An Introduction to Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe
by Leonard Susskind, James Lindesay
List Price:
Our Price: $22.54
You Save: $12.46 (36%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $14.91 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: James Lindesay, Leonard SusskindEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-12-31
ISBN: 9812560831
Number of pages: 200
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Book Reviews of An Introduction to Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe
Book Review: Black hole spirit according to a true leader
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is an exciting review of the most important ideas that have emerged in our quest to understand black holes - essential labs that tell us a lot about quantum gravity and the deepest mysteries of the Universe.
It is an introduction but an introduction for a person who is serious about black holes, not just a person who wants to impress his friends with two emotional sentences about them!
Nevertheless, ordinary people should give it a try, especially plumbers because the author is also an ex-plumber whose father was a plumber and wanted his son to continue in the tradition.
It just happened that Susskind also became one of the top 5 black hole experts in the world. Please don't ask me to tell you who are the remaining four because it could be a tough task.
He's been waging a war against some superficially acceptable but wrong ideas - such as the information loss - and he became the winner. Meanwhile, he also co-discovered string theory and other things.
I don't know James Lindesay too well, so let me talk about Susskind as the author.
At the beginning of the book, you are presented with the geometry of the Schwarzschild black hole - especially what is its causal structure. Equations but also pictures are included. Various coordinates are used to find out who can escape from where etc. i.e. what is the causal diagram.
Following chapters are dedicated to quantum fields in this curved background and particle production, Unruh radiation and density matrix etc. When they have everything, they can finally explain why black hole evaporate (they're not quite black) and why they have a temperature and entropy.
Charged black holes differ in some details and they are explained, too. But all these semiclassical pictures are so 1970s. The laws of Nature must be unitary so something must be slightly different.
Susskind dedicates more than 1/2 of the book to the most modern interpretations and insights that have occurred in our research of string theory and closely related paradigms such as stretched horizons, baryon number violation by black holes, complementarity, holography (he is a co-father of both), related entropy bounds, the concise description of black holes in Maldacena's AdS/CFT, and light-cone descriptions of black holes.
If you want to know how black holes really work according to the best science we have as of 2008, read this book in detail. The author is one of the funniest top physicists and he writes in a no-nonsense style.
More An Introduction to Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe reviews:
1 2
1 2
Summary of An Introduction to Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe
Over the last decade the physics of black holes has been revolutionized by developments that grew out of Jacob Bekenstein's realization that black holes have entropy. Steven Hawking raised profound issues concerning the loss of information in black hole evaporation and the consistency of quantum mechanics in a world with gravity. For two decades these questions puzzled theoretical physicists and eventually led to a revolution in the way we think about space, time, matter and information. This revolution has culminated in a remarkable principle called "The Holographic Principle", which is now a major focus of attention in gravitational research, quantum field theory and elementary particle physics. Leonard Susskind, one of the co-inventors of the Holographic Principle as well as one of the founders of String theory, develops and explains these concepts.Astronomy Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Astronomy Books
The Universe in a Nutshellby Stephen William Hawking
Bantam; Published: 2001-11-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.25
Price in other shops:
Cosmosby Carl Sagan
Ballantine Books; Published: 1985-10-12; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.71
Price in other shops:
Hubble: Imaging Space and Timeby David Devorkin, Robert Smith
National Geographic; Published: 2008-09-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $31.02
Price in other shops:
NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the UniverseFirefly Books; Published: 2006-09-12; Spiral-bound; Book
Best price: $18.66
Price in other shops:
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Realityby Brian Greene
Vintage; Published: 2005-02-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.25
Price in other shops:
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theoryby Brian Greene
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2003-10-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.97
Price in other shops:
The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanicsby Leonard Susskind
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2008-07-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.70
Price in other shops:
Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASAby Richard C. Hoagland, Mike Bara
Feral House; Published: 2007-10-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.97
Price in other shops:
A Brief History of Timeby Stephen Hawking
Bantam; Published: 1998-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops:
Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End . . .by Ph.D., Philip Plait
Viking Adult; Published: 2008-10-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.21
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Cosmologyby Steven Weinberg
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2008-04-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.37
Price in other shops:
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travelby Michio Kaku
Doubleday; Published: 2008-03-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.10
Price in other shops:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory (Complete Idiot's Guide to)by George Musser
Alpha; Published: 2008-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.89
Price in other shops:
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theoryby Brian Greene
Vintage; Published: 2000-02-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.37
Price in other shops:
Three Roads to Quantum Gravityby Lee Smolin
Basic Books; Published: 2002-08-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.91
Price in other shops:
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universeby Roger Penrose
Vintage; Published: 2007-01-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.75
Price in other shops:
Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensionsby Lisa Randall
Harper Perennial; Published: 2006-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.87
Price in other shops:
The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Nextby Lee Smolin
Mariner Books; Published: 2007-09-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.27
Price in other shops:
The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Designby Leonard Susskind
Back Bay Books; Published: 2006-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.63
Price in other shops:
The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanicsby Leonard Susskind
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2008-07-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.65
Price in other shops: