A Book on Science

This book is not really a new comer. Yet as I do love physics, I find it really interesting. Part which I like the most is “Evolving Universe..”. It discusses recent advance in physics, such as, String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity- two theories which seems to compete each other for unifying all of physics. A good quote of Lee Smolin, one of the leaders of Loop Quantum Gravity theorists

“Nature is a unity. This pen is made of atoms and it falls in the earth’s gravitational field. Hence there must be one framework, one law of nature of which these two theories are different aspects. It would be absurd if there were two irreconcilable laws of physics, one for one domain of the world and another for another domain.”

I’m not truly following the debate between String Theory and Quantum Gravity, particularly in technical terms. However, it is likely that fierce competition between them take place. In the last paragraph of his article, Smolin writes

“The good thing about science is that you get these shocks from real world. You can live for a few years in an imaginary world, but in the end the task of science is to explain what we observe. Then you look in the mirror and ask yourself ‘Do I want to be out there in eleven dimensions, playing with beautiful math when the experiments start coming in”

Here, Smolin attacks string theorists who believe that there are eleven dimensions in universe. Smolin's words somehow reminds me to Samuelson’s words arguing to those of Friedman.