The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science.There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall. The bestselling author of Warped Passages is an expert in both particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest). In Knocking on Heaven's Door, she explores how we decide which scientific questions to study and how we go about answering them. She examines the role of risk, creativity, uncertainty, beauty, and truth in scientific thinking through provocative conversations with leading figures in other fields (such as the chef David Chang, the forecaster Nate Silver, and the screenwriter Scott Derrickson), and she explains with wit and clarity th

In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, Professor Lisa Randall, one of today’s most influential theoretical physicists, takes readers on an intellectual adventure through the history of the cosmos, showing how events in the farthest reaches of the Universe created the conditions for life—and death—on our planet.
Sixty-six million years ago, an object the size of a city crashed into Earth, killing off the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the planet’s species. Challenging the usual assumptions about the simple makeup of the unseen material that constitutes 85% of the matter in the Universe, Randall explains how a disk of dark matter in the Milky Way plane might have triggered the cataclysm.
But Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs does more than present a radical idea. With clarity and wit, it explains the nature of the Universe, dark matter, the Milky Way galaxy, comets, asteroids, and impacts. This breathtaking synthesis, illuminated by pop culture references and social and political viewpoints, reveals the deep relationships among the small and the large, the visible and the hidden, as well as the astonishing beauty of the connections that surround us. It’s impossible to read this book and look at either the Earth or the sky again in the same way.

Selected as a Book of the Year by Mail on Sunday and Financial Times
66 million years ago, a ten-mile-wide object from outer space hurtled into the Earth at incredible speed and destroyed the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet.
Where did it come from, and why? And how is this connected to dark matter – the most mysterious, elusive stuff in the universe, that interacts with gravity like ordinary matter but doesn’t emit or absorb light. Astronomers know it’s there but it is literally invisible.
Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs tells the story of Big Bang theory, cosmological inflation, the makeup of the universe and our solar system’s place in it; it’s about mass extinctions through the ages, what we know has hit the Earth and what might hit us in the future. And it explores the radical idea that dark matter might ultimately have been responsible for the dinosaurs’ extinction.
A horizon-expanding tour of the cosmos that blends what we know about the universe with new thinking, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a book full of wonders, from a gifted scientist and writer.

In "Warped Passages" one of the world's most exciting scientists gives us a glimpse into our future. Incredibly readable - and illustrated throughout - it allows the general reader to understand the questions that scientists are dealing with at the frontiers of research today. Lisa Randall allows the reader to understand the kind of problems that extra dimensions might solve and the kind of speculation that is needed even to imagine them. She also gives an introduction to developments in early twentieth century physics, particle physics and string theory and addresses current debates about relativity, quantum mechanics and gravity - and she describes the questions that are still to be solved.

The universe has its secrets. It may even hide extra dimensions, different from anything ever imagined. A whole raft of remarkable concepts now rides atop the scientific firmament, including parallel universes, warped geometry, and threedimensional sink-holes. We understand far more about the world than we did just a few short years ago -- and yet we are more uncertain about the true nature of the universe than ever before. Have we reached a point of scientific discovery so advanced that the laws of physics as we know them are simply not sufficient? Will we all soon have to accept explanations that previously remained in the realm of science fiction? Lisa Randall is herself making these extraordinary breakthroughs, pushing back the boundaries of science in her research to answer some of the most fundamental questions posed by Nature. For example, why is the gravitational field from the entire Earth so defenseless against the small tug of a tiny magnet? Searching for answers to such seemingly irresolvable questions has led physicists to postulate extra dimensions, the presence of which may lead to unimaginable gains in scientific understanding. Randall takes us into the incredible world of warped, hidden dimensions that underpin the universe we live in, describing how we might prove their existence, while examining the questions that they still leave unanswered. Warped Passages provides an exhilarating overview that tracks the arc of discovery from early twentieth-century physics to the razor's edge of today's particle physics and string theory, unweaving the current debates about relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity. In a highly readable style sure to entertain and elucidate, Lisa Randall demystifies the science and beguilingly unravels the mysteries of the myriad worlds that may exist just beyond the one we are only now beginning to know.

《弯曲的旅行》是哈佛大学理论物理学家、美女教授丽莎•兰道尔的代表著作，在书中，作者以轻松愉快、浅显易懂的文风，深入浅出地谈论了宇宙的奥秘。同时，该书还给读者奉献了一个令人振奋的文献综述，它回顾了二十世纪早期物理直到当今粒子物理和弦理论最前沿的发现，化解了当今有关相对论、量子力学和引力的争议和纠纷。作者极大地调动了读者的好奇心，举重若轻、饶有兴趣地引领读者由简单的直觉经验出发，穿越当代物理学的主要概念，一直到达令人兴奋的科学最前沿。

The universe has many secrets. It may hide additional dimensions of space other than the familier three we recognize. There might even be another universe adjacent to ours, invisible and unattainable . . . for now. Warped Passages is a brilliantly readable and altogether exhilarating journey that tracks the arc of discovery from early twentieth-century physics to the razor's edge of modern scientific theory. One of the world's leading theoretical physicists, Lisa Randall provides astonishing scientific possibilities that, until recently, were restricted to the realm of science fiction. Unraveling the twisted threads of the most current debates on relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity, she explores some of the most fundamental questions posed by Nature&#8212taking us into the warped, hidden dimensions underpinning the universe we live in, demystifying the science of the myriad worlds that may exist just beyond our own.

The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the universe: its make-up, its evolution and the fundamental forces that determine its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and a rousing defence of the role of science in our lives. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall: the bestselling author of Warped Passages is an expert on both particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest) and is one of the most highly regarded theoretical physicists in the world. In thi book she recounts the thrilling progress in our understanding of the universe from Galileo and Newton to Einstein and Feynman; she explores how we decide which scientific questions to study and how we go about answering them; and, she examines the role of risk, creativity, uncertainty, beauty and truth in scientific thinking.

Bestselling author of Warped Passages and Knocking on Heaven's Door and one of today's most influential and highly cited theoretical physicists, Professor Lisa Randall once again effortlessly delivers fascinating science to the general reader. Weaving together the cosmos' history and our own in an expanding intellectual adventure story, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs takes us from the mysteries of dark matter and our cosmic environment to the conditions for life on Earth.

Sixty-six million years ago, an object the size of a city descended from space to crash into Earth, creating a cataclysm that killed off the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet. What was its origin? Randall proposes it was a comet that was dislodged from its orbit as the Solar System passed through a disk of dark matter that is embedded in the plane of the Milky Way. Her research challenges the usual assumptions about the simple nature of dark matter and demonstrates how scientists formulate and establish new ideas. In a sense, it might have been dark matter that killed the dinosaurs.

With her unique and wide-ranging perspective, Randall connects dark matter to the history of the world in the broadest terms. Bringing in pop culture and social and political viewpoints, she shares with us the latest findings—established and speculative—regarding dark matter, the cosmos, the galaxy, asteroids, comets, and impacts, as well as life's development and extinctions. Randall makes clear how connected the planet is to the makeup of the Universe, but also how fragile our place in the Universe, which evolved over billions of years, might be.

In this brilliant and fresh exploration of our cosmic environment, Professor Randall explains the underlying science of our world in the breathtaking tale of a Universe in which the small and the large, the visible and the hidden are intimately related. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs illuminates the deep relationships that are critical to our world as well as the astonishing beauty of the structures and connections that surround us. It's impossible to read this book and look at either Earth or sky again in the same way.