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| Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces |
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List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $17.79
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Manufacturer: Basic Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 531.1
EAN: 9780465003211
ISBN: 0465003214
Label: Basic Books
Manufacturer: Basic Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2008-08-25
Publisher: Basic Books
Studio: Basic Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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Physicist’ understanding of the essential nature of reality changed radically over the past quarter century. Frank Wilczek has played a lead role in establishing the new paradigms. Transcending the clash and mismatch of older ideas about what matter is, and what space is, Wilczek presents here some brilliant and clear syntheses. Space is a dynamic material, the engine of reality; matter is a subtle pattern of disturbance in that material. Extraordinarily readable and authoritative, The Lightness of Being is the first book to unwrap these exciting new ideas for the general public. It explores their implications for basic questions about space, mass, energy, and the longed-for possibility of a fully unified theory of Nature. Along the way, Wilczek presents new perspectives on many strange aspects of our fantastic universe. Pointing toward new directions where the great discoveries in fundamental physics are likely to come, he envisions a new Golden Age in physics.
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| Spotlight customer reviews: |
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Lightness of Reading a Nobel Laureate's Writings
Comment: This is the clearest explanation of multitudes of basic theoretical elements for NON-experts in physics that I've ever read! And while he openly admits to no great desire to integrate science with art and/or an abstract (non-personified) form of religion, I sense a couple of starter-possibilities someone else might use in trying that. Already I've gone on to his earlier book -- Longing for the Harmonies -- to search for more clarity on several relevant ideas. Right now, Wilczek is right up there near Henry Stapp on my ranking of best-tentative-directions-in-grasping a multiverse that MAY have started with MIND versus MATTER but so far we really don't know which.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best fundamental physics book in a generation.
Comment: The book reaches out to a wide audience: communicating with wit, skill, and remarkable truthfulness. In this it is better than any other popular account of fundamental physical reality that I know--bringing you into the mind of a top-level theorist, connecting you with how he thinks, what is actually known, what the questions are, what will be learned in the next few years. The book is intense, entertaining, extremely honest. There is no BS. Bob Laughlin said it: the book is both fun, and *right*.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Quite technical, but very interesting
Comment: The author is a very brilliant person. This book is not light reading. On the other hand, the subject matter is quite complex. For physicists, the book is a five plus. I am glad that I labored through it, although at times, I was tempted to put it aside. It took a lot of work and concentration to read it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Lighness of Being
Comment: The Lighness of Being by Wilczek.
Great booik. Not quite done with it yet. Very good on the Core Theory (or Standard Model). Very understandbly written.
Chris G.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Particle physics still alive?
Comment: Frank Wilczek, Physics Professor, MIT, Nobel Prize winner 2004,
427 publications, impressive work on theoretical particle physics.
This book is a classic, and a great read for anyone who is interested in physics.
Looking at the MIT website, there are many physics professors. What about the students? They can do research on particle physics. Where are the jobs when they graduate? How do they make a living? This is the main reason that Physics is fairly dead for the rest of the country.
I got my Ph.D. in Chemical Physics. I worked at Princeton University, under the late Dr. Lyman Spitzer. The first thing he told me, was there was no guarantee of jobs if you worked here. He was brutally honest and I appreciated that to this day.
I subsequently changed my field, Physics to Chemistry, to Computer Science, then to work as a Business Professor. Today, I teach everything from Accounting to Unix.
Yes, Physics is the foundation of everything. Dr. Wilczek has done very well. But for the young aspiring physics researcher, you need to put in 10 times the effort to be the next Dr. Wilczek. Good luck.
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