Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World by Lisa Randall (PDF)

Description

“Science has a battle for hearts and minds on its hands….How good it feels to have Lisa Randall’s unusual blend of top flight science, clarity, and charm on our side.”—Richard Dawkins“Dazzling ideas….Read this book today to understand the science of tomorrow.”—Steven PinkerThe bestselling author of Warped Passages, one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century,” Lisa Randall gives us an exhilarating overview of the latest ideas in physics and offers a rousing defense of the role of science in our lives. Featuring fascinating insights into our scientific future born from the author’s provocative conversations with Nate Silver, David Chang, and Scott Derrickson, Knocking on Heaven’s Door is eminently readable, one of the most important popular science books of this or any year. It is a necessary volume for all who admire the work of Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, Simon Singh, and Carl Sagan; for anyone curious about the workings and aims of the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest and most expensive machine ever built by mankind; for those who firmly believe in the importance of science and rational thought; and for anyone interested in how the Universe began…and how it might ultimately end.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Written with dry wit and ice-cool clarity. A book anyone at all interested in science must read. Surely the science book of the year.” — Sunday Times (London)“Startlingly honest [and] beautifully written. . . . Randall’s calm authority and clarity of explanation are exemplary. . . . Like being taken behind the curtain in Oz and given a full tour by the wizard.” — NewScientist.com“[Randall is] one of the more original theorists at work in the profession today. . . . She gives a fine analysis of the affinity between scientific and artistic beauty, comparing the broken symmetries of a Richard Serra sculpture to those at the core of the Standard Model.” — New York Times Book Review“[A] whip-smart inquiry into the scientific work being conducted in particle physics. . . . [Randall] brings a thrumming enthusiasm to the topic, but she is unhurried and wryly humorous. . . . [Knocking on Heaven’s Door] dazzles like the stars.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“The general reader’s indispensable passport to the frontiers of science.” — Booklist (starred review)“[Randall’s] eloquent book details the trials and tribulations of the [Large Hadron Collider], from conception to implementation, and takes us on a grand tour of the underlying science.” — Nature“Offers the reader a glimpse of the future. . . . An enlightening and exciting read.” — San Francisco Book Review“Valuable and engaging. . . . Randall’s generous cornucopia of ideas, her engaging style, and above all her deep excitement about physics make this a book that deserves a wide readership.” — American Scientist“Full of passion and jaw-dropping facts. . . . A fascinating account of modern particle physics, both theoretical and practical.” — The Independent on Sunday“Beautifully written. . . . An impressive overview of what scientists (of any kind) get up to, how they work and why science is an inherently creative endeavor.” — Times Higher Education (London)“Randall’s witty, accessible discussion reveals the effort and wonder at hand as scientists strive to learn who we are and where we came from.” — Publishers Weekly“Randall manages to transform . . . experiments at distant and unfamiliar scales into crucial acts in a cosmic drama.” — Daily Beast“An exciting read about the very edge of modern science. . . . [Knocking on Heaven’s Door] inspires a sense of awe, appreciation and excitement for what the future holds.” — Daily Texan“Very accessible, readable, and appealing to a broad audience. . . . Randall’s passion and excitement for science and physics is infectious and welcome in our digital age.” — New York Journal of Books“Lisa Randall has written Knocking on Heaven’s Door in the same witty, informal style with which she explains physics in person, making complex ideas fascinating and easy to understand. Her book . . . just might make you think differently―and encourage you to make smarter decisions about the world.” — President Bill Clinton“A deep and deeply wonderful explanation of how science―and the rest of the known universe―actually works.” — Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness“Lisa Randall is the rarest rarity―a theoretical physics genius who can write and talk to the rest of us in ways we both understand and enjoy. This book takes nonspecialists as close as they’ll ever get to the inner workings of the cosmos.” — Lawrence H. Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University“Science has a battle for hearts and minds on its hands: a battle on two fronts―against superstition and ignorance on one flank, and against pseudo-intellectual obscurantism on the other. How good it feels to have Lisa Randall’s unusual blend of top flight science, clarity, and charm on our side.” — Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion“Randall’s lucid explanations of . . . the frontiers of physics-including her own dazzling ideas-are highly illuminating, and her hearty defense of reason and science is a welcome contribution. . . . Read this book today to understand the science of tomorrow.” — Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works and The Stuff of Thought“Lisa Randall does a great job of explaining to the non-physicist the basic science approaches of modern physics and what the latest experiments might reveal. . . . This is a must read to appreciate what is coming in our future.” — J. Craig Venter, sequencer of the human genome and developer of the first synthetic life“I didn’t think it was possible to write a complex, detailed look at the world of physics that the non-scientist could understand, but then Lisa Randall wrote this amazing, insightful, and engaging book and proved me wrong.” — Carlton Cuse, award–winning producer and writer of Lost From the Back Cover One of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world and the bestselling author of Warped Passages, Lisa Randall is an expert in both particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest). In this, her most recent book, Randall takes us on an amazing tour through the latest developments in physics—including a new preface explaining the thrilling discovery of the Higgs boson—and the theoretical concepts underlying this work.Knocking on Heaven’s Door also explores the role of risk, creativity, uncertainty, beauty, and truth in scientific thinking. Through provocative conversations with leading figures in other fields, including chef David Chang, forecaster Nate Silver, and screenwriter Scott Derrickson, and through reflections on her own work, Randall makes an impassioned argument in defense of science. About the Author Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University, where she is Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees. Professor Randall was included in Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2007 and was among Esquire magazine’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.” Professor Randall’s two books, Warped Passages (2005) and Knocking on Heaven’s Door (2011) were New York Times bestsellers and 100 Notable Books. Her stand-alone e-book, Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space, was published in 2012. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book appears to have multiple objectives. One, listed in the conclusion, is to show how high-energy physicists and cosmologists determine their course. In other words, how does science work, at least for this subset of scientists? A further objective is to show the relevance of scientific thought to today’s complex challenges. The writing is very clear and the reader should follow what the author has written without any significant effort. The description of how the Large Hadron Collider works is the best I have seen, although its relevance to the objectives is more questionable, and it could have been better edited.How science works is given by example, mainly involving fundamental particle physics, which appears to be the author’s own area of work. The Higgs mechanism is explained from a theoretical viewpoint, then follow the problems arising from no direct observational evidence, and thus having to design indirect experiments. Such examples are given to show how science works for the modern particle physicist, and not simply to explain modern physics, although the reader will get this as well, at least up to a point.Nevertheless, there is an obvious problem: where to draw the line regarding what to include and what to leave out. If everything is included, the account gets bogged down in subsidiary side-explanations, but if too little is included, the reader is left with too many questions and may understand less than when he/she started. (Actually, this is how science really works. Very often as the scientist begins to unravel a problem, more problems simply grow up from nowhere; it is only when a genuine advance is made that answers to this morass of problems suddenly self-assemble into a coherent whole. This gives the researcher quite a remarkable feeling, and if the author was trying to encourage more young people to take up science, an example of something like this would have been highly desirable. Possible suggestion for the next edition?)As an example of what I found troubling, the explanation for why a photon has no mass was that a hypercharge gauge boson interacted with one of the weak gauge bosons and the combination no longer interacts with the weak charge of the vacuum (i.e., the Higgs field). The hypercharge gauge boson is not mentioned anywhere else, there are three weak gauge bosons with different charge (+1, 0, -1. If weak charge is conserved, how many hypercharge bosons are there? What happens if the collision results in net weak charge? A two-charged particle? Together with one or two postulated Higgs fields that have an internal broken symmetry, this is quite a set of postulates to explain one fact. Observational support for the mechanism is claimed from the following: in a Bose condensate the electrons pair and such pairs impede the photon’s progress, which conveys mass to the photon. Two objections come to mind: how do we know the photon has mass there, and why does this not happen as photons go through a crystal of, say, sodium chloride, where the photon hits a number of electron pairs.This example is not unique, but that raises the question, is this what the author intended to happen? There are no examples of looking back, just in case there has been a wrong turning, and as the example above ought to show, there could be some doubt as to whether that is right. On the other hand, if the objective is to encourage critical scientific thought, this book is actually a gold-mine. If you wish to understand how high-energy physicists think, this book appears to be very good. If you wish to know how science ought to work, then this is perhaps more debatable. In terms of Kuhn’s concept of how science works in practice, the young scientist should read this book, not so much for how science should work, but rather for how to go about advancing their own careers. Finally, the author often lapses into first person asides, and accordingly you get an insight into Lisa Randall, the person. This is most unusual in a scientific book, and well worth reading.

⭐I just finished Randall’s book Warped Passages and enjoyed it very much. So it was with anticipation that approached reading this book. Randall notes the intended audience for this book saying that it “is intended for an interested lay reader who would like to have a greater understanding of current theoretical and experimental physics and who wants a better appreciation of the nature of modern science – as well as the principles of sound scientific thought.” The title is explained in the book: “Scientists knock on heaven’s door in an attempt to cross the threshold separating the known from the unknown.”She begins by discussing the many misconceptions people have about science today and introduces us to the concept of effective theories, which is a technique scientists use to study “particles and forces that have effects at the distances in question.” A whole chapter is then spent on the contribution of Galileo in establishing the foundations of science thought. Some time is spent discussing the different aims for science and religion. She notes that the goals of science and religion are intrinsically different. Science addresses physical reality, whereas religion tends to be concerned with psychological or social human desires. Early modern scientists actually viewed the “Book of Nature” and the “Book of God” as similar paths to edification and revelation.We are next taken on a journey from the sub-atomic scales all the way down to something known as the Planck length (10-33 cm). We learn of the discoveries of electrons and quarks, fixed-target verses particles colliders, the Higgs mechanism, and more.Section III of the book delves into the machinery and measurements behind the science, notably the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. A chapter is spent discussing the conception, construction, first tests, and problems encountered with the LHC. Some feared the LHC would be capable of producing black holes, and maybe even destroy the earth. Randall puts our fears at bay by explaining all we need to know about this. She continues by discussing calculating and dealing with risk citing common examples such as climate change and the financial crisis and explains how risk can be mitigated. The next topic deals with measurement and uncertainty where we learn the meaning of the terms accuracy, precision, and systemic uncertainty. A chapter is devoted to the CMS and ATLAS experiments. These are the two general purpose detectors of the LHC. They are incredibly large and extremely complex wonders of engineering. Perhaps Randall’s own theories will be verified here. Space is devoted to explaining in more detail the detection system. Here we have the trackers (innermost part of the detector), the electromagnetic calorimeter, the hadron calorimeter, and on the outermost part of the detectors we have the muon detector. There are many images provided to show us all that is described in the text.Section IV of the book deals with the topics of modeling and prediction of results. The concept of beauty and its relationship to science is explored, and we are given some insight into the process of model building. This segues into the nature of the Higgs boson, the Higgs field, symmetry breaking, and how the Higgs imparts mass to particles via something called the Higgs mechanism. We also learn about how the particles produced in the LHC can be used to identify the “fingerprints” of the latest theories. One theory of the author, called the Randall-Sundrum theory, proposes a warped geometry involving two types of branes in close proximity. Randall expresses the anxiety provoking nature of waiting for the LHC results. She notes that “They could change our view of the underlying nature of reality […] When the results are in, whole new worlds could emerge. Within our lifetimes, we just might see the universe very differently.” The text would not be complete with a discussion of inflation, dark matter and dark energy. We are informed of the various dark matter detection methods, and the various experiments worldwide that are being conducted in a attempt to detect it.Randal has given us here a glimpse into the world of high-energy physicists and cosmologists, their hopes, and the experiments that could answer the fundamental questions about the universe we live in.

⭐I am sure Randall is a brilliant, and possibly an original scientist, however I find her thoughts on the philosophy of science, on creativity, and on human nature generally mundane. This would not matter so much if it were not for the fact they take up so much of her book. This inadvertent banality somehow extends into the scientific passages, in the form of repetitions – she sometimes repeats the same point three times in the same paragraph – as if she does not trust her audience will be able to accept some of the more surprising ideas she is presenting.On the positive side, the author did come across as a genuine and likeable person, if not a great stylist. Perhaps she just needs a bit more faith in her readers.

⭐There were sections of this that I enjoyed and found useful, but there was a lot of material that I felt she’d written up for other occasions (public lectures, student course material, etc) and had pressed into service to fill out the book. Its relevance to the topic at hand seemed somewhat tenuous e.g. the chapter ‘Risky Business’. On the other hand the diagrams on pp. 73 and 254/5 were useful. Just one more small point: when drawing nucleons in the context of their constituent parts do we have to show an encasing sphere? Is this meant to be a physical reality? I somehow doubt it – it’s not labelled as a ‘sheath’ or ‘wrapper’. If it has no physical counterpart, why add it?

⭐The best description of CERN I have come across. How did Europe manage to organise it when everything else it to touch seems to turn to dust!Very comprehensible (well mostly) great book.MM

⭐Lisa is an excellent communicator. She does a good job of giving you a feel of what is going on in a difficult subject without patronizing the reader. It would be too much to ask for her to provide a solid understanding of quantum chromodynamics and the Higgs mechanism without the use of sophisticated mathematics. Her views on the history and philosophy of science are also of interest.

⭐I have a scientific background but this is not the most riveting read. It starts very slowly and by then I had lost interest

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