Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything

Reading an overview about modern thoughts on unifying the physics of particles, relativity and the forces of nature has been on my to do list for a while. Mission accomplished, albeit based on 1988 physics. If there was a more recent follow-up book by F. David Peat I would buy it; there is a lot of content that only wet my appetite to learn more about the details behind the narrative and I have enjoyed the way the author wove this complicated story together.

I found this book to be an excellent introduction to some fascinating fields in theoretical physics. It is easy to read and was hard for me to put down. I am not a Mathematician or a Physicist but this book has done a lot to pique my interest and motivate me to tackle the Math required for a deeper inquiry into these fascinating subjects. I look forward to reading more books by this author.

This book is non-technical -- it has almost no equations, but is well-illustrated. Just having finished it, I feel it gave a good sense of the major issues involved in this still highly speculative and uncertain field. Readable summary of the state-of-the-art in 1988. Author condescends nicely to the reader: he takes pains to repeat over and over, in slightly varying words, the technical points; this made book wordy; but it was a good strategy since, w/o equations, these esoteric ideas come across vaguely at best. Repetition allows at least "ear knowledge" of the jargon. Please don't expect much more at this level. Like another reviewer, I was not happy with one-third of the book being devoted to twistors, since these strike this outsider as higher on mathematical elegance than on physical content. I will not fault Peat, however, for doing this since: A) due to his friendship with the Penrose Twistor group he is specially qualified to popularise this subject, and B) the Twistor program, a child of Penrose's brain, is rich in guiding principles, and provides therefore a healthy antidote to the superstrings, which grew up higgeldy-piggeldy by a sequence of "accidental" discoveries -- "It seems to work, but, heck, we don't really know why." Twistors have been less a matter of trial and error. At least they work well for massless particles. (Sidelight: In a blackboard discussion w/ Penrose at Cal Tech that I chanced to overhear about 25 yrs. ago, Feynman told Penrose that no one had succeeded in making massless fields cohere together so as to act like massive fields.)

Though at times, the historical overview of superstring theory devolpment (about the first third of the book)gets a little...boring, the overall level of understanding for the average lay reader of this potentially revolutionary theory is high. Obviously written for the non physicist, this book gives necassarily short treatment to some of the more arcane aspects of superstring theory. However, even without the more involved mathametics, this theory is explained with both depth and accuracy. Overall, a first class treatment of a complex theory.

Superstrings is not a subject that is of interest to everyone, but I suprised myself how interested I became. The author, F. David Peat, brings the subject, the subatomic world, down to a non-scientific person's level. Through the clever use of analogies, and diagrams, and by refering the reader back to previous sections of the book, the reader is able to follow what becomes a very interesting story. An interesting story that is yet to be complete. Through out the book we are reminded that a new understanding, a deeper principle may be needed before a clear picture of the subatomic world will emerge. The book covers the work of many of the great minds of postmodern physics and the mathematics of complex numbers and when you have finished the book you feel you are on a first name basis. I would recomend the book to anyone with an interest in the physical world and beyond.