The fabric of the cosmos

What are space and time. Although these are familiar concepts to us, they have always been a source of interest to philosophers and scientists, and in The Fabric of the Cosmos Brian Greene takes a look at the answers they have come up with. Thus he introduces special and general relativity, as well a quantum theory, in a non-technical way, and explains how chance and thermodynamics are related to the flow of time. He also looks at Bell's inequalities and experiments involving quantum entanglement and shows how all these things have revolutionised our ideas about space and especially time

The second half of the book gets on to symmetry, particle physics, and of course string theory. Greene shows how the field of quantum cosmology has arisen, looking at the earliest moments after the big bang, as well as leading to more speculative ideas such as a universe on a brane.

Although this book is non-technical, it is intellectually deep, and is likely to have something of interest even for those experienced in the subject - there are plenty of notes at the end for those wanting more details. Greene manages to include a great deal of modern physics without resorting to equations, and I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to know about current ideas regarding the universe in which we live