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Book Recommendation: The Fabric Of The Cosmos By Brian Greene

Posted on Sunday May 29, 2016 9:45AM by SJ — No Comments ↓

My last book recommendation was also science related, but you can’t really get enough science, so here is my current reco, Brian Greene’s ‘The Fabric Of The Cosmos’. Brian Greene covers bits of General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and other cool topics to help non-science majors get a better understanding of the underlying nature of the Universe.

Brian Greene is a superb science communicator and is also a String Theorist, so in addition to well-proven theories of physics, he also teases us with hints of what we might discover or prove in the future as technology and experiment methods improve. It’s also a very math-lite book, there won’t be any equations to solve or tests to take, just a bunch of cool insights into space and time.

Enjoy!

Book Recommendation: From Eternity To Here By Sean Carroll

Posted on Thursday Apr 28, 2016 5:36PM by SJ — No Comments ↓

I recently read Sean Carroll’s ‘From Eternity To Here’ and I thought it was a superb explanation of the physics that might lead us to understanding time. But don’t be fooled into thinking it has the answer to “what is time?”, we still don’t have aÂ full understanding, fortunately we do however have General Relativity, Quantum Field Theory, Entropy, and a bunch of other cool theories that ProfessorÂ Carroll ties together very clearly. It’s very light on math also, in case you happen to have that phobia.

‘From Eternity To Here’ also includes bits of interesting history of how we have perceived and explained time and cool stories of the physicists and their discoveries.

Enjoy!

Book Recommendation: Time’s Arrow By Martin Amis

Posted on Thursday Apr 7, 2016 12:45PM by SJ — No Comments ↓

I just read “Time’s Arrow” by Martin Amis and I am very pleased. Sean Carroll (very clever cosmologist/physicist/science communicator) recommended it as an interesting portrayal of how we expect time to work by turning it backward in the experience of the protagonist’s life. Every moment is lived end to beginning, and cause-and-effect and entropy become more obvious in their reversal.

I won’t say too much about the life of the protagonist because even though I think his story is very compelling on its own and would be a great read in the usual chronology, I don’t want to give too much away, and also I think my favourite part of the book is how deftly the writer puts us in a story in reverse and would have been excellent with many different plots. I’ve never read anything like it.

It’s a short novel, only 165 pages or so, nice and quick, and the novelty of watching a life in reverse was very fun despite some of the darker experiences.
Enjoy!

Revelating on a Sunday Afternoon

Posted on Sunday Jan 6, 2013 7:49PM by SJ — No Comments ↓

Dear friends, first off, I started my Sunday with the
realization that Red Rose Speedway by Paul McCartney is on Spotify.
Playlist saved, locked on repeat. And then we had a great rehearsal
this afternoon. This band is fekkin great, come and check out one
of our upcoming shows: www.sjatr.com/shows

After that, I got back and finished off a new song, and now I’m
just listening to Red Rose Speedway again with a cup of tea and I’m
going to finish a book lent to me by Phil Hirschi (who will be
playing cello at these upcoming shows with us).