In an interview on Einstein

Your next book is Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos.

Brian Greene is one of the developers of string theory, the pioneer of string theory, and what he’s doing is he’s aiming at Einstein’s great unresolved quest for a theory that ties all the forces of the universe together. In The Fabric of the Cosmos he takes Einstein’s fundamental discoveries of special relativity and general relativity and puts them in their historical context. He starts with Newton’s theory of gravity and helps us understand all the developments that led to Einstein’s theory that space and time create a four-dimensional fabric that is related to gravity. This is the clearest explanation of Newton and Einstein available, and Greene does it with a great sense of humour and wonderful visual thought experiments. He wrestles with the question Newton asked about whether a bucket of water spinning in an absolutely empty universe would show any signs of inerti would the water spin up against the sides? From that he is able to walk us through the great issues of gravity and space.

Would the bucket show signs of inertia?

Einstein and Greene think it would, yes. The fabric of the cosmos is there even in an empty universe.

In an interview on Cosmology

Your first book, The Fabric of the Cosmos, is by Brian Greene, one of the world’s leading physicists. In it, he explores the idea of what reality is.

I almost didn’t put this book on my list because Brian certainly doesn’t need the publicity. But I think this is his underappreciated book. His first book, The Elegant Universe, was specifically about string theory – a particular attempt to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics. This book takes a step back and looks at foundational issues such as: What is space time? What is quantum mechanics? How do they play well together and what are the problems of having them play together? I like it because it is an extremely well-written book. It covers a lot of deep issues that don’t get attention in a lot of other places, such as the nature of time, the nature of space. It really gives its readers a profound understanding of the universe.

This book is less about theories and more about the basics?

Yes, he isn’t propounding any specific controversial theories in this book. I think that he takes a very legitimate attitude, because we don’t understand a lot right now. We have ideas, we know certain things about how the universe works and there are other things we don’t know. He takes a tour through the issues.

Which of the issues that he explores interests you most?

The single issue that interests me the most is the arrow of time – why the past is different from the future. There are various ways that we can observe that. You remember the past, you don’t remember the future. But these differences can’t be found anywhere in the fundamental laws of physics as we know them. Brian’s book puts that issue front of centre, and it was very helpful to me when I was writing my own book on that issue.