The Hole in the Universe How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything

by K.C. Cole

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics, Astronomy, Philosophy

Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

For the past ten years, K.C. Cole has been a science writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Times; she has also written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Smithsonian, Discover, Newsweek, Newsday, Esquire, Ms., People and many other publications. Her articles were featured in The Best American Science Writing 2004 and 2005 and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002. She has also been an editor at Discover and Newsday.

Cole is the author of several nonfiction books, including Mind Over Matter: Conversations with the Cosmos; The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything; and The Universe and the Teacup, the Mathematics of Truth and Beauty.

Reviews

[J.D. Steens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read, April 2025:

After re-reading Cole, I wonder if we’re plagued somewhat with the legacy of Newton - that gravity is an attractive force where one body pulls another (or where both pull each other). Cole refers, for example, to the “inward pull of mutual attraction of everything;” popularizing books continue to say that gravity is one of the four forces - the other three operating at the atomic-level. Einstein, who says that gravity doesn’t attract and isn’t a force at all, gets lost. For Einstein, gravity is a geometric phenomenon. Space-time is warped by mass, and matter-energy follows the lines of space-time toward a large mass (the gravitational center). While Cole calls these lines “creases” and gives a nod to Einstein that way, she does not jettison the gravity-as-a-force concept.

This prompts a question. If large masses don’t pull, then matter and energy are themselves the source of motion.* Isn’t this per Newton’s first law, inertial motion, and isn’t this set in motion by the initial big bang (Cole: “In the…initial expansion set in motion by the big bang….”), or subsequently, set in motion by, say, supernova explosions?

More questions follow. When Cole says that “Gravity pulls space-time” (note the word “pull” again), this suggests that space-time is filled with, albeit in a dissipated way, matter-energy and that in her words is what gravity acts upon, though, more accurately stated - see prior paragraph - the inertial motion of matter-energy moves toward larger gravitational bodies. Thus, with gravitational lensing, light follows the geometric curvature of space-time because gravity acts on the “stuff” of space-time (i.e. massless light is not acted upon (“pulled”) by gravity). On this point, Cole writes: “Light passing through curved spacetime…does not, strictly speaking, bend; it simply follows the shortest possible path. The spacetime itself bends, taking the light with it.”

The main part of Cole’s book is the role of the vacuum where something emerges from nothing, and something merges back to nothing again. I think that something in this context means a particle, and nothing means energy (anti-particle?), but I am not clear. What is clear is that Cole says that in modern physics, basic reality is the (energy) field. It is primary, and matter is secondary. It is where the concentration of energy is small, versus matter where “the concentration of energy is great.” Seen this way, energy is a unitary substance.

I’m also not clear about the relationship of vacuum to a field and the “fabric” of space-time (fabric of spacetime is good because it means it consists of something, but the flat sheet analogy is misleading). Right off, I’d say that vacuum is the “field” at the micro (quantum) level and that spacetime is the field at the macro (gravity) level.

As others do, Cole posits three overarching cosmic scenarios - big crunch (“closed”), where matter “pulls” the big bang expansion back to its beginning point; infinite expansion (“open”), where the expansion from the big bang creates outward movement, counter to gravity; and flat, where gravity and expansion are at a balance point. Cole says we are in the flat scenario now, which is “a very brief moment when the forces are in exact balance [and] that moment appears to be now.” Left behind in her discussion of these three scenarios is the role of the inverse square law (it’s not in the glossary) where gravity’s effect becomes less and less as inertial movement extends from the large gravitational center (the origin of the big bang). Could the balance point she references (Cole writes that the universe seems “to float on the delicate boundary between expansion and contraction, the push of the big bang and the pull of everything”) be where outward inertia and inward gravity ceases to be in effect, thereby liberating inertia, leaving matter-energy to continue freely explaining the expansion of space-time (per Hubble et al. findings) we now see? Is dark energy’s repulsive force energy’s liberation from gravitational effects?

To continue the logic, if there is an overall cosmic curvature, would liberated matter-energy continue its journey around the cosmos and return back to its origins? And, beyond the balance point between “push and pull,” would the increasingly concentrated matter-energy now, under cosmic curvature, constitute a gravitational “pulling” effect that becomes increasingly strong per the inverse square law? If that were the case, wouldn’t that then be gravity playing the role of dark energy - a repulsive pulling in effect?

As a final point, in contrast to the scenario above, given Cole’s point about a hole in the universe, in a post big bang scenario where matter-energy explodes outward, is nothing left behind, in which case, can there be cosmic curvature and a return of cosmic energy back to its’ beginning?

*Do galaxies pull energy and matter (gas and dust) toward their gravitational centers or, alternatively, do energy and matter with their own inertial properties follow geometric lines toward the gravitational center (from unformed clouds, to accretion disks, to barred galaxies, to elliptical galaxies)?


2011 Review

The book's theme is the paradox of the concept of nothing in cosmological terms. The paradox is illustrated best by the singularity of a big bang event or black hole, which is (if measured mathematically) nothing yet is everything as it contains all that is and all that will be. This is, the author says, the "duality of nothing."

Nothing does not exist. The vastness of space is filled with energy, albeit in its lowest possible state. From here the author goes on to explain why the physical world has empty space. Without it, everything is solid. Space is needed to account for movement in the world, a dimension, a place for energy and matter to go. Another way to view the richness of "nothing" is the concept of zero, which is the balance point between positive and negative charges, the absence of which drives movement. A dancer's center of gravity is also a net balance point, or a zero dimension where all weight is concentrated at the center.

Cole's description of a "field" is excellent. Matter is not really solid. It is a field of energy. Matter is where a field is concentrated. Everything in nature comes in clumps (energy quanta; collections of matter), and everything unceasingly moves through continuously connected force fields. Each type of matter has its own field that weaves together to make the world as we know it. In force and matter fields, forces act on things and matter is acted upon. We cannot walk through matter fields, but we can walk through force fields. In space, the Higgs field, which the author says determines the identity of particles, is like "cosmic molasses" that slows down matter. This she says is why matter doesn't travel at the speed of light.

Space and time are flexible, not absolute constants. They are bent and extended by the weight of massive bodies of matter that draw/pull space (fields of energy) toward themselves, and add mass (and energy) to a body in the process. Thus, she seems to be saying, gravity both creates (pulls spacetime) and is created (by the addition of mass) at the same time.

Understanding gravity continues to be challenging. Gravity is commonly said, and is so stated by Cole, to involve the mutual attraction of two or more bodies toward each other, in contrast to the other forces (electromagnetic, and weak and strong nuclear forces) that involve positive and negative poles. Yet, the relationship between attraction and inertia (resistance) is not clear. Resistance seems to be a negative force that counters positive attraction. As to what pulls matter and energy toward a center point, the author goes back to her "nothing" theme. She says that molecules "don't use energy if they don't have to" (Is there a connection between quantum theory and gravity here? Was Aristotle right after all - natural movement was toward a rest state?), and tends to move to the lowest ground state (lowest energy state of mass) that is the center. To illustrate, she uses a marble moving around the rim of a bowl that quickly moves to the bottom of the bowl. Here, the power of zero (attraction and resistance cancel each other out) and pulls energy to a rest state where it remains, presumably, until it's acted upon by an outside force.

On the subject of gravity, it was fun to wonder and speculate while reading Cole. For example, she says gravity moves to a center point (where there's the lowest energy state), which suggests that this is the 'mysterious' force that lies at the center of the earth and pulls mass toward it. Yet, if it is the center that pulls, what created the center in the first place? Do matter and energy pull against each other, drawing inescapably toward a center point, and create round bodies that, in turn, pull spacetime onto themselves? Is it, in other words, not always a "center" that pulls, but matter and energy pulling against each other? Does extreme gravitational pull (such as in singularity cases) result in explosive situations, pushing energy and then matter outward? And, if energy moves outward at the speed of light, does it in turn create mass that, 'paradoxically,' pulls energy and mass outward?

In a way, the theme of nothing is incidental in this book. Cole's clear and accessible writing helps provide the lay person with an excellent overview of a large swath of contemporary physics and cosmology.

[Denise E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good. It posed lots of questions I never even knew were questions - like if the big bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, why do we exist? What tipped the balance? But there's too much rhapsodizing. In a science book about a topic this hard, it's already confusing enough to understand all of the unintuitive physics. Cole adds to the confusion. She quotes many scientists saying stuff like, we don't understand nothing about nothing, and that's something. She'll quote the existentialists, who believed nothing is itself something. She'll go into the history of the number zero and what it means that we can imagine such a thing as nothing. It's like... is this going somewhere? All I know is it's going somewhere so terrifyingly difficult that it probably won't make sense, but come on, please, let's just get there.

I got something out of this book. It definitely pointed to things like black holes and string theory and the problem of the big bang that weren't on my radar. Then I went and watched Brian Greene's World Science Convention videos on Youtube and found much of this explained reasonably logically and clearly for a lay person. So I'm giving it three stars. It's a hard topic and Cole must be unbelievably smart to have learned all this research well enough to philosophize and joke about it. But you get less enjoyment about of playing with the main topic if you don't understand the science, it feels like you're waiting for an explanation that isn't coming. Maybe I will go back and finish this after watching a few more youtubes.

[Jim Noel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the short sections and attempts at wit fairly distracting. This was mainly a problem in areas with familiar topics, where I just wanted to move along at a good clip but found the writing too choppy. In sections where I wasn't as familiar with the details and was reading a bit more slowly it didn't bother me as much, but her style just wasn't satisfying for me.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cole, K.C. The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything (2001)
Nothing exposed for what it is: Something!

This is a book about "nothing" inspired by recent discoveries in physics, similar to the one written by Brit physicist John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe (2000). While Barrow devoted several chapters to the history of the concept of zero and the idea of nothing, Cole, while covering much of the same territory, emphasizes recent discoveries about the vacuum and ideas from string and loop theory while her extensive use of quotations gives her book a more journalist feel. Otherwise the books are strikingly similar, even to the typographic use of subheads in capital letters followed by epigram-like quotes from various authors that break up the text. It's almost as if the same person did the layout for both books! Both authors sometimes even use the same examples, e.g., John Cage's "musical composition" entitled, 4' 33" (four minutes and 33 seconds of pure silence). Noteworthy in Cole's book is the interesting material on silence beginning on page 211 and then some examples from the psychology of perception on pages 214-231 with an excursion into the concept of nothing from Zen Buddhism.

Cole is a science journalist who writes for the Los Angeles Times and is the author of The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty (1998) and First You Build a Cloud: And Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life (1999). I enjoyed both books and reviewed the latter favorably for Amazon.com readers, and so it was with pleasant anticipation the I began reading The Hole in the Universe, hoping that I would learn more about the bizarre properties of the vacuum than I was to glean from Barrow's excellent book. What I learned was just how difficult the subject really is, and how far removed it is from our common sense notions about the world.

I would rate this book higher but sometimes Cole's ready metaphors and analogies run into each other, further obscuring an already dusky subject matter, and there are some slips. She writes on page 251, "It's easy to imagine ten dimensions of space because you can just add one on top of the other." (Not for me, at any rate, it isn't.) And there's a bad take on the anthropic principle on page 242. Cole writes. "...in a sense, our very perception determines the kind of universe we populate." It's really the other way around: we are created from the stuff of the universe and that stuff determines our perception. It's not even clear that "We perceive the only universe we can perceive" (also from page 242), because the universe could be a little different and we could still perceive it. Finally, Cole, in discussing the Higgs field, uses the simile, "the Higgs field to our universe is like water to a fish--the same everywhere and therefore utterly imperceptible." We can imagine that the fish "perceives" the water when it touches the sand at the bottom and when it leaps above the surface.

These quibbles aside, this is an exciting and stimulating book. Let me share some impressions:

First, it is apparent that there is no such thing as nothing, or I should say, nothing is something!

Second, the idea that time and space began with the big bang and that there was nothing as a matter of definition beyond the big bang can be discarded. It now seems more likely that our universe is just one of a possible infinity of universes, popping probabilistically out of the vacuum that used to be nothing but is now a bubbling caldron of potential energy.

Third, my favorite question, Why is there something rather than nothing? has an easy answer: There is something rather than nothing because there is no such thing as nothing.

Fourth, the world of string theory with its eleven dimensions and it ultra tiny strings at the scale of 10 to the minus 33 centimeters, is entirely of the stuff we will never perceive or have any ability to comprehend beyond the report of the equations.

Fifth, the old bugaboo about the universe having no beginning or being created from nothing is no longer such a quandary because, One, nothing is something; and Two, nothing has always been here. In other words, the question is answered: the universe (or mega-universe or super-universe, or whatever) had no beginning and is eternal. (God, the creator, is not going to like this, but I'm sure something can be worked out.)

Sixth, perhaps, as Cole suggests in the final chapter, a good definition of "nothing" is perfect symmetry.

Finally, I came away from reading this book with the clear sense that the universe exists indefinitely in every direction from the macro to the micro, from the distant past to the distance future. In other words, we exist not as on a darkling plain as the poet Matthew Arnold had it, but in a bubble of space and time smack in the middle of a possible infinity of bubbles, our ability to see in any one "direction" limited by our senses and our instruments, but enhanced by our ability to reason and extrapolate from evidence, but ultimately stopped cold by our imaginations and the realization of how really tiny is our arena of discernment compared to the incredible vastness gaping away from us in any and all directions. If this realization doesn't make us humble and awestruck, I don't know what will.

Incidentally, both Cole and Barrow, while carousing merrily about all sorts of whimsical notions of nothing, failed to acknowledge the "god of nothing," that is, the ineffable god of the Vedas about whom nothing can be said: "Neti, neti, neti"--not this, not this, and not this!

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cole's bio states that she is the writer of a popular science column for the LA Times, and it shows. She is very witty and engaging in her prose, even when explaining complex topics. I am the first to say that physics is not my forte (see my review of "How to Explain Physics to your Dog"), but I was able to understand pretty much all of this book.

This book is about nothing (literally - she begins with a discussion of the invention of zero and how it changed mathematics and then moves on to the concept of nothing), and how it fits into the way we understand the universe and it's origins. She touches on Einstein and relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory and black holes. This is a great book to get an overview of all that. She breaks everything into small sections within the chapters, so it's not too overwhelming.

My only complaint is that the book might be a little too choppy. To introduce concepts and defer discussion of them repeatedly made it a little hard for me to remember how the concept fit into the overall framework; but, to be fair, I never used the index to go back and re-read previous sections. Also, at the end of the book I wonder why it's so important to know how the universe was created. Maybe I'm not curious but it seems like we are here regardless of how it happened. My life won't change if there are 4 dimensions or 11.

[Gregg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the best books I have ever read on the concept of "nothing" The book goes into detail of how the darkness created light to see itself. It was at this point that consciousness emerge, and the universe became self aware. I will have more to say later!!!

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting, a must read.

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm an undergraduate physics major right now, and I found this book to be more of a thesaurus on the word "nothing" than a really interesting book. It had its moments, but I learned very little.

[Bob Rosenbaum · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoy pop science and have read many books on advanced physics, general relativity, gravitational lensing, etc. I'm fascinated by the idea of "something from nothing" and here's an entire book devoted to the topic. I wanted to like it more than I did.
My issue with it is the big disconnect between the math and the conclusions. I'm not a mathematician, and you don't need to get very deep into advanced physics to lose me. But I want to know where the ideas are coming from. In this book, the author leaves the math so far out of her explanations that the astounding ideas she discusses are indistinguishable from magic. They could just as easily be alcohol induced midnight musings as the results of exhaustive research and experimentation.
If you've done other reading on the topic, this book provides more insight on the latest thinking (at least through 2012 when it was published), and the fraught relationship between relativity and quantum theory.
But as a place to begin understanding what we know about the universe and how we know it, I'd recommend some of the many other options available.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing exposed for what it is: Something!

This is a book about "nothing" inspired by recent discoveries in physics, similar to the one written by Brit physicist John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe (2000) (see the previous review). While Barrow devoted several chapters to the history of the concept of zero and the idea of nothing, Cole, while covering much of the same territory, emphasizes recent discoveries about the vacuum and ideas from string and loop theory while her extensive use of quotations gives her book a more journalist feel. Otherwise the books are strikingly similar, even to the typographic use of subheads in capital letters followed by epigram-like quotes from various authors that break up the text. It's almost as if the same person did the layout for both books! Both authors sometimes even use the same examples, e.g., John Cage's "musical composition" entitled, 4' 33" (four minutes and 33 seconds of pure silence). Noteworthy in Cole's book is the interesting material on silence beginning on page 211 and then some examples from the psychology of perception on pages 214-231 with an excursion into the concept of nothing from Zen Buddhism.

Cole is a science journalist who writes for the Los Angeles Times and is the author of The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty (1998) and First You Build a Cloud: And Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life (1999). I enjoyed both books and reviewed the latter favorably for Amazon.com readers, and so it was with pleasant anticipation the I began reading The Hole in the Universe, hoping that I would learn more about the bizarre properties of the vacuum than I was to glean from Barrow's excellent book. What I learned was just how difficult the subject really is, and how far removed it is from our common sense notions about the world.

I would rate this book higher but sometimes Cole's ready metaphors and analogies run into each other, further obscuring an already dusky subject matter, and there are some slips. She writes on page 251, "It's easy to imagine ten dimensions of space because you can just add one on top of the other." (Not for me, at any rate, it isn't.) And there's a bad take on the anthropic principle on page 242. Cole writes. "...in a sense, our very perception determines the kind of universe we populate." It's really the other way around: we are created from the stuff of the universe and that stuff determines our perception. It's not even clear that "We perceive the only universe we can perceive" (also from page 242), because the universe could be a little different and we could still perceive it. Finally, Cole, in discussing the Higgs field, uses the simile, "the Higgs field to our universe is like water to a fish--the same everywhere and therefore utterly imperceptible." We can imagine that the fish "perceives" the water when it touches the sand at the bottom and when it leaps above the surface.

These quibbles aside, this is an exciting and stimulating book. Let me share some impressions:

First, it is apparent that there is no such thing as nothing, or I should say, nothing is something!

Second, the idea that time and space began with the big bang and that there was nothing as a matter of definition beyond the big bang can be discarded. It now seems more likely that our universe is just one of a possible infinity of universes, popping probabilistically out of the vacuum that used to be nothing but is now a bubbling caldron of potential energy.

Third, my favorite question, Why is there something rather than nothing? has an easy answer: There is something rather than nothing because there is no such thing as nothing.

Fourth, the world of string theory with its eleven dimensions and it ultra tiny strings at the scale of 10 to the minus 33 centimeters, is entirely of the stuff we will never perceive or have any ability to comprehend beyond the report of the equations.

Fifth, the old bugaboo about the universe having no beginning or being created from nothing is no longer such a quandary because, One, nothing is something; and Two, nothing has always been here. In other words, the question is answered: the universe (or mega-universe or super-universe, or whatever) had no beginning and is eternal. (God, the creator, is not going to like this, but I'm sure something can be worked out.)

Sixth, perhaps, as Cole suggests in the final chapter, a good definition of "nothing" is perfect symmetry.

Finally, I came away from reading this book with the clear sense that the universe exists indefinitely in every direction from the macro to the micro, from the distant past to the distance future. In other words, we exist not as on a darkling plain as the poet Matthew Arnold had it, but in a bubble of space and time smack in the middle of a possible infinity of bubbles, our ability to see in any one "direction" limited by our senses and our instruments, but enhanced by our ability to reason and extrapolate from evidence, but ultimately stopped cold by our imaginations and the realization of how really tiny is our arena of discernment compared to the incredible vastness gaping away from us in any and all directions. If this realization doesn't make us humble and awestruck, I don't know what will.

Incidentally, both Cole and Barrow, while carousing merrily about all sorts of whimsical notions of nothing, failed to acknowledge the "god of nothing," that is, the ineffable god of the Vedas about whom nothing can be said: "Neti, neti, neti"--not this, not this, and not this!

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Jsrott · Rating 5 out of 5]

K.C. Cole has always been a personal favorite of mine, and this book is no different. Cole delves into the deepest ideas with a profound sense of wonder and lyricism that borders on poetry at times. While she stays away from the really, really technical aspects of modern physics, she does discuss the work in a way that balances the need to explain really esoteric theory with the inability to use the mathematics in which it is usually discussed. It's a sad truth that books about cutting edge science are out of date within a few years, but even so, this one was worthwhile.

[Jim Romo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes “The Twilight Zone “ non-fiction.

Gets better every time I read it. For me this book reflects the essence of the Buddhist concept of the “Unborn Buddha Mind “. The source of the supernatural. And how about Carl Jungs concept of “Synchroniciry”?

The mind boggling concept that “nothing “is not just “something “ BUT is everywhere and everything!

I recommend this book to all curious OPEN minds about the Universe. Easy to read,non-technical. Extensive bibliographies of the world renowned contributors to this book included for fact checking.

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am a detective in search of a criminal - the cosmological constant." - Arthur Eddington
"The history of physics is the history of giving up cherished ideas." - Andrew Strominger.
"Of all the conceptions of the human mind from unicorns to gargoyles to the hydrogen bomb, perhaps the most fantastic, is the black hole." - Kip Thorne

Loved this book! It was tied together so succinctly with lots of great scientific discoveries and the scientists that made them.

[Angi Benthouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never having been an avid physic person based on little understanding, I would recommend this book to those like me who have a problem with physics, if K. C. Cole would have been my physics teacher I would have had a better and broader understanding of the subject.

[Dkolacinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible book. Who could thing that a book about nothing could be so intriquing and thought-provoking?

[Ronald Vasicek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philosophy and Physics sometimes are hard to tell apart.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting and the small sections made a very complicated subject much easier to understand, especially for the less scientifically inclined like myself.

[Jason Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could only get through the first chapter as she went on and on and on without actually saying anything of value.

[Michael Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this book. The book is explores the not only the human understanding of nothing, and zero along with the cosmological ramifications of empty space which turns out is not really empty after all.

K.C. Cole is an engaging writer.

Cole includes many of the scientific "biggies" of today and their ideas about sting theory, alternate universes, black holes,space time, and quantum particles all done masterfully with a peppering of humor.

A fun educational read that left me thinking the universe is probably much more complicated and facinating that scientists and scientific wanna bees like me thought. Recommend!

[Marik Casmon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book a number of years ago and really enjoyed it.

It is fairly easy reading, given its subject matter of the physics of the universe and nothing.

The book features some marvelous descriptions of the universe now created by scientific thinking. In addition, the author has a very clever sense of humor, which keeps the matter less heavy than it might be.

The ideas in this book seem to portray miracles of a sort.

[Bern J · Rating 5 out of 5]

K.C. Cole, the former science columnist for the L.A. Times, is one of my favorite science writers. She makes science fun and accessible. She's a wonderfully skillful writer who loves her subject. Consider her riff on the beauty of the number zero. "Used to multiply, it erases everything; used to divide, it explodes. No wonder mathematicians sometimes think of it as The Terminator of numbers."

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing in this book.

This book has nothing. It's full of vacuum and space. Pages and pages of nothing. It's an excellent book--I enjoyed reading nothing in it. I highly recommend you get this book and read nothing.

[James R Jackson III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I don't have to understand it.

These physics books are entertaining. I feel that I got a glimpse of results of smart people and their world without having to commit my life to science. My student differment would have vanished in one semester.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

fun to read

[Joshua Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining read about "nothingness."

[Phil Lawless · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much meat.

[Karli Heimburger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely mind bending concepts. Hard to fully understand