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Monday, March 6, 2006 12:00 AM

Secrets of the cosmos

Could the universe be a giant computer? A new book argues just that, and unlocks some great scientific mysteries along the way.

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  • Monday, March 6, 2006 10:03 AM

    Truth

    I too was disappointed, although not surprised at all, that Ms. Miller quotes from the book as if it is revealed truth. There seems to be a real trend in "popular science" writing (and to be fair some of this comes from real scientists, like Brian Green) where this happens. One example is the whole decoherence thing, which is very controversial in the physics community, see for example http://www.citebase.org/cgi-bin/fulltext?format=application/pdf&identifier=oai:arXiv.org:quant-ph/0112095, from Stephen Adler at the Institute for Advanced Study. A book in which decoherence is cited as explaining away the problems with Schrodinger's cat is not a book I would trust very far. A much better book is Penrose's Road to Reality, though to be fair even for a mathematician like myself it can be heavy slogging in parts, but even if you were to skip most of the math, you would still get a very good sense of the issues in modern physics. Penrose, who knows a *lot*, is very clear that there is a lot he doesn't know, and is very good at explaining why the people who claim they *do* know are going too far.

    Jeff McGowan

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