- Hardcover: 176 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (Dec 15 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0199225907
- ISBN-13: 978-0199225903
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 299 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #646,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Aristotle famously wrote that nature abhors a vacuum, but as Oxford physicist Close illustrates in this concise study, that depends on what you mean by a vacuum or a void. Greek and medieval philosophers gave philosophical arguments against the existence of the void, but an artificial vacuum was finally created in 1643 and quickly used to investigate atmospheric pressure. Scientific exploration of a vacuum's properties and applications took off in the 19th century, although ancient ideas like the concept of an ether that pervaded empty space masqueraded as serious science until Einstein explained them away via relativity. Close (Lucifer's Legacy) is a particle physicist at heart, and he hits his stride as he explains why scientists now don't think a void is really empty at all, but is teeming with particles popping in and out of existence and pervaded by a contemporary version of the ether, called the Higgs field. Close misses opportunities to make this a more rewarding interdisciplinary study that would attract a broader readership, and science buffs will find it redundant with other books in their collections. The moral of Close's book should be, as Nietzsche said, that when you look into the void, it really is looking back at you. 20 b&w illus. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
`An accessible and entertaining read for layperson and scientist alike.' Physics World
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
A-voids getting to the point, Mar 28 2008
By mcerner "mcerner" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Void (Hardcover)
While a very well written book, The Void spends most of its 156 pages not getting to the point. But then the title is misleading -- this is not about voids or vacuums or the idea of nothingness. Instead, Close writes a summary, fairly historical, of the theories contributing to the current views of the universe. We hear a lot about Newton and Einstein, Lorentz and Michelson, and so on. Special and general relativity are explained again (as they have been in myriad other books). Something as important as the Higgs field is glossed over, while such things as inertial frames of reference or concepts of curved space-time are covered in a tad too much depth or too much repetition. This is really a book for someone who needs a quick overview, rather like it is the introductory chapter to a text with a lot more depth. And from my perspective, it seems to ramble here and there, as if the author doesn't quite want to make a point. Even at the end, the summary shows that the book was not about the void or vacuum but about what fills it and defines its boundaries/properties. Not quite what I was looking for.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good science, quick gloss, not quite what the title implies, May 23 2008
By W. Metz "compulsive reader" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Void (Hardcover)
This little book covers a LOT of science in a pretty short amount of time. Another reviewer said that it deals rather less with the void than one might think from the title. While this is true, there isn't much that can be said about nothing without understanding that in the real universe, nothing is truly something after all. That said, there is a lot of explaining of "stuff" to get to explaining nothing, which leads the book to have a lot less nothing than you might expect.That said, the science is very solid and quite clearly explained. However, having extensively studied physics and chemistry years ago, this read more like a refresher course to me. I didn't have too much trouble making sense of most of the science because I have been exposed to it in great depth (even though I may've forgotten some things). I worry that to the lay reader, the book would be extremely hard going, even as there are many analogies drawn, so I would put it closer to three stars for a reader with little or no science background.
Still, written well overall and with great clarity. An interesting concept.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Touching the Void, Jan 15 2011
By Dr. Bojan Tunguz - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Void (Hardcover)
"Void" seems to be the simplest of all notions, apparently requiring no thought whatsoever. It is what remains where everything is taken away. But a closer scrutiny reveals that "void" is not trivial as it may first seem. Is it physically possible to achieve such a thing as the absence of all matter? Even if possible, is what remains a truly empty space? And what is space anyway - is it possible to talk about it in the absence of matter? It is these and related questions that this short book tries to answer. It takes the reader on a journey from philosophical and speculative ideas of classic antiquity, to the most advanced frontiers of modern theoretical and experimental Physics. For a book of its size it covers a lot of ground. It explains where the notion that "the nature abhors vacuum" comes from, and how it took almost two thousand years to refute it by actually creating the first known artificial vacuum. The book explains how the ideas about the vacuum have evolved over the centuries, and in particular what an effect the discoveries of quantum mechanics and general relativity have had on it. Today we believe that even the perfect vacuum is strictly speaking not completely empty, and it is a rather complicated and complex entity. The book concludes with some of the current Physics speculations and how they may pertain to our ideas about "nothing."The book is written in an interesting and easy-flowing style, and it does not overwhelm the reader with technical details and arcane jargon. There are hardly any equations in it, and the ones that are present are straightforward and used in order to illustrate a point that otherwise would be too cumbersome to describe. Overall, this is a very good book with a fresh and engaging perspective.
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