Product Description

Beginning well before Platos allegory of the cave and continuing to modern scientific breakthroughs from relativity to quantum mechanics, as well as to pop cultural icons like and , human beings have imagined, even longed for, alternate realities. Lawrence M. Krauss, one of the most gifted and engaging of writer-scientists today, examines why we have often believed that the answers to the great questions about existence lie in the possibility that we live in a universe more complex than we can see or otherwise sense. Drawing on work by scientists, mathematicians, artists, and writersfrom Einstein to Picasso to C. S. Lewis explores whether extra dimensions simply represent abstract speculation or hold the key to a deeper understanding of the universe. Krauss examines popular cultures embrace and misunderstandingof topics such as black holes, life in another dimension, string theory, and some of the daring new theories that propose that large extra dimensions exist alongside our own. This is popular science writing at its best and most illuminatingwitty, fascinating, and controversial.