The matter myth : dramatic discoveries that challenge our understanding of physical reality /

Recent breakthroughs in physics are causing a revolution in how scientists view the universe, according to Davies ( The Cosmic Blueprint ) and Gribbin ( In Search of the Big Bang ). The authors survey the discoveries that have caused this shift from the traditional mechanistic worldview (which sees the universe as ``a gigantic purposeless machine'') to a less rigidly determined one that includes chaos, black holes, antimatter and even the possibility of multiple universes. They explore how it would feel to be swallowed by a black hole (one would be stretched and squeezed before being crushed into nonexistence) and why going through a wormhole, a kind of space tunnel, would allow one to travel backward in time. The authors explain why cosmic strings (which may stretch across the universe and outweigh galaxies) could fit into a single atom and how space can be curved. This accessible work also examines fundamental questions such as how the universe's ``big bang'' origin probably sealed its fate (it will end in a reverse process known as the ``big crunch'') and whether time is real or simply an illusion. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

English astrophysicist-cum-science writer Gribbin (co-author, Cosmic Coincidences, 1989, etc.) and mathematical physicist Davies (Univ. of Adelaide, Australia; The Cosmic Blueprint, 1988, etc.) have collectively produced a couple of dozen popular books on the nature of the universe, churning them out as regularly as clockwork. Both are talented expositors with a passion to explain. But what can we expect from this latest version of micro and macro worlds? Not a lot of newness. Aficionados who are already titillated by parallel universes, multidimensional space, Schrödinger's cat, black holes, and wormholes will meet the same concepts and cast of characters, with the same zealous prose pointing out how weird and wonderful it all is. As a matter of fact, the purpose of the book seems to be to persuade readers of what the team devoutly believes: Newtonian reductionism (the matter myth) is dead; long live the new paradigm. Well, reductionism in physics died a long time ago with the appearance of relativity, quantum mechanics, and uncertainty. As for the new paradigm, Davies and now Gribbin are plumping for a ``self-organizing complexity''--a kind of interactive universe that raises the Gaia hypothesis to the nth power. Evidence for that is speculative and controversial. For the reader who might like to entertain this among other cosmological hypotheses, the setting out of one set of bizarre theories after another in a largely uncritical omnium-gatherum is more likely to engender skepticism than conviction. (Line drawings.)