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Signatures of the Artist
The Vital Imperfections That Make Our Universe Habitable
Synopsis
How does the scientific enterprise really work to illuminate the origins of life and the universe itself?
The quest to understand our universe, how it may have originated and evolved, and especially the conditions that allow it to support the existence of life forms, has been a central theme in religion for millennia and in science for centuries. In the past half-century, in particular, enormous progress in particle and nuclear physics and cosmology has clarified the essential role of imperfections - deviations from perfect symmetry or homogeneity or predictability - in establishing conditions that allow for structure in the universe that can support the development of life. Many of these deviations are tiny and seem mysteriously fine-tuned to allow for life.
The goal of this book is to review the recent and ongoing scientific research exploring these imperfections, in a broad-ranging, non-mathematical approach with an emphasis on the intricate tapestry of elegant experiments that bear on the conditions for habitability in our universe. This book makes clear what we know and how we know it, as distinct from what we speculate and how we might test it. At the same time, it attempts to convey a sense of wonderment at the tuning of these imperfections and of the rapid rate at which the boundary between knowledge and speculation is currently shifting.
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What Reviewers Are Saying
An interesting and unique contribution to the crowded field of popular scientific literature. The topics are well selected and [the author] omits no fundamental physics mysteries of consequence. * Don Lincoln, American Journal of Physics * A romp from quantum mixing to the apparent metastability of the vacuum (given current measurements of the Higgs and top masses), with excursions into cosmology, biology and metaphysics. * Mark Rayner, CERN Courier * Detailed chapters. He covers the most recent research... Highly recommended. * C.G. Wood, CHOICE * Vigdor takes us on a breathtaking excursion around the perimeters of our physics knowledge, opening vistas for the connections between what lies beyond and our type of life. He wittily describes the landscape and, in more depth than most other authors, how we know what we know. And he wonders, is there an artist behind such an imperfect masterpiece? * Ubirajara van Kolck, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique * This is a very carefully structured and well written book about the physical constraints that allow life to exist in the universe. It gives a much more detailed discussion of the relevant physics than comparable books, because the author is an experimentalist. However it does not lose sight of the big picture, and is entertainingly written and well illustrated. It is a good read. * George Ellis, University of Cape Town *