| View Larger Image | Reinventing Gravity: A Physicist Goes Beyond Einstein | Hardcoverby John W. Moffat (Author)
| List Price: | $27.95 | | Price: | $19.10 | | You Save: | $8.85 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Smithsonian | | Page Count: | 288 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 01, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 92,439nd |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780061170881
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Einstein's gravity theory—his general theory of relativity—has served as the basis for a series of astonishing cosmological discoveries. But what if, nonetheless, Einstein got it wrong? Since the 1930s, physicists have noticed an alarming discrepancy between the universe as we see it and the universe that Einstein's theory of relativity predicts. There just doesn't seem to be enough stuff out there for everything to hang together. Galaxies spin so fast that, based on the amount of visible matter in them, they ought to be flung to pieces, the same way a spinning yo-yo can break its string. Cosmologists tried to solve the problem by positing dark matter—a mysterious, invisible substance that surrounds galaxies, holding the visible matter in place—and particle physicists, attempting to identify the nature of the stuff, have undertaken a slew of experiments to detect it. So far, none have. Now, John W. Moffat, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, offers a different solution to the problem. The capstone to a storybook career—one that began with a correspondence with Einstein and a conversation with Niels Bohr—Moffat's modified gravity theory, or MOG, can model the movements of the universe without recourse to dark matter, and his work challenging the constancy of the speed of light raises a stark challenge to the usual models of the first half-million years of the universe's existence. This bold new work, presenting the entirety of Moffat's hypothesis to a general readership for the first time, promises to overturn everything we thought we knew about the origins and evolution of the universe. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 17 reviews)
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Articulate and Unassuming by Jim (Toronto, Canada)  5 Stars
November 21, 2009
I have just finished reading this book. It was a great read and invites the reader to think on key issues in astronomy today.
I would wholeheartedly agree with the review of Parmenides, but I would not hesitate to give this book a 5 out of 5. For a book that suggests that we should investigate possible alternatives to dark matter and that we should (perhaps) consider modifying Newtonian and Einsteinain gravity (slightly) in order to deal with astrophysical phenomena such as flattened galactic rotation curves and galaxy clusters that seem to rotate too fast to stay together, I felt that the author presented his suggestions very fairly and in a strikingly unassuming, non-antagonistic manner. It shows the wisdom of this author's years - a true old-school "gentleman" physicist interested in the real pursuit of science. Whether his theory of modifed gravity is right or wrong (and who can honestly tell at this point until we get more convincing data), I got the feeling throughout the text that the author was more interested to add to the dark matter/dark energy debate and to the ultimate pursuit of truth, than to necessarily promulgate a single point of view. I give him very high marks for his approach throughout the text.
I also give the author very high marks for how clearly he was able to convey his thoughts in a very straight-forward manner. As Parmenides says, there was no mathematics included in the text. But I found this quite re-freshing all-in-all. Too often I have found that scientists seem to fall back into mathematics, unable to express an idea coherently enough to convey their ideas to an educated person interested in science. Rarely do you see a physicist so able to express himself or herself in non-mathematical terms as this author has been able to do in this case. No doubt mathematics is the language of science, but language itself is the method of mass communication of new ideas. I really give the author very high marks for how he articulated his theory (right or wrong).
I believe that anyone would enjoy reading this book, but it probably would help to have at least a passing familiarity with current astronomical issues.
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Great lead in with mild finish by K. A. Czepelka (Bend, OR USA)  4 Stars
August 27, 2009
First off, I have to say I really enjoyed the flow of this book. The first two thirds was a fabulous progression of the thoughts and aches of the physicists of yore that went through the processes of getting their theories created and accepted, and of the more recent progession of discoveries and theories to explain the reason why most current scientists feel dark matter exists. The gravitational lensing effect (excessive bending of light ) of galactic clusters, the flat rotation curves of galaxies (why a "year" for an outer star is the same as a "year" for an inner star), the pioneer 10 and 11 decelleration anomolies and so on are each explained in enough detail to tie the whole dark matter paradigm into a nicely understood package. If you are fairly new to dark matter and yearning for some history and some explainations, then this portion of the book is worth the entire price.
In addition the author has an appreciated style of inserting tons of tidbits of extra information that are worth knowing, regardless of your level of expertise on the general subject, throughout the entire book. You get little pieces of physics trivia for free and great starter "wiki" words and phrases to further your knowledge. I was especially appreciative of the insertion of the Abell 520 cluster train crash anomaly which contradicts the Bullet Cluster conclusions about dark matter. Wow!!! I think this little bit of information for me was worth the price of the book alone! Wiki this one yourself for a big surprise!!
Now for the cons: The MOG theory, which is at the core of the entire book is a decent theory and is easy to understand. There was good supportive references and was believably presented. I don't lean toward or away from this theory, and even though I have serious reservations about the dark matter theory that has been too eagerly accepted in the community, I don't think the author fully convinced me to accept his theory as the final answer. Using a dart board as an analogy, I think dark matter is somewhere on the perimeter, MOG is somewhat closer, but no-one has yet shown me anything I'd consider in the bulls eye area. I hope they keep trying.
I would have liked to see the author throw in the exact details of the MOG theory, presented of course in a layman style, that included what constants and newtonian formulas that were used (and in what way) to create the theory so the reader could get a better sense of the "meat" in all of this. There are plenty of references and text describing the authors lectures, previous submissions to scientific journals, and corespondences that lead me to beleive he really is working on something substantial, but I was left feeling like there was one more act to the play that wasn't in the book.
This book is a "keeper", especially as a reference, and I recommend it.
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Lost Me About Half Way Through by E. David Swan (South Euclid, Ohio USA)  3 Stars
May 12, 2009
I've been a fan of pop science for years but when it comes right down to it I'm totally a layman. To my layman brethren I offer this warning, Reinventing Gravity is not an easy read. There are no formulas but quite often I found myself zoning out.
What the book is about is the authors attempt to resolve some of the great mysteries of cosmology including the apparent expansion of the universe and the possible existence or non-existence of dark matter and dark energy. The author's theory is that some of the constants of the universe including the speed of light and the force of gravity aren't so constant. In particular he presents a hypothesis that the speed of light during the early moments of the universe was much much faster than the current speed in our corner of the universe. With regards to gravity he proposes that the force of gravity actually increases as objects move apart up to a certain point and then begins to diminish. He calls these ideas modified gravity or MOG.
Let me get this right out of the way. The author lost me. I don't understand how adjusting the speed of light at the early moments of the universe solves the strange smoothness of the universe or how having gravity increase and then decrease can be anything but an ad hoc solution to observation. If the author offered up an explanation as to why gravity might behave this way I somehow missed it. MOG also gets rid of singularities particularly those that form Black Holes and the singularity that preceded the Big Bang. As to how MOG gets rid of singularities I couldn't say because I couldn't follow. Maybe I'm just dense so if the following sentence makes sense to you, "the vacuum fluctuations in MOG's varying G and phion fields in the neighborhood of t = 0 generate the scale-invariant primordial power spectrum that is required to explain the WMAP power spectrum data..." If that sounds perfectly logical and understandable then this is the book for you.
When I read pop science books I like to be informed and entertained and in this case I don't think the author managed either. I was slightly amused by his critique of superstring theory in which he stated that, "one prominent feature of sting theory is the use of the word "super" which enhances its attraction for physics students and media alike" I have to admit that was funny but that was one brief moment in the book. It's possible that Professor Moffat may have discovered the next great revolution in physics but my suspicion is probably not. I guess I would have been swayed more had his theory contained a little more meat on the bone or didn't feel so contrived. Maybe the problem was in the author's delivery but I just didn't feel as if I was reading something revolutionary. Or maybe I was just too dopey to follow.
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Kindle Users be Warned by Mike Byrne (Albany, NY, USA) 3 Stars
April 29, 2009
I was thoroughly enjoying this book on my Kindle 2. The first 50 pages or so, don't use any math. When the math began, I noticed that many four digit numbers began with "10". So we get 1070, 1036, etc. Then we get 10 -23, 10 -36, etc. I realized that the author intended to write 10 raised exponentially, eg...10^70 etc. I phoned the Kindle people at Amazon and explained the situation. They were very nice, and they refunded the cost of my purchase. I got the impression that they would advise the Kindle team and changes would be made.
I don't think this is happening. I do some proofreading for another ebook website, and I know this can be done. Some of the non-scientific books on Kindle are replete with errors (called "scanos" as in "typos") which even beginner proofreaders catch and correct.
As a shareholder in Amazon.com, I sincerely hope that management looks into this matter. Maybe they can pay the proofreaders at Project Gutenberg or [...] to give their books a smooth-scan. These folks could use the money.
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Models and physics of the Universe... by Wojciech Langer (Toronto, Ontario) 5 Stars
March 20, 2009
..yes, we have quite a few and none of them is for sure. There are physicists like Victor Stenger ("The Comprehensive Cosmos") who believes that we know almost everything about it based on standard inflationary model. But it cannot be further from the truth. This model is FULL of riddles! Flaws of Big Bang scenario have been discussed by several cosmologists in their books and John Moffat does it as well. They propose different scenarios. We may read about string (superstring-brane) models in "Endless Universe" (Steinhardt, Turok), "Universe Before the Big Bang" (Gasperini). New topology unique idea appears in "The Wraparound Universe" by Luminet. Moffat's book cannot be missed by anybody searching for truth in cosmology and about possible ways of Universe creation and development! All these "not main stream science" models cannot be disproved at least for now. Moffat's work concentrates on dark matter (and dark energy to certain extent), whether there is a real need to incorporate it into Einstein's gravity theory so that the theory can fit astrophysical and cosmological data. His conclusion: not realy. Perhaps we are too preoccupied with both shadowy dark "fudge factors". How can we verify who is right and reject certain propositions? Hope exists in analyzing Cosmic Microwave background ("The Music of the Big Bang" by Balbi) - at least for now. We have to wait for results coming from Planck mission and CERN experiments. For those who will live long enough radiotelescope SKA project will push our knowledge and verifications even further. For know, it is essential to know what we expect from variety of different theories (like the one in John Moffat's book). Author represents great deal of talent in explaining difficult topics and physical phenomena by using "easy going", straight language and building clear analogies without any abstract mathematics. Simply: "Reinventing Gravity" is a classic popular cosmology book about above mentioned theoretical models and extra lessons presenting MOND, VSL and MOG theories that has not been explored so far in popular science publications (IMO). Glossary therms are very appreciated and notes to each chapter are very helpful for those who want to explore beyond the main text. Must read for all cosmology enthusiasts!
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