HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Brian Greene's 'Fabric of the Cosmos'[1] has some great explanations of space and time and their relationship.

If you are very interested, I highly recommend Carlo Rovelli's 'The Order of Time.'[2]

And 'Your Brain is a Time Machine'[3], though I ultimately found it unsatisfying, goes directly at the apparent contradiction between our sense of the 'flow' of time, and the implications of general relativity. Although it doesn't have an answer, it states the problem clearly, and has a lot of other interesting facts about our perceptions of time.

Rovelli has also given some interesting talks on YouTube.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture-Reality/d...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=carlo+rovelli+order+of+time&crid=...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Time-Machine-Neuroscience/...

⬐ wallace_f

Nobody becomes famous, or rarely respected, by saying they don't understand.

There are a lot of mysteries, even ones which arise in deceptively ordinary experiences, for example when we try to confront exactly how a gyroscope works(1).

My personal opinion is, to make an analogy, that we don't really know the source code of the universe. Every natural law is not really a law, but just a theory, or a mental model, articulated in maths, describing what we see, nothing more than that. This becomes obvious when you consider something famous like Newtonian gravity's obsolecense by GR. GR is also not the source code, just another really good mental model to describe behavioral patterns of the universe.

AFAIK time is something we really struggle with wrapping our minds around. There are questions which are so difficult I wonder if they're even worth asking -- such as about places where time would not exist, such as in places outside our universe.

1-https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-forgotten-myst...

Why ? Someone states its Brian Greene in the comments => http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture-Reality/dp... because that passage is actually in there somewhere.

He is Brian Greene http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture-Reality/dp... (Cf. Index: 'speed of light', p.564), at least in this context:)

⬐ mistermann

How do you know?

⬐ mazsa

I mean, maybe it is a dog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_y... who is paraphrasing Greene:) But who cares? It is Greene "at least in this context".

I know this doesn't answer your question since you asked about math in general, but in case anyone ever starts a "Best Physics books for complete noobie?" thread I'd like to go ahead and suggest Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos": http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture-Reality/dp...

⬐ jimbokun

Maybe more on topic than you suggest, as some Physics books double as pretty good books about math.

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Reality-Complete-Guide-Universe/d...

OK, I haven't actually read it, but it looked like a really good book for learning a lot of interesting math when I thumbed through its contents at the library. :)

⬐ CamperBob

I agree with hyperbovine -- Road To Reality is a downright terrible book for the casually-interested nonprofessional, and I don't understand why it gets recommended so frequently. Roger Penrose is a bright fellow and a good writer but this book is not for the person who did OK in high school math and physics and now wants to take it to the next level.

⬐ MaysonL

How would it be for a guy who aced second semester freshman physics and the math GRE (40 years ago), and top 100 on the Putnam?

⬐ CamperBob

I'd guess you'd be in his target audience. Someone who's already comfortable with complex causality and relationships between seemingly-random facts.

⬐ hyperbovine

This is not a good book for someone who doesn't know math. He's on to hyperbolic geometry by ch 2. (unsuccessfully) reading this book was one of the things that convinced me to back to school to study more math :-)