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Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces | 
 enlarge | Author: Frank Wilczek
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $17.79
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 4264
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0465003214
Dewey Decimal Number: 531.1
EAN: 9780465003211
ASIN: 0465003214
Publication Date: August 25, 2008
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Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 A must read for physics buffs August 24, 2008
Paul McCord (Macon, GA, USA)
51 out of 52 found this review helpful
Anyone with more than just a passive interest in physics and the nature of the universe will enjoy this book. The title caught my attention, and the first chapter drew me in. Before I realized an afternoon had passed, I had finished the book in a single sitting and found myself eagerly flipping back to previous chapters!
Frank Wilczek may be a Nobel Prize winner (2004), but you don't have to be a physicist to read his book. He writes clearly (and occasionally humorously), with only minimal use of numbers and equations, allowing the text to have a smooth flow so the reader can absorb the complexity of it all. (He even provides a glossary for clearer understanding of the topics discussed.)
Almost from the first page, this is fascinating read, offering insights that literally contradict past theories that were once thought to be irrefutable. For example, perfectly "empty" space is unstable and can actually spawn tiny particles, so we really can get something from nothing!
And then there's what Wilczek calls the Grid, a sort of upgrade over the old ether idea, although it's really something entirely different. The Grid offers an explanation for, among many other things, the spontaneous activity in what appears to be empty space.
The Lightness of Being is about more than just particle physics. It's about connecting theories old and new, from particle physics to cosmology, to bring us many steps closer not only to understanding how the forces of nature work together to form a life-sustaining universe, but also to understanding what "nature" really is.
Making Advanced Nuclear Particle Physics Fun and Accessible September 19, 2008
Brad VanAuken (Honeoye Falls, NY United States)
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
I am not a physicist but I have been fascinated by cosmology, general relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, multi-dimensional theories, black holes, grand unified theory (GUT), etc. since my college days in the mid-to-late seventies. I have read many books on these topics and many are very difficult reads given that I am not grounded in the advanced mathematical models and approaches that underpin the theories. Having said that, this book is a very easy read for the layman (as easy as a book on this topic can be) and is written in a highly entertaining way. Frank Wilczek has a wonderful sense of humor. I find that I don't have to read any sentence twice to understand the concept. I get it the first time around. It takes true brilliance to convey very complicated concepts simply and with great clarity. I sat down and read this book from cover to cover without putting it down. It covers the evolution of thinking on matter and space from the earliest thinking to today's speculation and theories. The concept of space as a dynamic grid is fascinating. Dr. Wilczek even includes a glossary of terms in the back of the book in case you don't understand the meaning of a particular word or phrase. I highly recommend this book to people who want to keep abreast of the latest thinking on this area of physics. It is an informative and engaging read.
Crystal clear October 7, 2008
Nigel Seel (Andover, UK)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Wilczek got his Nobel Prize for his part in developing Chromodynamics, the theory of quarks and gluons and their strong force interaction. In this book we get an awe-inspiring jaunt through the most modern views of the quantum vacuum (which W. calls "The Grid") and unification theories (including SUSY).
Lots of stuff I hadn't understood before - for example, the mass of protons and neutrons (actually hadrons in general) is not at all a primary attribute. Instead it's Nature's optimisation compromise between the energy in the colour field (decreases as quarks and antiquark, for example, get closer together) and the increasing energy of 'localisation' as the said quarks and antiquarks are constrained into the same place: (more precision in location means higher momentum and energy). This energy (E/c2) is what turns out to be the proton or neutron mass: the quarks and gluons themselves are almost massless.
Wilczek writes in a humorous and crystal clear way, which makes his book that rarity in popularisations - a bit of a page turner! Warning: you need to be comfortable with the conceptual basis of 'undergraduate' quantum mechanics and special relativity to engage with this book.
Mass and QCD explained October 1, 2008
Jaume Puigbo Vila (Barcelona, Spain)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book continues the themes of "Fantastic Realities" (which was more a collection of articles than a real book), but it is much more intelligible. The title corresponds to the fact that a human being is 95% pure energy. The reason: proton's and neutron's masses are very much larger than the rest masses of their constituent quarks, i.e. most of these baryons' mass is pure (m= E/c*c) energy.
If you are not familiar with Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong interaction, you will get a good grasp of it by reading this book and you will understand quark confinement. QCD is an exceptionally rigid theory depending only on three parameters. The author won a Nobel Prize for the development of QCD based on asymptotic freedom together with David Gross, although this work, as graduate student, was not recognized until 20 years later.
By reading the book you will also discover why gravity is so weak compared to other forces (a magnet lifts a clip against Earth gravitational pull) and you will learn about the theoretical framework to extend the Standard Model group of symmetries to Supersymmetry, a theory that suggests a unification of all interactions, including gravity, at high energies. Predicted superpartners of the standard particles may be discovered at the LHC in Geneva. On the way you will also come to accept that empty space is a most complex structure: a multilayered, multicolored superconductor.
The author questions Popper's falsifiability dogma to which all scientific theories must obey. Part 3 is titled: Is Beauty Truth? It reminds me of Sir Michael Atiyah's presentation at Cosmocaixa in Barcelona with a similar argument and the author presents historical evidence (Dirac's prediction of the positron, for example). Wilczek argues that a good beautiful theory (SUSY) is worth keeping even if some things do not really fit in. He adopts the Jesuit credo: "It is more blessed to ask forgiveness than permission". Nature is, of course, the last judge.
I will quote a beautiful description he makes of the LHC: "In sheer size, the LHC is our civilization's answer to the pyramids of ancient Egypt. But it is a nobler monument in many ways. It is born out of curiosity, not of superstition. It is a product of cooperation, not command". Blessed are we to live in such exciting times in science!
 The Lightness Of Being September 19, 2008
Rita Grolitzer (New York City)
9 out of 35 found this review helpful
Without a good basic science knowledge you are likely
to find this book incomprehensible.
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