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Books : reviews

Sean M. Carroll.
Dark Matter, Dark Energy: the dark side of the universe.
Great Courses. 2007

rating : 2 : great stuff
review : 26 March 2024

This is the course guidebook that accompanies the 24 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially an abbreviated transcript of each lecture, a few pictures, and some related reading. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

This is a tour de force explanation of why our best model of the universe contains mostly stuff we know very little about, and have never directly detected: dark matter and dark energy.

Carroll spans the Big Bang, cosmology, and the Standard Model of particle physics, with beautifully lucid descriptions, intuitions, and inferences.

This was written and recorded before the discovery of the Higgs boson, and, perhaps more importantly, before the failure to discover supersymmetric particles, so some of the speculations are outdated. However, these are noted as speculations, and it is interesting to see the reasoning behind ideas that have not panned out.

Recommended.

Sean M. Carroll.
From Eternity to Here: the quest for the ultimate theory of time.
Oneworld. 2010

Sean M. Carroll.
Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time.
Great Courses. 2012

Sean M. Carroll.
The Particle at the End of the Universe: the hunt for the Higgs and the discovery of a new world.
Oneworld. 2012

Sean M. Carroll.
The Higgs Boson and Beyond.
Great Courses. 2015

Sean M. Carroll.
The Big Picture: on the origins of life, meaning and the universe itself.
Oneworld. 2016

rating : 1.5 : unmissable
review : 8 June 2024

Where are we? Who are we?
Do our beliefs, hopes and dreams hold any significance out there in the void?
Can human purpose and meaning ever fit into a scientific worldview?

Acclaimed award-winning author Sean Carroll brings his extraordinary intellect to bear on the realms of knowledge, the laws of nature and the most profound questions about life, death and our place in it all. In a dazzlingly unique presentation, Carroll takes us through the scientific revolution’s avalanche of discoveries, from Darwin and Einstein to the origins of life, consciousness and the universe itself. Delving into the way the world works at the quantum, cosmic and human levels, he reveals how human values relate to scientific reality.

An extraordinary synthesis of cosmos-sprawling science and profound thought, The Big Picture is Carroll’s quest to explain our world. Destined to sit alongside the works of our greatest thinkers, from Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan to Daniel Dennett and E. O. Wilson, this book shows that while our lives may be forever dwarfed by the immensity of the universe, they can be redeemed by our capacity to comprehend it and give it meaning.

In this ambitious work, Carroll covers an enormous range: fundamental physics, cosmology, epistemology, complexity, consciousness, morality.

He shows how (our best current understanding of) fundamental physics allows no room for any ghosts in the machine. He explains the philosophical position of “poetic naturalism”, and how it can be used to tell (well-founded, scientific) “stories” about the emergent macro-world that don’t need to reduce everything to quantum physics, but how this necessarily means we have to omit certain aspects when telling these stories. And he introduces Bayesian reason as a technique for improving understanding at all levels.

This is a bold endeavour, cramming much profound material into 50 chapters, each less than 10 pages, but adding up to over 400 pages of fascinating material. He has interesting insights on a wide range of topics, not just his own speciality of quantum physics, but also epistemology, emergence, complexity, and more. It is a deeply humanistic account, yet grounded in the cold hard light of the constraints of physical reality.

Sean M. Carroll.
Something Deeply Hidden: quantum worlds and the emergence of spacetime.
Oneworld. 2019

Quantum physics is not mystifying

The implications are mind-bending, and not yet fully understood, but this revolutionary theory is truly illuminating. It stands as the best explanation of the fundamental nature of our world.

Spanning the history of quantum discoveries, from Einstein and Bohr to the present day, Something Deeply Hidden is the essential guide to the most intriguing subject in science. Acclaimed physicist and writer Sean Carroll debunks the myths, resurrects and reinstates the Many-Worlds interpretation, and presents a new path towards solving the apparent conflict between quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of general relativity. In doing so, he fills a gap in the science that has existed for almost a century.

A magisterial tour, Something Deeply Hidden encompasses the cosmological and everyday implications of quantum reality and multiple universes. And – finally – it all makes sense.

Sean M. Carroll.
Space, Time and Motion.
Oneworld. 2022

In this major trilogy, Sean Carroll opens up the word of physics and shows that you don't need a science degree to gain a deeper insight into the workings of the universe.

Starting with the ideas that revolutionised our view of nature, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time and Motion poses deep questions about the cosmos, guiding us through classical physics from Euclid and Galileo to Newton and Einstein. Carroll investigates how a twin could be seven years older than her brother, and demonstrates why it's easier than you might think for a drifting astronaut to get back to the safety of the space station.

These are the laws of physics as you've never understood them before.

Sean M. Carroll.
Quanta and Fields.
Oneworld. 2024

Immense, strange and infinite, the world of modem physics often feels impenetrable to the undiscerning eye – a jumble of muons, gluons and quarks, impossible to explain without multiple degrees and a research position at CERN.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Allow world-renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Sean Carroll to guide you through the biggest ideas in the universe. Elegant and simple, Carroll untangles a web of theory to get to the heart of the truths they represent about the world around us.

In Quanta and Fields, the second book of a landmark trilogy, Carroll travels through the quantum revolution with the greatest minds of the twentieth century, from Schrödinger to Feynman. Exploring how several decades of research overturned centuries of convention, Carroll provides a dazzling tour of the most exciting ideas in modern science.