Un libro spesso complicato,come d'altronde lo ?¨ la materia di cui tratta: la fisica delle teorie di stringa et similia.Nonostante questa complessit?  intrinseca,l'autore ?¨ un ottimo divulgatore,sapendo alternare le parti pi?? tecniche a quelle pi?? discorsive.Molto interessante anche il taglio scettico,ma aperto a tutte le possibilit?  nei confronti delle teorie di stringa,mettendo bene in evidenza la necessit?  della sperimentazione quando si parla di fisica: non basta la bellezza di teorie matematiche,ma ?¨ necessaria la prova empirica portata a supporto. ( )

Five stars, because I love this stuff...and he does an amazing job of simplifying very complex concepts. Well, that is until he got to D-branes and M-theory...kind of lost me there for a bit.

Oh, and he gets five stars for saying things like

I will also attempt to present a "fair and balanced" treatment of string theory (in a "non-Fox News" sense)

and on Hubble's initial estimation of the age of the universe being only 2 billion years (he revised it)

This was embarrassing, because the earth was, and is, known to be older than that, except by school boards in Ohio, Georgia, and Kansas perhaps.

and in the same vein on Euclidean vs non-Euclidean geometry...

As any European high school student could tell you, the sum of the angles inside this triangle is 180 degrees.

This is a wonderfully composed progression of physics history from Plato to string theory and Krauss was in my reading extremely fair and balanced in his discussions of the various incarnations of string theory. Easy to read, not focused on the math. I think it takes someone extremely comfortable with the subject to simplify it for the masses. He did well.

My two nit-picks, for all the accolades I can gush:
1) Krauss opens with a Twilight Zone quote and a snippet from an episode that dealt with another dimension...and he got the title wrong (three times in the text, so it was not just a typo). It was "Little Girl Lost", but he called it "Little Lost Girl".
2) He misquotes a line from his favorite movie (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the Eighth Dimension) - he said "Wherever you go, there you are." but it really was "...no matter where you go, there you are"

Why is that important? If Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly misquoted, I'd shrug it off because I expect that from them, but I expect that Krauss's editor didn't bother checking because he was Krauss.

Still, I very highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the subject who doesn't want to mess with tensors and other such math.
( )

A non fiction book pimped heavily by Ira Flatow on NPR, Hiding in the Mirror is an overview of cutting edge cosmology and particle physics by Lawrence Krauss.

The full title of the book is: Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities, from Plato to String Theory (by way of Alicein Wonderland, Einstein, and The Twilight Zone)

In reality, Plato, Alice, Einstein and the Twilight Zone are hooks for Krauss to investigate and discuss higher dimensions, string theory, particle physics, cosmology and a host of related subjects and digressions underneath that umbrella.

Starting with a memory of a Twilight Zone episode ("Little Girl Lost"), Krauss explores the ideas of extra dimensions, eventually getting into particle physics, quantum gravity, and string theory. Having written about and clearly being a big fan of Star Trek, Krauss is tuned into popular culture and uses examples from science fiction as vehicles for discussing some very tricky subjects. He's not a devotee at the church of String Theory, and so his view of it is somewhat more skeptical than other books I've read on the subject (eg, Brian Greene's work).

Krauss does a good job at balancing the material. Its difficult to make these esoteric subjects accessible to everyone, and perhaps only someone like Carl Sagan could have done much better. Equations are at a bare minimum in the book. I did take away a better knowledge of some of the corners of particle physics. Since reading this, I picked up the latest Scientific American, and a discussion of some particulars of bosons in an article made me think "Aha! Krauss discussed *that*!"

I think its a good primer on these subjects for intelligent readers who want to know more about some very tricky subjects. ( )

The subtitle expresses it all: "The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions".

We start with a recap of special and general relativity, setting the stage for the claim that physics has, legitimately, changed how we think about space and time.
This is followed by a brief discussion of Kaluza-Klein theory, and an even briefer discussion of Weyl's gauge theory.
These set us up for the bulk of the story which is the ever crazier claims of the string theory crowed. I've no idea if their ideas make sense when expressed as mathematics, but, expressed as prose, this book was as unsatisfactory as all pop physics books.

It's nice that the author expresses skepticism about the claims of string theory, but it would be even nicer if he were to write a book that book explained the subject and was not targetted at the retarded. ( )