I have a pretty straight forward way in which I review books I have read. First, I read the book...I never read the introduction until the end. Then I do a little research, think about the topic, and I always read some of the book reviews, including the 1-star reviews. I want to know who's pissed. Then I think about the book and everything I have learned. When I am satisfied I have something cogent to say, I write something down. Typically I can't move on to my next read without putting the current read to bed in this tried and true fashion. I've currently just finished a book and have begun the next step. I had to laugh out loud as I was reading one of the reviews of Jim Baggott's "Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe". The book I just finished. I came across this gem of a comment in one of the reviews on Amazon. The reader GEBUHER said, "If I do not understand after three readings, the only possibility is to read for the fourth time". Whereas I am not inclined to give Baggott 5-Stars for this book as GEBUHRER has done, I'll confess, I also did not follow his rule of thumb. One reading was quite enough for me.
But he nailed it...seriously, four readings? Or maybe he is just talking about a paragraph or a particular concept. Here's the rub, Baggott is suppose to be writing popular science....something accessible to the populous. He has failed. He is thrashing through what he has read regarding Loop Quantum Gravity and Cosmology LQG and LQC respectively. He still does not understand it sufficiently to bring his talents to the fore. The ability to make it accessible to idiots like me. The best chapter of the book is the epilogue where the subjects of his book, Lee Smolin and Carlos Rovelli are being interviewed and talk about the subject in their own words. But still...this is a review of Baggott's book, so here are some thoughts.
He does bring the relationship of Smolin and Rovelli to life. It is certainly clear, that without those two, we would not have LQG or LQC any time soon. But would we not? The other competing theory is so wrong shouldn't it just be a matter of time. During the time period he is discussing, this particular subject was monopolized by Edward Witten and his merry band of string theory theorists... Any one who was keeping up with physics during this period of time couldn't believe in string theory, let alone understand it. Only those who could do the math, could begin believe in it...and let's be clear. Even if you could do the math, and you believed in string theory, you had to be a moron of the highest order, or high on drugs. This is the major difference between mathematicians and engineers. It is the difference between theory and practical applications. Any theory, in which, one must believe in the possibility of 11 dimensions, has to be one of two things, on drugs, or high, I've just recently eliminated the possibility that you are a moron. I guess the forth possibility is that they are stone cold f-nuts wrong. And yes, spoiler alert, this book basically says string theory is wrong. But so to, did Peter Woit in his book, in 2006. I'll repeat that, 2006. Why has it taken so long to really get the word out? Anyone thinking about string theory right now? Don't do it. It's a bad investment. Let's stop saying it.
Truth is, LQG, mathematically speaking, is far easier to understand then any string theory with it's 11 dimensional space ever could be. Calabi–Yau manifold anyone? I don't think so. Baggott has written the history now, to give credit to Smolin and Rovelli. Now we need someone to make it accessible to the people. No need to give a synopsis here...but I will because I'm trying to review his book. But how ironic. I want to give him 5-Stars for the future and for getting the word out...but I can't because it's a mediocre book at best.
Baggott reviews some basic physics, gravity, and then quantum mechanics before diving into the subject. In fairness, he says up front, you can skip the first three chapters, but he hopes you don't. I wish I did. Nothing in there really lays the ground work for the meat and potatoes of the narrative. Nothing that any one of the books written on theoretical physics hasn't plowed ahead of time. Everyone want's to write physics in their own words...but all of them are the same. Einstein, Einstein, Einstein, Bohr, oh shit, Stephen Hawking,..ugh. We've heard all the fucking stories...get to the point...
Here's the point. One, at the smallest possible scale there is this thing call the Plank Length....1.616255 ×10−35 m... Don't even try to imagine how small that is...I mean seriously, don't even try. Two, gravity, is not a force, it is an emergent phenomena resultant from this thing called quantum foam, which is essentially volume based on a gravitational field (not particles) united by a spin network (Look up Roger Penrose). Boom. That's it. We have a fabric, of space, comprised of Plank length volumes, forever and all around us, that become the foundation for everything...that's where gravity comes from and that's kinda what Einstein said. Mathematically it is a sound theory. It conforms to both general and special relativity...should we need anything else. And since we can not empirically detect the quanta of the gravitational field at Plank scale without a sensor the size of Jupiter, it will be awhile before we can prove it in the lab. Oh, there is one bugaboo...whereas it explains time, it doesn't give time equal footing in the relativity space. Time does pass by. In case someone was wondering if time really exists. It does, and both LQG and LQC says it does and it passes by. Unlike other crack pots who talk about time going backwards and the possibility of infinite universes...yes Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. The physical world around us, actually makes a bit of intuitive sense, even at the quantum level.
Lest I throw Baggott completely under the bus, he is a good writer. He keeps it going and has been around the scene long enough to throw in all the right physicists, Susskind, Dyson, and Heisenberg. But then he throws in Descartes a philosopher, Picasso an artist, McLuhan a journalist, and Claude Shannon, an information theorist, in the same cover. So clearly, he is a smart writer.
So here we are, a mediocre book by Baggott that should have been written ten years ago. I'll start with 5 Stars for the future of Loop Quantum Gravity. Deduct 1 star because if you are gonna review theoretical physics, review theoretical physics. It was half-assed attempt at best. Deduct 1 star because it's still not accessible to the masses. Three stars for a book with a cool cover but I wouldn't read it a second time. And what the hell took so long?
