a charming, thought-provoking tour guide (Manjit Kumar Prospect)

About the Author:

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. He has worked in Italy and the US, and is currently directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de physique th�orique in Marseille, France. His Seven Brief Lessons on Physics is an international bestseller translated into forty-one languages.

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