The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
ISBN:9780375727207 read summary

This is simply another great book on the cosmos by Brian Greene. I previously read Greene's book "The Elegant Universe" and I think at enjoyed this one even more. Greene packs as enormous wealth of information in his books. Quite frankly, it takes me considerably longer to read one of his books than most other books I read because of the volume of new information I am learning.

Greene has done a fantastic job of explaining the cosmos in this work. His explanations are detailed and lengthy enough to thoroughly convey the concepts discussed. There were many concepts that I read about in other books which were clearly delineated in this book, and I went away with a much better understanding.

Green covers a wealth of information about the cosmos such as wave probability, uncertainty, spin, entanglement, the flow and direction of time, quantum erasure, decoherence, symmetry, the various forces of nature (strong, weak, electromagnetic, gravity), Higgs field, the big bang, inflation, dark matter, dark energy, entropy, string theory, branes, time travel, the future, and much more.

If you want to get a good education about the universe we live in, I high recommend Green's books.

allows the non-physics major to understand some of the most complicated and intricate principles and theories of abstract/theoretical physics.

Greene's writing is an excellent draw for this book, which will ensure it is easily accessible to a wide range of potential readers. His style is extraordinarily engaging, although he is forced into a somewhat anachronistic arrangement.

The book suffers heavily from the legitimate accuracy early on. Greene makes mistaken claims on the nature of Special Relativity, particularly by claiming that the effects are more extreme when events are separated by larges spans of space. In reality, his example only shows a misapplication of common formulae to situations that they were not designed for. Additionally, he fails to accurately describe what "events" are being used for analysis. Where Greene has seen a relativistic effect of altering one's view of time by +/-500 yrs, closer scrutiny shows no relativistic effect, but a signal delay of +/-500 yrs (an important distinction in physics, as this is NOT due to a warping of space-time).

Furthermore, Greene's discussion of entropy as it may relate to time shows additional subtle internal inconsistencies. Without describing what "a moment" means, he seems to suggest that entropy is unrelated to the previous (or future) values of entropy. However, he still uses graphs with continuous lines to plot entropy.

With these faults at the base of his description of physics, one cannot truly trust in his arguments of more complicated phenomenon at all.

I've read many books on cosmology and particle physics, it's just an incredible area of science to explore. This is easily one of the best reads in the genre that I've come across.

Greene has a gift (as does Leonard Susskind) for explaining an area of science that is, by it's very non-Newtonian nature, almost wholly counterintuitive. To a non-mathematical reader his ability to cover so many areas of the key theories, string and quantum among them, in a digestable fashion is relieving and fascinating.

If you have any interest in the topic this is a must-read.

Finally a book that goes deep, and answers (if possible) most questions. Books of this type usually generate questions as you read along. Brian Green has an intuition on what his reader's questions will be, and however difficult, he addresses them. So one has the feeling that most issues are thoroughly explained and as such, the reader can move on to the next issues without being perplexed about what has just been read.

Highly recommended for those who are interested in the mysteries of life. One sees the world with different eyes afterwards.