Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions

by Lisa Randall

ISBN: 0060531088
Format: Hardcover, 499pp
Pub. Date: August 2005
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Hardcover, August 2005
Barnes & Noble price: $19.56

FROM OUR EDITORS
A century ago, physicists could present current research to a general audience. Today, scientific discoveries are so advanced and specialized that a chasm has developed between physicists and the rest of society. In Warped Passages, renowned Harvard physicist Lisa Randall ably bridges that gap, describing the connections between recent research in particle physics and theories of super symmetry, string theory, and extra dimensions of space. A mind-expanding book about our expanding universe.

ANNOTATION
Randall, a professor of physics at Harvard, offers a tour of current questions in particle physics, string theory, and cosmology, paying particular attention to the thesis that more physical dimensions exist than are usually acknowledged. Writing for a general audience, Randall is patient and kind: she encourages readers to skip around in the text, corrals mathematical equations in an appendix at the back, and starts off each chapter with an allegorical story, in a manner recalling the work of George Gamow. Although the subject itself is intractably difficult to follow, the exuberance of Randall's narration is appealing. She's honest about the limits of the known, and almost revels in the uncertainties that underlie her work—including the possibility that some day it may all be proved wrong.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Randall takes us into the incredible world of warped, hidden dimensions that underpin the universe we live in, describing how we might prove their existence, while examining the questions that they still leave unanswered." Warped Passages provides an overview that tracks the arc of discovery from early twentieth-century physics to the razor's edge of today's particle physics and string theory, unweaving the current debates about relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity. In a highly readable style sure to entertain and elucidate, Lisa Randall demystifies the science and unravels the mysteries of the myriad worlds that may exist just beyond the one we are only now beginning to know.

FROM THE CRITICS

Tim Folger - The New York Times
Lisa Randall's chronicle of physicists' latest efforts to make sense of a universe that gets stranger with every new discovery makes for mind-bending reading. In Warped Passages, she gives an engaging and remarkably clear account of how the existence of dimensions beyond the familiar three (or four, if you include time) may resolve a host of cosmic quandaries. The discovery of extra dimensions - and Randall believes there's at least a fair chance that evidence for them might be found within the next few years - would utterly transform our view of the universe.

The New Yorker
Randall, a professor of physics at Harvard, offers a tour of current questions in particle physics, string theory, and cosmology, paying particular attention to the thesis that more physical dimensions exist than are usually acknowledged. Writing for a general audience, Randall is patient and kind: she encourages readers to skip around in the text, corrals mathematical equations in an appendix at the back, and starts off each chapter with an allegorical story, in a manner recalling the work of George Gamow. Although the subject itself is intractably difficult to follow, the exuberance of Randall's narration is appealing. She's honest about the limits of the known, and almost revels in the uncertainties that underlie her work—including the possibility that some day it may all be proved wrong.

Publishers Weekly
The concept of additional spatial dimensions is as far from intuitive as any idea can be. Indeed, although Harvard physicist Randall does a very nice job of explaining-often deftly through the use of creative analogies-how our universe may have many unseen dimensions, readers' heads are likely to be swimming by the end of the book. Randall works hard to make her astoundingly complex material understandable, providing a great deal of background for recent advances in string and supersymmetry theory. As coauthor of the two most important scientific papers on this topic, she's ideally suited to popularize the idea. What is absolutely clear is that physicists simply do not yet know if there are extra dimensions a fraction of a millimeter in size, dimensions of infinite size or only the dimensions we see. What's also clear is that the large hadron collider, the world's most powerful tool for studying subatomic particles, is likely to provide information permitting scientists to differentiate among these ideas soon after it begins operation in Switzerland in 2007. Randall brings much of the excitement of her field to life as she describes her quest to understand the structure of the universe. B&w illus. Agent, John Brockman. (Sept. 1) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal
Randall (theoretical physics, Harvard Univ.) has written a book that, like Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, promises to be the intellectual's coffee-table status symbol this fall. The author proposes a universe with many more dimensions than we are physiologically able to perceive-we are in a three-dimensional sinkhole, or "3-brane"; the universe is made up of many brane-worlds with different numbers of dimensions. To explain and illustrate the complex models and mathematical calculations used to develop groundbreaking new theories in physics, Randall employs stories, analogies, and drawings. In this way, she is like an extraordinarily smart and lively college professor working to engage her students in the excitement of discovery. Many references to earlier research supply historical background. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.-Sara Rutter, Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa Lib. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.