Reddit Reddit reviews The Universe in a Nutshell

We found 13 Reddit comments about The Universe in a Nutshell. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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The Universe in a Nutshell
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13 Reddit comments about The Universe in a Nutshell:

u/EightOfTen · 10 pointsr/suggestmeabook

The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking because it is so accessible to mere mortal minds.

u/mattymillhouse · 5 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Some of my favorites:

Brian Greene -- The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Elegant Universe, and The Hidden Reality. Greene is, to my mind, very similar to Hawking in his ability to take complex subjects and make them understandable for the physics layman.

Hawking -- I see you've read A Brief History of Time, but Hawking has a couple of other books that are great. The Grand Design, The Universe in a Nutshell, and A Briefer History of Time.

Same thing applies to Brian Cox. Here's his Amazon page.

Leonard Susskind -- The Black Hole Wars. Here's the basic idea behind this book. One of the basic tenets of physics is that "information" is never lost. Stephen Hawking delivered a presentation that apparently showed that when matter falls into a black hole, information is lost. This set the physics world on edge. Susskind (and his partner Gerard T'Hooft) set out to prove Hawking wrong. Spoilers: they do so. And in doing so, they apparently proved that what we see as 3 dimensions is probably similar to those 2-D stickers that project a hologram. It's called the Holographic Principle.

Lee Smolin -- The Trouble with Physics. If you read the aforementioned books and/or keep up with physics through pop science sources, you'll probably recognize that string theory is pretty dang popular. Smolin's book is a criticism of string theory. He's also got a book that's on my to-read list called Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.

Joao Magueijo -- Faster Than the Speed of Light. This is another physics book that cuts against the prevailing academic grain. Physics says that the speed of light is a universal speed limit. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Magueijo's book is about his theory that the speed of light is, itself, variable, and it's been different speeds at different times in the universe's history. You may not end up agreeing with Magueijo, but the guy is smart, he's cocky, and he writes well.

u/ap0s · 3 pointsr/space

You can't go wrong with A Brief History of Time or The Universe in a Nutshell.

A book that is only partially about space but covers a lot of material that I'd highly* recommend is How to Build a Habitable Planet.



u/goodbetterbestbested · 2 pointsr/science

No, not an imposition at all.

I read this book a long time ago, but I think it is where most of the information I know about cosmology came from, and speaks to the idea of time as analogous to spatial dimensions:

The Universe In A Nutshell by Stephen Hawking

I haven't read A Brief History of Time but I hear it's great, too.

and there is always this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe

u/Linguiste · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

Well, you can't go wrong with this.

u/nickcernis · 1 pointr/golang

Jeff Atwood has a nice take on rewriting (and Joel's post): https://blog.codinghorror.com/when-understanding-means-rewriting/

>Joel thinks rewriting code is always a bad idea. I'm not so sure it's that cut and dried. According to The Universe in a Nutshell, here's what was written on Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death:
>
>\> What I cannot create, I do not understand.
>
>It's not that developers want to rewrite everything; it's that very few developers are smart enough to understand code without rewriting it.

u/Optimal_Joy · 1 pointr/science

Thanks, one downvote is nothing to get too upset about, some days I have people run through and downvote my last 20 or 30 comments just to spite me for something I wrote that they strongly disliked. I'm used to it. In this case, I was making an obscure reference to these types of references:


Top Physicists Ponder on the Idea of Universe in an Atom

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nutshell-Stephen-William-Hawking/dp/055380202X

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Single-Atom-Convergence-Spirituality/dp/076792066X

The Universe in a Single Atom by his Holiness the Dalai Lama

physicsforums.com discussion : could it be a possiblity that our entire universe as we know it, is contained inside of what appears as one single atom in another universe?

Sadly, you and perhaps only a handful of others will ever even see this comment...

u/onacloverifalive · 1 pointr/atheism

It's probably easier to swallow if you go beyond just the topic of evolution and its evidence. If he's truly a bright and open-minded guy and he learns a little about chemistry, physics, Biology, Genetics, and animal behavior, he will reach the conclusions you have himself.

There is a wornderful movie they show at the Smithsonian Planetarium that is a broad overview of the origins of all the heavenly bodies, spacetime, galaxies,etc., and if you are going to be in DC anytime soon you should catch it in all its glory.

There are a few Very insightful books I could recommend as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Universe-Nigel-Calder/dp/0517385708 is a great overview of 20th century not quite unified physics for laypeople.

https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nutshell-Stephen-William-Hawking/dp/055380202X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511133101&sr=1-1&keywords=universe+in+a+nutshell&dpID=41BPtZAJx8L&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

The Universe in a Nutshell is Hawking's outstanding illustrated overview of physics of particles and waves for laypeople.

Feynman's Quantum Electrodynamics: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter is his attempt at waves and fundamental forces for laypeople as well, and all these have a different flavor.

Also here is the Kurzgesagt animated educations youtube video on evolution which is the best one I've ever seen in just 10 minutes.
I recommend you watch the whole series, and then move on to TED talks for some basic enlightenment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGiQaabX3_o

u/lolredditftw · 1 pointr/Christianity

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nutshell-Stephen-William-Hawking/dp/055380202X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1395199423&sr=8-5&keywords=stephen+hawking

It's much less in depth than you might imagine, but definitely goes deeper than a science documentary would. It's also nicely illustrated, which is frequently helpful.

u/physicsking · 0 pointsr/askscience

You can think of it like this if it helps. if you take a balloon and put some dots on it and then blow it up slowly, you will see that everything is getting farther way from everything else. This is a nice visualization but has some small inconstancies. First, we are in what is called the 'local Group' of galaxies. that is, Milkyway, Large & Small magellanic clouds, and andromeda. Usually these groups' constituents are getting closer. Second, a 'better example' if you can think about soap bubbles filling a space (many bubbles all squished together). Now try to picture the surface of all the bubbles. If you think that these bubbles were inflated like the balloon then where multiple bubbles (balloons) meet you will have a higher density of galaxies. Pictures of these LINK at this site right but where it talks about lensing. These are the current 'filaments' that we observe. As far as "what we are expanding in to", is a much harder and deeper question. Probably will hack it up if I attempt to explain. Better off not thinking of it. Be happy that there are things you can explain. Otherwise, perhaps life would be lame. You can also just snag book.