 First edition cover art | |
| Author | Michio Kaku |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Physics |
| Genre | Popular science |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | December 28, 2004 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 428 |
| ISBN | 978-0385509862 |
| LC Class | QB981 .K134 2005 |
| Preceded by | Visions (book) |
| Followed by | Physics of the Impossible |
Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos is a popular science book by Michio Kaku first published in 2004. [1]
The book has twelve chapters arranged in three parts. Part I (Chapters 1–4) covers the Big Bang, the early development of the Universe, and how these topics relate to the Eternal Inflation Multiverse (Level II in the Tegmark hierarchy of Multiverses). Part II (Chapters 5–9) covers M-Theory and the "Many-Worlds interpretation" of Quantum Mechanics (Level III Multiverse). It also discusses how future technology will enable the creation of wormholes. Part III discusses the Big Freeze and how a Hyperspace wormhole (one in 11-dimensional Hyperspace rather than 3-dimensional normal space) will enable civilization and life to escape to a younger Universe.
In Parallel Worlds, Kaku presents many of the leading theories in physics; from Newtonian physics to Relativity to Quantum Physics to String theory and even into the newest version of string theory, called M-theory. He makes available to the reader a comprehensive description of many of the more compelling theories in physics, including many interesting predictions each theory makes, what physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists are looking for now and what technology they are using in their search.
Scarlett Thomas writing for The Independent calls Parallel Worlds "absolutely impossible to put down." [2] Mark Mortimer for Universe Today felt the book maintains a nice balance between detail and corollary while sometimes drifting to the philosophical side of things. [3] Gerry Gilmore of the Institute of Astronomy, wrote that the book "is not a classic, but does raise many interesting ideas." Gilmore praised the book for its "exotic physics" and felt there were "lots of intellectual challenge" but believed there "was a little too much of a pot-pourri." Gilmore wrote that the biggest weakness of the book is how it covers astrophysical history. [4]
The book was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in the UK. [5]
The multiverse is the hypothetical set of all universes. Together, these universes are presumed to comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "flat universes", "other universes", "alternate universes", "multiple universes", "plane universes", "parent and child universes", "many universes", or "many worlds". One common assumption is that the multiverse is a "patchwork quilt of separate universes all bound by the same laws of physics."
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a book on theoretical cosmology by the physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who had no prior knowledge of physics.
The ekpyrotic universe is a cosmological model of the early universe that explains the origin of the large-scale structure of the cosmos. The model has also been incorporated in the cyclic universe theory, which proposes a complete cosmological history, both the past and future.
A parallel universe, also known as an alternate universe, parallel world, parallel dimension, alternate reality, or alternative dimension, is a hypothetical universe co-existing with one's own, typically distinct in some way. The sum of all potential parallel universes that constitute reality is often called the "multiverse". Another common term for a parallel universe is "another dimension", stemming from the idea that if the 4th dimension is time, the 5th dimension—a direction at a right angle to the fourth—is a direction into any of the alternate spacetime realities.
In general relativity, a white hole is a hypothetical region of spacetime and singularity that cannot be entered from the outside, although energy-matter, light and information can escape from it. In this sense, it is the reverse of a black hole, from which energy-matter, light and information cannot escape. White holes appear in the theory of eternal black holes. In addition to a black hole region in the future, such a solution of the Einstein field equations has a white hole region in its past. This region does not exist for black holes that have formed through gravitational collapse, however, nor are there any observed physical processes through which a white hole could be formed.
Michio Kaku is an American physicist, science communicator, futurologist, and writer of popular-science. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. Kaku is the author of several books about physics and related topics and has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film. He is also a regular contributor to his own blog, as well as other popular media outlets. For his efforts to bridge science and science fiction, he is a 2021 Sir Arthur Clarke Lifetime Achievement Awardee.
Brian Randolph Greene is an American physicist known for his research on string theory. He is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University and the chairman of the World Science Festival, which he co-founded in 2008. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds. He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point.
The characterization of the universe as finely tuned intends to explain why the known constants of nature, such as the electron charge, the gravitational constant, and the like, have their measured values rather than some other arbitrary values. According to the "fine-tuned universe" hypothesis, if these constants' values were too different from what they are, "life as we know it" could not exist. In practice, this hypothesis is formulated in terms of dimensionless physical constants.
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory is a book by Brian Greene published in 1999, which introduces string and superstring theory, and provides a comprehensive though non-technical assessment of the theory and some of its shortcomings. In 2000, it won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. A new edition was released in 2003, with an updated preface.
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (2004) is the second book on theoretical physics, cosmology, and string theory written by Brian Greene, professor and co-director of Columbia's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics (ISCAP).
In science fiction, hyperspace is a concept relating to higher dimensions as well as parallel universes and a faster-than-light (FTL) method of interstellar travel. In its original meaning, the term hyperspace was simply a synonym for higher-dimensional space. This usage was most common in 19th-century textbooks and is still occasionally found in academic and popular science texts, for example, Hyperspace (1994). Its science fiction usage originated in the magazine Amazing Stories Quarterly in 1931 and within several decades it became one of the most popular tropes of science fiction, popularized by its use in the works of authors such as Isaac Asimov and E. C. Tubb, and media franchises such as Star Wars.
Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension is a book by Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist from the City College of New York. It focuses on Kaku's studies of higher dimensions referred to as hyperspace. The recurring theme of the book is that all four forces of the universe become more coherent and their description simpler in higher dimensions.
Arthur Willink (1850-1913) was a nineteenth-century British theologian and clergyman.
Laura Mersini-Houghton is an Albanian-American cosmologist and theoretical physicist, and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a proponent of the multiverse hypothesis and the author of a theory for the origin of the universe that holds that our universe is one of many selected by quantum gravitational dynamics of matter and energy. She argues that anomalies in the current structure of the universe are best explained as the gravitational tug exerted by other universes.
Paul Halpern is an American author and Professor of Physics at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
The Grand Design is a popular-science book written by physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow and published by Bantam Books in 2010. The book examines the history of scientific knowledge about the universe and explains eleven-dimensional M-theory. The authors of the book point out that a Unified Field Theory may not exist.
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos is a book by Brian Greene published in 2011 which explores the concept of the multiverse and the possibility of parallel universes. It has been nominated for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books for 2012.
Quantum fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that reflects modern experience of the material world and reality as influenced by quantum theory and new principles in quantum physics. It is characterized by the use of an element in quantum mechanics as a storytelling device. The genre is not necessarily science-themed, and blurs the line separating science fiction and fantasy into a broad scope of mainstream literature that transcends the mechanical model of science and involves the fantasy of human perception or imagination as realistic components affecting the everyday physical world.
The Science of Interstellar is a non-fiction book by American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Kip Thorne, with a foreword by Christopher Nolan. The book was initially published on November 7, 2014 by W. W. Norton & Company. This is his second full-size book for non-scientists after Black Holes and Time Warps, released in 1994. The Science of Interstellar is a follow-up text for Nolan's 2014 film Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain.
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