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Download the Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion THE COSMIC LANDSCAPE: STRING THEORY AND THE ILLUSION OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK Leonard Susskind | 403 pages | 01 Dec 2006 | Little, Brown & Company | 9780316013338 | English | New York, United States The Cosmic Landscape : String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design Read more The Myth of Uniqueness and Elegance, 5. Sign Up. The book contains many prof This book contains interesting theories of origin concerning the universe as a whole, as well as the various quantum particles the universe is understood to be comprised of. Susskind has done a good gob explaining string theory to the lay public. Like Quark Theory, Q Mapping the Void: This book is endlessly fascinating, frequently frustrating and is, hands down, one of the most difficult books I've ever read. The Anthropic principle was one solution, but was rejected by many physicists who preferred a more elegant solution. See more details at Online Price Match. The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design 24, Micah Johnson rated it really liked it. How sound is the science? This problem is cured by M-theory, a unique, all- embracing theory that subsumes the five superstring theories by requiring 11 space-time dimensions and incorporating higher-dimensional extended objects called branes. An alternative to the go-to-college method, The Theoretical Minimum offers a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace. Line drawings. Another important constant is the "fine structure constant". Corey S. Incredible ideas, sad conclusion. In this edition, however, when you click on, say, 5 the system will take you to 6. But both theories are alive and well, and the subject of ongoing research, to this very day. The problem with M-theory is that although its equations may be unique, it has billions and billions of different solutions. A potential answer relies on the anthropic principle that has gone out of fashion a few hundred years ago. View 1 comment. Thunderbolt from Heaven, 6. Walmart One is that the chapters tend to ramble and become incredibly dry. Thank you for signing up! Hardcoverpages. But does this mean that the religious fundamentalists have won? Really closes out the book with a bang. The chapter on the black hole war covers beautifully the behind the scenes battle among scientists. It's important to note that Susskind is The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design only a physicist himself, but in fact was actually the originator of string theory although at least two others independently had similar ideas about the same time. While I had no downloading problems with the Kindle edition I did notice a problem with the "chapter notes" that the reader should be aware of. At present, there is an enormous "landscape" of theoretical possibilities, numbering something like 1 followed by zeros. At the time the book was written, it had been noted that the conditions of the The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design are very fine tuned, allowing life. I can see how a physicist would think he addressed the topic but it's really string theory and the anthropomorphic principle. It requires an investment of your time. The ideas presented in the book really open up the views to the reader, whether they are right or wrong I'm not competent to comment on that. The great achievements of cosmology. Instrumentation and measurement Research update New microwave bolometers could boost quantum computers. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Until one comes along, I'll be a major skeptic of those who belittle it's scope and capability. Intelligent design is creationism through the back door. Life in a landscape of possibilities Read Now. For instance, the "cosmological constant" of the universe appears to be the sum of two terms, which cancel to decimal digits, yet fail to cancel in the th digit! How sound is the science? Escape the Present with These 24 Historical Romances. A Bubble Bath Universe, But that's just to get started on the main topic. The book has received favorable critical reception. Susskind is very complimentary to his brethren. How likely is it that this generation, right now, is the lucky one that has discovered the final answer? Then, in the book, Susskind hypothesized that there are multiverses where there are occasional universes where life is indeed possible. Community Reviews. From quantum jitters and quantum fluctuations to Feynman diagrams and vacuum diagrams, the book rolls along nicely until I got tied up in knots with the complexity of string theory and needed to skip the last pages. Mostly an unconvincing justification of string theory The first thing to note is Professor Susskind's insistence on using 14 billion years as the time since the Big Bang whereas most authorities today give Frequent mentions. Susskind spends a great deal of time and energy in this book defending the anthropic principle, and I found these parts of the book the least interesting. The book contains many prof This book contains interesting theories of origin concerning the universe as a whole, as well as the various quantum particles the universe is understood to be comprised of. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Extensions to the Standard Model and cosmological theory bring the number of The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design to over a hundred. The book was great though, until there was a "hiccup" at the end with his bragging about how he p This book was hard to put down because the presentation of string theory was excellent. Register to unlock all the content on the site. May 27, Jody rated it really liked it. What is not mentioned in this book is Hawking's addendum. Susskind does an amazing job of explaining things so that a layman such as myself can understand them, or at least get a better sense of what truly understanding them would mean. What can be the explanation for such phenomena? But when there is a pocket universe in a particular state, to transition to a "nearby" state of lower energy, which will also have different values of all other variables, it can do so by the mechanism of quantum tunneling. Lately, some physicists have come to the conclusion that if even one of these numbers was even minutely different, then life and therefore intelligent life could never have existed at all. It must be our type of human life. A potential answer relies on the anthropic principle that has gone out of fashion a few hundred years The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. Yes, we still need to figure out why and how, but ultimately life was able to form because this rare universe did what it did. What happened to string theory itself? That is: life based on the element carbon, which requires liquid water to function, and which takes a long time to evolve to what we're familiar with probably a few billion years. Mixed in with the hard science are references to other scientists and their theories, thoughts on his colleagues and past interaction with them. These strings would not be visible as light or other electromagnetic radiation, but they would emit gravity waves. Michael Duff will next month take up the post of Abdus Salam professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, e-mail m. The answer, based on the last years of theological development, is: the definition of an intelligent designer is also one who is not himself created or designed. Sometimes the book touches on a few tantalizing The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design and moves on - I was left scratching my head on quite a few topics. I suppose since the brightest minds can't yet quite agree on how this actually works, I'm not going feel bad. Here at Walmart. The fascinating topic of cosmology in the hands of subject-matter expert. This book is educational and sometimes challenging but ultimately satisfying. Why exactly this means our universe is "fine-tuned" for us to live in He asks the question, "If the universe is intelligently designed by a supernatural being, who designed the designer? The author ultimately concludes that there is a 'Landscape of possibilities, populated by a megaverse of actualities', and that like Laplace his hypothesis does not require a god, but that seems rather at odds with his prior explanations of the anthropic principle. Books by Leonard Susskind. Shop Our Brands. Some physicists are still hopeful that eventually some new mathematical development may yet make it possible to construct a "theory of everything", based on string theory, that will be simple and elegant and nail down all of the variables to make a universe exactly like ours. Event date:. Cosmic landscape : string theory and the illusion of intelligent design EMBED for wordpress. An alternative to the go-to-college method, The Theoretical Minimum offers a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace. I had seen many references to this controversial book - among other things, it's quoted approvingly in Dawkins's The God Delusion - but somehow I didn't get round to reading it until this week. What is special about our universe? Another problem I had with this book is Susskind's unrelenting endorsement of string theory as something proven and true, as something "discovered. The remaining mass is almost certainly not made up of ordinary matter. Love how Dr. Susskind's argument for the Anthropic Principle is fairly non-existent.
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