Reality Is Not What It Seems
Carlo Rovelli, an Italian theoretical physicist and a founder of loop quantum gravity, takes readers on a sweeping tour of how human ideas about the nature of reality have developed. Beginning with the ancient Greek atomists Democritus and Leucippus, he moves through Newton, Faraday, Einstein's relativity, and quantum mechanics, showing how each step revised our picture of space, time, and matter. Rovelli then arrives at the unfinished frontier of his own field, where space appears to be made of tiny grains and time may not exist at the deepest level. Written with the clarity and poetic touch that made him a bestselling science writer, the book treats physics as a continuing human story of curiosity and revision. It is both an accessible introduction to relativity and quantum theory and a glimpse of the strange world that may lie beneath them.
What you might want to know about Reality Is Not What It Seems
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A theoretical physicist traces the story of how we understand reality, from ancient atomists to the frontier of quantum gravity, where space and time themselves dissolve.
No. Rovelli writes for general readers, using clear language and analogies to explain relativity, quantum mechanics, and the ideas behind quantum gravity.
It is the unfinished effort to unite Einstein's relativity with quantum mechanics. Rovelli works on one approach, loop quantum gravity, which suggests space is made of tiny grains and time may not be fundamental.
Reality Is Not What It Seems was written by Carlo Rovelli, published in 2017 by Penguin.
Reality Is Not What It Seems is 234 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Reality Is Not What It Seems takes most readers 4 to 5 hours to finish.
Reality Is Not What It Seems is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
