More Than amazing! <3<3<3

It's still about how his wife doesn't understand anything about physics

Aπο τα καλύτερα βιβλία για το συγκεκριμένο θέμα!

Newtonian mechanics/basic physics isn’t that hard to understand. In fact, the dumber you are, the quicker you learn about it, as you’re likely to have some kind accident involving gravity and acceleration. Experimental physics is a little harder, but it is something you can still touch (or at least see) to the extent you can watch an experiment being performed. With a little effort, a starter kit, and a YouTube tutorial you can even perform some minor experiments at home. And heck, if you find a way to get your hands on twenty-eight kilometers of magnetized toroidal metal, you can build your own supercollider.
Once you get down to the subatomic, though, things start getting confusing. Things exist as potentials, or don’t exist unless you look at them, or something (even the biggest brains disagree on this stuff.) Go one step further into the purely theoretical and you’ll be dragged from being asked to thinking about a fourth dimension (spacetime) to being asked to countenance at least eleven dimensions.
At this point, unless you have many years of training in the field, or are some sort of prodigal savant with an IQ of 200, you are screwed. The closest you can get to understanding this stuff is having someone who is big-brained to hold your hand.
Dr. Jim Al-Khalili proves to be an especially efficient and able cosmic psychopomp. Thanks to his lucid and straightforward style, I rarely had to overly furrow my simian brow in frustration. His easy but informative method always condenses where necessary and slows down where a layperson might get lost. This ensured that I never became so confused that I yearned to defecate onto my non-opposable digits and fling my feces at him. Illustrations and diagrams are employed, as are metaphors that make all the stuff less intimidating. A good sense of humor also helps put the insecure among us at ease, bracing, as we all are, for the moment where it sails far over our heads.
There’s some basic math, but it thankfully only involves letters from the Roman alphabet, rather than the Mus and Deltas of Attic antiquity. I did algebra and geometry in secondary school and managed to limp through college courses employing the same kind of math, before escaping into the adult daycare center of the humanities, so this part also was easy enough for me to grok.
Subjects covered include everything from black holes to wormholes and time machines. Various dimensions (both spatial and temporal) are also explained so that even the nonvisual-minded can get an accurate enough picture to understand the theory. Al-Khalili is careful to never stray from the possible and theoretical into the wholly speculative, except to make a point about the gulf between science fact and fiction. That said, he is not churlish, and understands that some of us come to the book with a certain set of expectations (to say nothing of rubber Vulcan ears and man-boobs.) He is careful to never lie and give false hopes to those of us who hope to take our DeLorean to the past, but neither does he pour cold water on a nerd’s dreams needlessly.
This is a great book, that I can’t recommend highly enough, for fans of science and yes, fans of SF.

Lettura molto interessante anche per chi, come me, ha solo una scarsa infarinatura della matematica o della fisica. Alcuni capitoli risultano più impegnativi da comprendere ed è necessaria una maggiore attenzione, ma Al-Khalili riesce nel suo intento di rendere comprensibile una tematica tanto affascinante quanto complessa con il suo brillante umorismo da scienziato.
Decisamente consigliato!

It's a good while since I read Jim Al-Khalili's Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines, but I will be forever grateful to him for teaching me how to visualise the fourth dimension. Really.

I remember reading this book back in high school. It was one of the first key moments that sparked my admiration for space and astronomy.

Jim is such a consummate writer, skillfully teaching complex concepts in a way that is both engaging and simple yet still challenging the reader to contemplate the text.

This is my first non-all-out-space physics book. I love Prof Al-Khalili's TV programmes and have bought a few of his books in ebook form (well, apart from this one which is hugely expensive, instead got a PDF of it from Academia.edu). Definitely looking forward to reading the others but thought starting with the first one was as good a place as any.
Not gonna pretend everything in this book lodged itself in my brain, (after all, at school I got Cs from physics and Cs and Ds in maths...and have since forgotten everything), but it pretty much gave me what I expected from it. And hopefully some of the basics are finally gonna stick from now on. (Like that there are two theories of relativity which I either never knew or have forgotten. See, that's my level of idiot right here.)
It's obvious that even 20 years ago Prof. Al-Khalili already had a knack for relating science to idiots. And I actually enjoyed the "attempts at humour", thank you very much.

This one is good for stretching.

Intriguing read. Al-Khalili keeps his use scientific jargon on the down low and thoroughly explains unfamiliar terms and concepts, presents scientific evidence from a relatively objective viewpoint, and isn't dry and boring like so many other authors of the nonfiction science genre. I would recommend his book to anyone interested in understanding the possibility of black holes, wormholes, multiple dimensions, and time travel in our fascinating universe.

Saggio divulgativo, pur non entrando nei particolari fornisce un attenta analisi sui buchi neri e sulla relatività dello spazio-tempo

I´m very into this topic. But. I´m used to use my imagination. Fourth, fifth etc. dimension, parallel universes and space-curving is little bit above my othervise very colorful imagination (deformed by sci-fi series). What i can´t imagine, that i don´t get. I will definitely give a chance to this book again.