Quake3World

If anyone is up for reading the same book I am right now (Briane Green's "The Fabric of the Cosmos") and discussing it here let me know.

u should start a q3w book club

kracus never read it but im sure he wants to discuss it with you untill flames do you part

How long is it?

ToxicBug wrote:How long is it?

wrong answer

Dave wrote:

ToxicBug wrote:How long is it?

wrong answer

jerk

thats using some superiour strategy right there

MKJ wrote:thats using some superiour strategy right there

wow trolling with an overused lame catch phrase is so funny.

*reels in*

I was going to read A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, which looks like a similar book, or at least the same style, before I decided to take a couple of classes this summer.

Oh and it looks like its about 570 pages, so TB won't be reading it

MKJ wrote:thats using some superiour strategy right there

I had to laff

tnf wrote:If anyone is up for reading the same book I am right now (Briane Green's "The Fabric of the Cosmos") and discussing it here let me know.

Physics? I dunno... I don't know much about it and I'd be afraid to get into a physics-ignorant discussion with you... (I've seen it done before. )

Plus, as I'm taking a backpacking trip next week, I need to find a book small enough to carry everywhere with me. Is there a condensed version? :icon26:

werldhed wrote:

tnf wrote:If anyone is up for reading the same book I am right now (Briane Green's "The Fabric of the Cosmos") and discussing it here let me know.

Physics? I dunno... I don't know much about it and I'd be afraid to get into a physics-ignorant discussion with you... (I've seen it done before. )

Plus, as I'm taking a backpacking trip next week, I need to find a book small enough to carry everywhere with me. Is there a condensed version? :icon26:

There is a paperback version. And as for the physics, it assumes no prior knowledge.

Dave wrote:I was going to read A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, which looks like a similar book, or at least the same style, before I decided to take a couple of classes this summer.

Oh and it looks like its about 570 pages, so TB won't be reading it

Fabric of teh Cosmos is about string theory.
Does Bryson's book cover that topic at all?

dave that bryson book kicks a lot of ass

Well, I'm about 80 pages in so far, and this is a very good book thus far.

Found a great quote that addresses almost all of Kracus's random thoughts and the frustration you feel as a person educated in physics trying to answer them:
"You could spend a lifetime - in antiquity, some did - wondering what happens when you reach earth's edge, or trying to figure out who or what lives on the earth's underbelly. But when you learn that the earth is round, you see that previous mysteries are not solved; instead, they're rendered irrelevant."

Substitute "previous mysteries" with Kracus's random thoughts..and you see what I mean. Kracus, it isn't that your posts are always just plain wrong (although in terms of physics many are), the thing is, in light of what we already know, they are just irrelevant (like the "when is Russia?" type of question).

tnf wrote:

Dave wrote:I was going to read A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, which looks like a similar book, or at least the same style, before I decided to take a couple of classes this summer.

Oh and it looks like its about 570 pages, so TB won't be reading it

Fabric of teh Cosmos is about string theory.
Does Bryson's book cover that topic at all?

Dunno, I never got to start it

Well, I bit the bullet. What a great book (I'm still only on chapter 1). I wonder if proving the 11 dimensions predicted by M-theory exist can resolve the "dark matter" conflict... Why science can't currently account for a large amount of volume apparently missing from observable space.

I was also intrigued by his ambiguous use of the word "Reality." Does he mean a physical reality, either touchable or untouchable (but no less real like time), or a more abstract version that also dictates why people behave in certain ways.

tnf wrote:If anyone is up for reading the same book I am right now (Briane Green's "The Fabric of the Cosmos") and discussing it here let me know.

Sounds very interesting. I'll look for a copy tomorrow. I'm not high level educated in science or anything like that. But I have a knack for grasping concepts pretty easily.

Dave: Are you referring to the string universe theory? Where the galaxies are concentrated in threadlike 'tubes' with huge amounts of empty space between?

Dave -This is the bryson book you are describing, right?
EDIT - nvm I see what you are talking about... I skipped the 'roads to reality' part because I saw most of it in the 'elegant universe book.' I started right at "universe in a bucket." I'm up to page 110. So far he's spent most of the book discussing the departure from the newtonian world - first via Einstein's special, and then general, theories of relativity, then jumps into the quantum world, quantum entanglement, the whole 'observer's paradox' (not named directly), heisenberg's stuff, all building to the crescendo where he will point out that (if I am predicting right) quantum and relativity cannot both be right, and thus we need a new theory to explain the universe on both the micro- and macroscopic levels..or sommat.

scourge34 wrote:

tnf wrote:If anyone is up for reading the same book I am right now (Briane Green's "The Fabric of the Cosmos") and discussing it here let me know.

Sounds very interesting. I'll look for a copy tomorrow. I'm not high level educated in science or anything like that. But I have a knack for grasping concepts pretty easily.

Dave: Are you referring to the string universe theory? Where the galaxies are concentrated in threadlike 'tubes' with huge amounts of empty space between?

The string theory is not quite what you describe there scourge.

This is the closest thing I can find to what I'm talking about.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... f%26sa%3DN

I'm sure I was pretty vague in my description.

Yea, that picture shows the "filamentous "distribution of galaxies throughout the universe - but I that really isn't the defining characteristic of string theory. Get the book and jump on board to the discussion here. But be prepared to be doing some serious head scratching at times when reading, because they way you observe the universe will be forever changed...you have to almost forget the way you've looked at things...its crazy stuff.

tnf wrote:Dave -This is the bryson book you are describing, right?
EDIT - nvm I see what you are talking about... I skipped the 'roads to reality' part because I saw most of it in the 'elegant universe book.' I started right at "universe in a bucket." I'm up to page 110. So far he's spent most of the book discussing the departure from the newtonian world - first via Einstein's special, and then general, theories of relativity, then jumps into the quantum world, quantum entanglement, the whole 'observer's paradox' (not named directly), heisenberg's stuff, all building to the crescendo where he will point out that (if I am predicting right) quantum and relativity cannot both be right, and thus we need a new theory to explain the universe on both the micro- and macroscopic levels..or sommat.

Yessir.. I typically start books at the beginning (unless its the preface or sommat)

Chapter 1 is pretty much as you described the following chapters, so it's probably skippable even if you hadn't read it elsewhere

One thing I really like about the book is that it's very visual. I know a tiny bit about what he's writing about already, but his descriptions play around visually in my head like some kind of Errol Morris documentary. Someone like Morris could take this book to an incredibly cinematic level.

like this:

http://www.errolmorris.com/content/abor ... s_ibm.html