The Reality Frame: Relativity and our place in the universe

by Brian Clegg

Weaving together the great ideas of science, Reality’s Frame takes us on a thrilling journey from empty space all the way to the human mind.

Acclaimed science writer Brian Clegg builds up reality piece by piece, from space, to time, to matter, movement, the fundamental forces, life, and the massive transformation that life itself has wrought on the natural world. He reveals that underlying it all is not, as we might believe, a system of immovable absolutes, but the ever-shifting, amorphous world of relativity.

From religion to philosophy, humanity has traditionally sought out absolutes to explain the world around us, but as science has developed, relativity has swept away many of these certainties, leaving only a handful of unchangeable essentials — such as absolute zero, nothingness, light — leading to better science and a new understanding of the essence of being human.

This is an Ascent of Man for the 21st century, the gripping story of modern science that will fill you with wonder and give you a new insight into our place in the universe.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics

310 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

About the author

Brian's latest books, Ten Billion Tomorrows and How Many Moons does the Earth Have are now available to pre-order. He has written a range of other science titles, including the bestselling Inflight Science, The God Effect, Before the Big Bang, A Brief History of Infinity, Build Your Own Time Machine and Dice World.

Along with appearances at the Royal Institution in London he has spoken at venues from Oxford and Cambridge Universities to Cheltenham Festival of Science, has contributed to radio and TV programmes, and is a popular speaker at schools. Brian is also editor of the successful www.popularscience.co.uk book review site and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Brian has Masters degrees from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences and from Lancaster University in Operational Research, a discipline originally developed during the Second World War to apply the power of mathematics to warfare. It has since been widely applied to problem solving and decision making in business.

Brian has also written regular columns, features and reviews for numerous publications, including Nature, The Guardian, PC Week, Computer Weekly, Personal Computer World, The Observer, Innovative Leader, Professional Manager, BBC History, Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful. His books have been translated into many languages, including German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, Norwegian, Thai and even Indonesian.

Reviews

[Tino · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay book that suffers from trying to fit too many topics into such a small work. 3-3.5 stars.

[Sohum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brian Klegg’s Reality Frame takes readers back to the origins of the universe, and allows them to experience how a “featureless void” evolved in to the bright and astonishing cosmos we know today. Most people would generally not pick up a physics book as light reading, but this novel is more than a bunch of equations and formulas as it challenges a reader’s own beliefs, and puts into picture our place in the universe. People have basic understanding about physical laws such as, gravity and speed of light. These universal constants form the basis of one’s general knowledge. What most people fail to notice is that they use these absolutes unknowingly. These physical laws are not written in any book, but rather deduced by everyday people. If someone drops an object, they notice that gravity pulls it to the ground. Brian Klegg encourages the audience to understand that their lives are more interconnected with physics than they think, and that it does not take a PHD to figure out the universe. Klegg pushes the audience to expand the parameters of their thoughts by questioning their perspective of reality. Brian Klegg is able to interpret the reader’s straightforward thinking, and amaze them with the outcomes of certain theoretical situations, or concepts that he introduces. On one occasion Klegg spoke of the concept of age, where he referred to how the audience counts age based on the number of years that have passed since they were born, whereas “a lot of what we are dates back to the beginning of the universe.” The atoms of hydrogen in our flesh date back to 13.8 billion years. This realization of their true beginnings makes the audience reconsider their frame of reference. Despite this novel dealing with particularly complex concepts it uses language school children can understand. For example, when referring to matter, the book uses the word “stuff,” so that people can understand the information being discussed without having to know proper science terminology. While this kind of language is premature, and slightly inaccurate, it can get the message across to readers. Brian Kleggs tone is also light and animated, therefore making the reader more interested in the novel. The universe is so complicated that even the brightest minds have trouble wrapping their mind around certain concepts, but Brian Klegg has synthesized these ideas in such a way that any reader can gain a in depth understanding of the basic components in the universe.

[Tom Elliot · Rating 2 out of 5]

A flawed concept executed about as well as was probably possible. It's strange, given that part of the books central thesis is that it's impossible to have true understanding without context, that the author should have fallen into the reductionist trap of attempting to construct a universe component by component. The broader part of the books thesis is that relativity is the necessary framework from which this understanding emerges. The problem is that the definiton of relativity he uses has to be tortured mercilessly to get his point across. Often he uses the term 'relativistic' where I think he simply means 'relative' or even just 'relational'. His point of view on evolution and creativity in the last few chapters doesn't seem to have any uniquely Einsteinian charcter to it at all, and, furthermore, much of it seems to be essentially the commonly held viewpoint on these subjects trying to masquerade as something profound.
Also, in the last chapter or so, he lauches into these protracted diatribes against various 'principles of mediocrity' used in subjects such as evolution and cosmology as matters of expedience. While I don't disagree with anything he said as such, the point is somewhat belaboured, especially if you have been properly cautioned in their use to begin with. The purpose of these ramblings seems to be to defend his own Bronkowskian regard for the human condition as a legitimate intellectual position. I don't think this was really necessary: if you want to awe and wonder, awe and wonder away. You don't have to dress it up as something self-important, and, at any rate, you can hardly stop people from gushing at human ingenuity at slightest provocation at the best of times, contrary to what he'll have you believe.
The discussion of the actual physical relativity is okay, but probably handled better elsewhere. I'll probably be avoiding his writing from now on.

[Charity Jenkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really had me thinking in a lot of places.
I got a lot out of it at the beginning, some mind bending stuff. But towards the end I wasn't feeling the same wow factor, so that's affected my overall feeling and then rating. I think the author hs tried to tie in a human theme that is relevant but (and I'm just guessing) not his expertise. I'll be interested to read another book by Clegg.

[Doug White · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book aimed at the lay person with an interest in physics, ccosmology and the theory of relativity. Clegg takes us on a fascinating journey through the construction of our Universe, weaving in the discoveries and theories of the many great minds that have contributed to our understanding over the centuries. We hear from ancient Greek philosophers, Isaac Newton, Einstein, Richard Feymann and many more, as we construct our Universe layer by layer, adding space, time, matter (or 'stuff' as Clegg labels it), energy, and more. The book is an easy read, not bogged down with difficult equations or long detailed theoretical passages. It gets to the important points and makes them simple to grasp. Definitely my favorite of Clegg's many physics/science books to date!

[George Lai · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read the first 4 chapters (the book has 9), and I don’t have the will to finish it. This is the 6th book of his I’ve read recently; the first three were hits, these last three were misses.

[Alfonso Sierra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great content and very interesting. It covers several topics in direct connection with Relativity and the universe. Great read!

[Caramello · Rating 2 out of 5]

😞

[Richard Marney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another example of bringing complex science to the non-technical reader. Truly eye-opening!!

[Bernard O'Leary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very similar to another I read recently, Void: The Strange Physics of Nothing, in that it tries to cram all of physics into 200-odd pages, and doesn't achieve much in the process.