An Infinity of Worlds - Will Kinney ***

There is something rather odd about this book on cosmic inflation. Will Kinney assumes a considerable amount of foreknowledge in the reader - for example, he uses electron volts as a unit of energy without unpacking the concept and throws in everything from 'the unification of strong and electroweak forces' to 'the Hawking radiation of black holes' as if these are topics with which the reader will be comfortably familiar, no explanation needed. The problem with this is, if you know that much, you are probably pretty clued in on the basics of cosmic inflation too, so I'm not sure who the target reader of this book is. This is not helped by a series of light cone-based diagrams that convey nothing much at all.

Inflation is a strange subject. It's a patch to fix the Big Bang theory so it can cope with the way that the universe is unexpectedly homogenous and flat (in the sense of (not) curved space), a patch that has limited evidence to back it up. Kinney emphasises where inflation makes confirmed predictions, but also notes that it has its failings - it's the kind of topic where speculation tends to be piled on speculation. An Infinity of Worlds does quite a good job of explaining the nature of inflation, but, as tends to be the case in books on this topic, it is less successful on making symmetry breaking and eternal inflation accessible and comprehensible.

Kinney sometimes throws aspects of current theory into the mix without justifying them. So, for example, a lot of the early discussion in the book is based on the cosmological principle without saying why we should assume the cosmological principle holds. It's just given as a sort of cosmological axiom. The book is also strangely selective in what it questions. We read in the preface that Kinney 'has chosen to give short shrift to theories of modified gravity…' - but it seems odd to treat dark matter in this way when the whole basis of the book - inflation - is described as 'a highly speculative idea'. The degree to which dark matter is also speculative and only partly matches observation, yet is built into the assumptions, really ought to have been included.

Overall, then, some interesting content, but An Infinity of Worlds is unlikely to satisfy either the beginner wanting to understand inflation from scratch, or someone who has already read widely and wants a more hands-dirty exploration of inflation's nuts, bolts, context and failings.

Hardback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Comments

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...

How to Keep a Plane in the Sky - Alex Davies ****

If there's one big gap in the science writing sphere, it's popular engineering (you can quibble over whether engineering is science, but where else would you put popular engineering?). Alex Davies does the field a real service with this insightful introduction to the world of test engineering. The concept is simple. If we build something and sell it, we need to test it to make sure that it won't fail in a way that's dangerous to the consumer. The most obvious example is airliners, which feature at some length, but this applies to everything from cuddly toys to hair straighteners: someone needs to predict what could go wrong and to put the product through its paces to see if it will survive under any reasonable circumstances. When Davies is telling a story of test engineering in action, the book is a delight. He opens with the way that real bears are used to test if bears can get into coolers and trash cans - and the impressive ways these animals can circumvent human in...

On the Equality of All Things - Carlo Rovelli ****

There is a wide gulf between the worldviews of physicists and philosophers. Many physicists present a rather sweetly naive, child-like view of the world, where philosophers bring a distinctly more adult, cynical tone. This being the case, it can be a little worrying when a physicist dips a toe into the philosophical mire. Infamously, in The Grand Design , Stephen Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow told us that philosophy was now dead because science could deal with anything it had previously been needed for. Thankfully, Carlo Rovelli is not trying to do away with philosophy, though it has to be said that when he veers into the topic that physicist's naivety can make it feel like the philosophising of an earnest eighteen-year-old. Take the opening paragraph, which tells us 'electrons and minds, stones and laws, judgements and galaxies do not essentially differ in nature from one another. They are notions that illuminate each other'. I almost expected a Pink Floyd soundtr...

Search This Blog