Reinventing Gravity: A Physicist Goes Beyond Einstein |  | Author: John W. Moffat
Publisher: Smithsonian
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Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 61623
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0061170887
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.143
EAN: 9780061170881
ASIN: 0061170887
Publication Date: October 1, 2008
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Product Description
Einstein's gravity theory—his general theory of relativity—has served as the basis for a series of astonishing cosmological discoveries. But what if, nonetheless, Einstein got it wrong? Since the 1930s, physicists have noticed an alarming discrepancy between the universe as we see it and the universe that Einstein's theory of relativity predicts. There just doesn't seem to be enough stuff out there for everything to hang together. Galaxies spin so fast that, based on the amount of visible matter in them, they ought to be flung to pieces, the same way a spinning yo-yo can break its string. Cosmologists tried to solve the problem by positing dark matter—a mysterious, invisible substance that surrounds galaxies, holding the visible matter in place—and particle physicists, attempting to identify the nature of the stuff, have undertaken a slew of experiments to detect it. So far, none have. Now, John W. Moffat, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, offers a different solution to the problem. The capstone to a storybook career—one that began with a correspondence with Einstein and a conversation with Niels Bohr—Moffat's modified gravity theory, or MOG, can model the movements of the universe without recourse to dark matter, and his work challenging the constancy of the speed of light raises a stark challenge to the usual models of the first half-million years of the universe's existence. This bold new work, presenting the entirety of Moffat's hypothesis to a general readership for the first time, promises to overturn everything we thought we knew about the origins and evolution of the universe.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
 Great lead in with mild finish August 27, 2009
K. A. Czepelka (Bend, OR USA)
First off, I have to say I really enjoyed the flow of this book. The first two thirds was a fabulous progression of the thoughts and aches of the physicists of yore that went through the processes of getting their theories created and accepted, and of the more recent progession of discoveries and theories to explain the reason why most current scientists feel dark matter exists. The gravitational lensing effect (excessive bending of light ) of galactic clusters, the flat rotation curves of galaxies (why a "year" for an outer star is the same as a "year" for an inner star), the pioneer 10 and 11 decelleration anomolies and so on are each explained in enough detail to tie the whole dark matter paradigm into a nicely understood package. If you are fairly new to dark matter and yearning for some history and some explainations, then this portion of the book is worth the entire price.
In addition the author has an appreciated style of inserting tons of tidbits of extra information that are worth knowing, regardless of your level of expertise on the general subject, throughout the entire book. You get little pieces of physics trivia for free and great starter "wiki" words and phrases to further your knowledge. I was especially appreciative of the insertion of the Abell 520 cluster train crash anomaly which contradicts the Bullet Cluster conclusions about dark matter. Wow!!! I think this little bit of information for me was worth the price of the book alone! Wiki this one yourself for a big surprise!!
Now for the cons: The MOG theory, which is at the core of the entire book is a decent theory and is easy to understand. There was good supportive references and was believably presented. I don't lean toward or away from this theory, and even though I have serious reservations about the dark matter theory that has been too eagerly accepted in the community, I don't think the author fully convinced me to accept his theory as the final answer. Using a dart board as an analogy, I think dark matter is somewhere on the perimeter, MOG is somewhat closer, but no-one has yet shown me anything I'd consider in the bulls eye area. I hope they keep trying.
I would have liked to see the author throw in the exact details of the MOG theory, presented of course in a layman style, that included what constants and newtonian formulas that were used (and in what way) to create the theory so the reader could get a better sense of the "meat" in all of this. There are plenty of references and text describing the authors lectures, previous submissions to scientific journals, and corespondences that lead me to beleive he really is working on something substantial, but I was left feeling like there was one more act to the play that wasn't in the book.
This book is a "keeper", especially as a reference, and I recommend it.
 Lost Me About Half Way Through May 12, 2009
E. David Swan (South Euclid, Ohio USA)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I've been a fan of pop science for years but when it comes right down to it I'm totally a layman. To my layman brethren I offer this warning, Reinventing Gravity is not an easy read. There are no formulas but quite often I found myself zoning out.
What the book is about is the authors attempt to resolve some of the great mysteries of cosmology including the apparent expansion of the universe and the possible existence or non-existence of dark matter and dark energy. The author's theory is that some of the constants of the universe including the speed of light and the force of gravity aren't so constant. In particular he presents a hypothesis that the speed of light during the early moments of the universe was much much faster than the current speed in our corner of the universe. With regards to gravity he proposes that the force of gravity actually increases as objects move apart up to a certain point and then begins to diminish. He calls these ideas modified gravity or MOG.
Let me get this right out of the way. The author lost me. I don't understand how adjusting the speed of light at the early moments of the universe solves the strange smoothness of the universe or how having gravity increase and then decrease can be anything but an ad hoc solution to observation. If the author offered up an explanation as to why gravity might behave this way I somehow missed it. MOG also gets rid of singularities particularly those that form Black Holes and the singularity that preceded the Big Bang. As to how MOG gets rid of singularities I couldn't say because I couldn't follow. Maybe I'm just dense so if the following sentence makes sense to you, "the vacuum fluctuations in MOG's varying G and phion fields in the neighborhood of t = 0 generate the scale-invariant primordial power spectrum that is required to explain the WMAP power spectrum data..." If that sounds perfectly logical and understandable then this is the book for you.
When I read pop science books I like to be informed and entertained and in this case I don't think the author managed either. I was slightly amused by his critique of superstring theory in which he stated that, "one prominent feature of sting theory is the use of the word "super" which enhances its attraction for physics students and media alike" I have to admit that was funny but that was one brief moment in the book. It's possible that Professor Moffat may have discovered the next great revolution in physics but my suspicion is probably not. I guess I would have been swayed more had his theory contained a little more meat on the bone or didn't feel so contrived. Maybe the problem was in the author's delivery but I just didn't feel as if I was reading something revolutionary. Or maybe I was just too dopey to follow.
Kindle Users be Warned April 29, 2009
Mike Byrne (Albany, NY, USA)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
I was thoroughly enjoying this book on my Kindle 2. The first 50 pages or so, don't use any math. When the math began, I noticed that many four digit numbers began with "10". So we get 1070, 1036, etc. Then we get 10 -23, 10 -36, etc. I realized that the author intended to write 10 raised exponentially, eg...10^70 etc. I phoned the Kindle people at Amazon and explained the situation. They were very nice, and they refunded the cost of my purchase. I got the impression that they would advise the Kindle team and changes would be made.
I don't think this is happening. I do some proofreading for another ebook website, and I know this can be done. Some of the non-scientific books on Kindle are replete with errors (called "scanos" as in "typos") which even beginner proofreaders catch and correct.
As a shareholder in Amazon.com, I sincerely hope that management looks into this matter. Maybe they can pay the proofreaders at Project Gutenberg or [...] to give their books a smooth-scan. These folks could use the money.
 Models and physics of the Universe... March 20, 2009
Wojciech Langer (Toronto, Ontario)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
..yes, we have quite a few and none of them is for sure. There are physicists like Victor Stenger ("The Comprehensive Cosmos") who believes that we know almost everything about it based on standard inflationary model. But it cannot be further from the truth. This model is FULL of riddles! Flaws of Big Bang scenario have been discussed by several cosmologists in their books and John Moffat does it as well. They propose different scenarios. We may read about string (superstring-brane) models in "Endless Universe" (Steinhardt, Turok), "Universe Before the Big Bang" (Gasperini). New topology unique idea appears in "The Wraparound Universe" by Luminet. Moffat's book cannot be missed by anybody searching for truth in cosmology and about possible ways of Universe creation and development! All these "not main stream science" models cannot be disproved at least for now. Moffat's work concentrates on dark matter (and dark energy to certain extent), whether there is a real need to incorporate it into Einstein's gravity theory so that the theory can fit astrophysical and cosmological data. His conclusion: not realy. Perhaps we are too preoccupied with both shadowy dark "fudge factors". How can we verify who is right and reject certain propositions? Hope exists in analyzing Cosmic Microwave background ("The Music of the Big Bang" by Balbi) - at least for now. We have to wait for results coming from Planck mission and CERN experiments. For those who will live long enough radiotelescope SKA project will push our knowledge and verifications even further. For know, it is essential to know what we expect from variety of different theories (like the one in John Moffat's book). Author represents great deal of talent in explaining difficult topics and physical phenomena by using "easy going", straight language and building clear analogies without any abstract mathematics. Simply: "Reinventing Gravity" is a classic popular cosmology book about above mentioned theoretical models and extra lessons presenting MOND, VSL and MOG theories that has not been explored so far in popular science publications (IMO). Glossary therms are very appreciated and notes to each chapter are very helpful for those who want to explore beyond the main text. Must read for all cosmology enthusiasts!
Do not buy the Kindle edition! March 17, 2009
vivere (Detroit Metro, MI USA)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
The kindle edition of this book, like all the other science books with math or other symbols offered in the kindle format, leaves much to be desired. There is no indication for superscripts, so that "ten to the power of forty" is presented as 1040, obscuring the context.
It is surprising to me that nobody checks this and the other science books when they are offered in kindle edition. No quality control whatsoever.
In terms of content, the book is wonderful (see other reviews). I also bought the paper version, because of the errors in the kindle version.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
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