This is pop-science at its best. Rovelli tries to elucidate some of physics’ most important concepts to the layman. He largely succeeds in explaining concepts like the general theory of relativity in a simple, if necessarily incomplete, manner. What it lacks in academically rigorous depth Rovelli makes up for by inspiring fascination and wonder to explore further. For a non-scientist like myself he makes science fun and accessible, while challenging my assumptions of the world as I know it. He makes the implausible seem as real as, in fact, it often is: such as a twin who spends his whole life in the Himalayas is actually very slightly older than his brother who lives by the ocean, since time passes more slowly at sea level. Does quantum mechanics actually prove that there are no firm laws in physics, just probabilities or is there really an “objective reality independent of whoever reacts with whatever”, as Einstein struggled to believe to his dying day? Was the Big Bang the beginning of the Universe and time or was it just the beginning of one universe and more like a Big Bounce, the point where one previously contracting universe started to expand again, as loop quantum gravity would suggest? Rovelli makes you ponder the mysteries of matter, space, and time in ways that make you wish you knew more about the current state of physics.
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