Biggest Ideas in the Universe 1

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ‘Sean Carroll has achieved something I thought impossible: a bridge between popular science and the mathematical universe of working physicists. Magnificent!’

Brian Clegg, author of Ten Days in Physics that Shook the World Immense, strange and infinite, the world of modern physics often feels impenetrable to the undiscerning eye – a jumble of muons, gluons and quarks, impossible to explain without several degrees and a research position at CERN. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Allow world-renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Sean Carroll to guide you through the biggest ideas in the universe. Elegant and simple, Carroll unravels this web of theories and formulae equation by equation, getting to the heart of the truths they represent.—In Space, Time and Motion, the first book of this landmark trilogy, Carroll delves into the core of classical physics. From Euclid to Einstein, Space, Time and Motion explores the ideas which revolutionised science and forever changed our understanding of our place in the cosmos.

‘Neat, and extremely simple: only a deep thinker such as Sean Carroll could introduce the complexity of Einstein’s general relativity in such a luminous and straightforward manner.’, ‘Sean Carroll has achieved something I thought impossible: a bridge between popular science and the mathematical universe of working physicists. Magnificent!’, 'What is most appealing in this ambitious book is its combination of technical accuracy and lightness of tone…reader-friendly… the scientific and mathematical aspects of the book are impeccable.', 'Reading The Biggest Ideas in the Universe is like taking an introductory physics class with a star professor – but with all of the heady lectures and none of the tedious problem sets… For those without the [STEM] background, [the result] might feel like a porthole into another world.', ‘Do popular books about physics leave you feeling that you’re just getting stories and not real science? If so, this is the book for you. In a clear and non-scary way, it explains the mathematical theories behind what physicists really think. Carroll’s trilogy will plug a big gap in how physics is communicated to non-specialists – and to judge from this first volume, will do so brilliantly.’

Sean Carroll is Homewood professor of natural philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He won the Royal Society Winton Prize for his book on the search for the elusive Higgs boson, The Particle at the End of the Universe, and The Big Picture was an international bestseller. His most recent book is Something Deeply Hidden. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. @seanmcarroll   preposterousuniverse.com