Publisher Description
The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science.
There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall. The bestselling author of Warped Passages is an expert in both particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest). In Knocking on Heaven's Door, she explores how we decide which scientific questions to study and how we go about answering them. She examines the role of risk, creativity, uncertainty, beauty, and truth in scientific thinking through provocative conversations with leading figures in other fields (such as the chef David Chang, the forecaster Nate Silver, and the screenwriter Scott Derrickson), and she explains with wit and clarity the latest ideas in physics and cosmology. Randall describes the nature and goals of the largest machine ever built: the Large Hadron Collider, the enormous particle accelerator below the border of France and Switzerland—as well as recent ideas underlying cosmology and current dark matter experiments.
The most sweeping and exciting science book in years, Knocking on Heaven's Door makes clear the biggest scientific questions we face and reveals how answering them could ultimately tell us who we are and where we came from.
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"Really interesting summation of where we are in regards to particle physics. While not nearly as dense as Randall's previous work Warped Passages, it does contain a large amount of technical information about the LHC and the way that particle colliders work. Randall doesn't ever talk down to the reader, which is refreshing but challenging. This is not a quick beach read, but well worth the effort if you are interested in the subject."
—
Corinna (4 out of 5 stars)
About Lisa Randall
Lisa Randall
is a professor of physics at Harvard University. She is one of today’s most
influential and highly cited theoretical physicists, and has received numerous
awards and honors for her contributions. Her work has been featured in Time magazine, the New York Times, Rolling
Stone, Esquire, Vogue, the Economist,
Scientific American, and elsewhere. Randall is a member of the National
Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and the American Physical Society, and is the recipient
of several honorary degrees. When not solving the problems of the universe, she
can be found rock climbing, skiing, or contributing to art-science connections.
Hypermusic Prologue, a small opera
for which she wrote the libretto, premiered in the Pompidou Center in 2009, and
Measure for Measure, an art exhibit
she co-curated, opened in Los Angeles in 2010.
About Carrington MacDuffie
Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor and
recording artist who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been
a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook, Many
Things Invisible. Alongside her narration work, she has released a new album of original songs, Only an Angel.