Knocking on Heaven's Door How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World

The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the universe: its make-up, its evolution and the fundamental forces that determine its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and a rousing defence of the role of science in our lives. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall: the bestselling author of Warped Passages is an expert on both particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest) and is one of the most highly regarded theoretical physicists in the world. In thi book she recounts the thrilling progress in our understanding of the universe from Galileo and Newton to Einstein and Feynman; she explores how we decide which scientific questions to study and how we go about answering them; and, she examines the role of risk, creativity, uncertainty, beauty and truth in scientific thinking.