A Briefer History of Time by Leonard
Mlodinow
Short, Easy Overview
From One of the Most Brilliant Minds of Our Time
Comes a Book that Clarifies His Most Important Ideas
Stephen Hawking’s worldwide bestseller, A Brief History of Time, remains
one of the landmark volumes in scientific writing of our time. But for years
readers have asked for a more accessible formulation of its key concepts
—the nature of space and time, the role of God in creation, and the history
and future of the universe.

Professor Hawking’s response is this new work that will guide
nonscientists everywhere in the ongoing search for the tantalizing secrets
at the heart of time and space.…
Although “briefer,” this book is much more than a mere explanation of
Hawking’s earlier work. A Briefer History of Time both clarifies and
expands on the great subjects of the original, and records the latest
developments in the field—from string theory to the search for a unified
theory of all the forces of physics. Thirty-seven full-color illustrations
enhance the text and make A Briefer History of Time an exhilarating and
must-have addition in its own right to the great literature of science and
ideas.
Personal Review: A Briefer History of Time by Leonard
Mlodinow
This is a short, easy read that gives a brief overview of the major themes
found in relativity theory, quantum mechanics, big bang cosmology, and
string theory. Many understandable examples and illustrations are
provided to help the reader understand the difficult and lofty ideas that the
author attempts to convey.
Although it is now common knowledge that the earth is round, it can
sometimes be difficult to think of some reasons why this would be true that
you could give to a skeptic. The author gives some good observable
evidence why one might believe that the earth is round, as opposed to flat.
For example, the fact that when the earth is between the moon and the
sun, the shape of the earth's shadow on the sun is always a disk. If the
earth was a flat disk, we would expect to sometimes see a disk, but other
times to see an elongated circle or ellipse. These kinds of little observable
phenomena that anyone can see I find interesting.
The author should stick to physics as opposed to metaphysics or questions
concerning religion. For example, towards the beginning of the book, the
author seems to admit that if all can be explained by science, then
determinism is true and hence, there is no reason to think that the
conclusions we come up with are the correct ones because they have all
been determined. However, he tries to get out of this mess by claiming that
according to Darwinian evolution, we should have developed higher
congnative faculties which are good for knowledge. This is an absurd
claim, as not only does it not at all address the question of determinism,
but also has been shown by Plantinga's evolutionary argument against
naturalism to be seriously flawed. However, the point of the author
discussing this made even less sense to me when he began discussing

how things work at the quantum level (can only have a probability
distribution for where a particle is at any given time rather than absolute
certainty) and how Laplace's idea of determinism has been disproven
because of said quantum phenomena. So that whole discussion at the
beginning rather confused me.
There were many fascinating things that the author discussed in a way that
was easy for a layman to understand and which had "real world"
applications. For example, the author discusses how the further you are
from the center of the earth, the less of an impact gravity has on you.
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, this also turns out to affect how
you understand time so that you and someone much further from the
earth's surface experience time differently. A very practical application that
the author then mentions is that of GPS systems and how if we did not
take general relativity and the time contraction into account when
designing the satellites used in GPS navigation, that it would be way
noticeably off. Another "popular" science phenomena that the author was
able to make sense of was black holes and supernova. It was interesting to
learn the relationship between gravity, mass, and black holes.
This book is based on a classic in the popular science arena, and as such,
is definitely worth reading.
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