Why read A Different Universe?

Book cover of A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down

Book description

Why everything we think about fundamental physical laws needs to change, and why the greatest mysteries of physics are not at the ends of the universe but as close as the nearest ice cube or grain of salt Not since Richard Feynman has a Nobel Prize-winning physicist written with as…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Different Universe as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Efe Yazgan

Author

I like the main idea promoted in the book that even laws of nature (including general relativity) result from "collective effects," i.e., many-body interactions. This is supported by examples from the material nature of the vacuum of elementary particles to proteins and daily life.

The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN (after the book was written) already greatly increased our confidence that the vacuum is not empty but a type of matter from which elementary particle properties emerge.

I also like his thoughts on the philosophy of physics from the collective-effects (or non-reductionist) perspective. He claims that for a…

From Efe's list on The best non-technical books to get interested in knowing the Universe.