Book 24: The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene

I'm back around to non-fiction again and this time we're going for some science.  The Fabric of the Cosmos is an exploration of the basics of the universe, basically what is it?  Through theoretical physics, cosmology and string theory he attempts to define the nature of spacetime.  If you know anything about me you'd know this is right up my alley.

It's 493 pages but 536 pages including the more detailed Notes section, which I'll probably read.  So that makes about 80 pages per day.

REVIEW:  Brian Greene does a nice job of laying down the basics in this book.  He starts with explaining the history of our knowledge of space.  Meaning: what is space?  From there he goes through more of the big questions: what is time?  How did the universe begin?  How will it end?  What makes up the fundamental particles and forces in our universe?

I've read enough of these kinds of books to have basic understanding of these concepts already and my own studies have fleshed those concepts out pretty thoroughly.  But Greene does an excellent job of describing all of these difficult ideas.  He explains things in a very understandably way and, if you desire, there is a "notes" section at the end which explains things in more depth for the mathematically and scientifically inclined reader.  He also does a good job of explaining that most of these concepts are just theories, hypotheses, really.  At the fundamental level, we still don't know most of the answers to the basic questions.

Reading through another science book, I typically judge them by whether or not I learn anything from them.  This book had a couple of large sections that I came away from feeling that I understood things better than before.  Entropy was a big one.  There was a large section on time and whether or not it can be shown to have an "arrow", a direction, from a scientific point of view.  I had a basic understanding of these ideas, but his explanations and the math in the notes section, really taught me something.

There was some rehashing; basic, history-of-science stuff at the beginning.  But he quickly moved on to more of the latest findings and theories, so it never really bogged down.  I found this book quite an interesting read... those without a love of science, physics and/or astronomy may not enjoy it quite as much.  8 out of 10.