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World-sheet. Two-dimensional surface swept out by a string as it moves.

Wormhole. A tube-like region of space connecting one region of the universe to another.

Z boson. See weak gauge boson.

Zero-dimensional sphere. See sphere.

References and Suggestions for Further Reading

Abbot, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Barrow, John D. Theories of Everything. New York: Fawcett-Columbine, 1992.

Bronowski, Jacob. The Ascent of Man. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.

Clark, Ronald W. Einstein, The Life and Times. New York: Avon, 1984.

Crease, Robert P., and Charles C. Mann. The Second Creation. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

Davies, P. C. W. Superforce. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.

Davies, P. C. W., and J. Brown, eds. Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Deutsch, David. The Fabric of Reality. New York: Allen Lane, 1997.

Einstein, Albert. The Meaning of Relativity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

———. Relativity. New York: Crown, 1961.

Ferris, Timothy. Coming of Age in the Milky Way. New York: Anchor, 1989.

———. The Whole Shebang. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Fölsing, Albrecht. Albert Einstein. New York: Viking, 1997.

Feynman, Richard. The Character of Physical Law. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995.

Gamow, George. Mr. Tompkins in Paperback. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Gell-Mann, Murray. The Quark and the Jaguar. New York: Freeman, 1994.

Glashow, Sheldon. Interactions. New York: Time-Warner Books, 1988.

Guth, Alan H. The Inflationary Universe. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997.

Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.

Hawking, Stephen, and Roger Penrose. The Nature of Space and Time. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Hey, Tony, and Patrick Walters. Einstein's Mirror. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Kaku, Michio. Beyond Einstein. New York: Anchor, 1987.

———. Hyperspace. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Lederman, Leon, with Dick Teresi. The God Particle. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Lindley, David. The End of Physics. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

———. Where Does the Weirdness Go? New York: Basic Books, 1996.

Overbye, Dennis, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Pais, Abraham. Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Penrose, Roger. The Emperor's New Mind. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Rees, Martin J. Before the Beginning. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997.

Smolin, Lee. The Life of the Cosmos. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Thorne, Kip. Black Holes and Time Warps. New York: Norton, 1994.

Weinberg, Steven. The First Three Minutes. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

———. Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon, 1992.

Wheeler, John A. A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime. New York: Scientific American Library, 1990.

* Some of the ideas in this and the next few sections are rather subtle, so don’t be put off if you have trouble following every link in the explanatory chain—especially in a single reading.

* Those readers who skipped over the “More Precise Answer” section of Chapter 6 might find it helpful to skim the beginning part of that section.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Copyright

Contents

Preface

Part I: The Edge of Knowledge

1. Tied Up with String

Part II: The Dilemma of Space, Time, and the Quanta

2. Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder

3. Of Warps and Ripples

4. Microscopic Weirdness

5. The Need for a New Theory: General Relativity vs. Quantum Mechanics

Part III: The Cosmic Symphony

6. Nothing but Music: The Essentials of Superstring Theory

7. The "Super" in Superstrings

8. More Dimensions Than Meet the Eye

9. The Smoking Gun: Experimental Signatures

Part IV: String Theory and the Fabric of Spacetime

10. Quantum