A Nerd's Dream Come True

What did you love best about Knocking on Heaven's Door?

This book provides a context in which to place the incomprehensible while doing no damage to the curiosity the lead us to this book in the first place. While the subject matter Dr. Randall discusses is understood by only a few particle physicists, she has a teacher's ability to relate ideas that, while out of the common man's theoretical reach, are nonetheless within their conceptual reach so long as the information source has the explanatory skills of Dr. Randall. She is fearless in taking on the shortsighted politicians who, on the one hand seem to think our nation is "extraordinary" and yet who routinely refuse to invest in its scientific future...unless that research leads to a bigger, better bomb. Her defense of science as a method, not as a surrogate for religion, a tool used not just to find answers, but to use those answers to form the next great question is a welcome defense of reason in a world increasingly subject to sound bites, simple answers and deepening religiosity.

What other book might you compare Knocking on Heaven's Door to and why?

Knocking on Heaven's Door is one of group of books published in the past several decades by physicists who have attempted to bring the immense complexity of their ideas into the focus of those of us less learned in their field. The God Particle (Leon M. Lederman and science writer Dick Teresi) and the many books from Stephen Hawking are examples of this genre that might be called "Big Ideas in Small Places". Lisa Randall is a solid citizen of that learned community.

What does Carrington MacDuffie bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Carrington MacDuffie's contribution to this reading is delivering some very thick conceptual pros with the sound of conviction. While this may seem to be a minor point, where complexity and passion meet, it can make the difference between just another political speech or hearing, "I have a dream...".

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Page turner? No. For this kind of reading, set aside time to think about what's being said.

Any additional comments?

Anybody interested in big science, in little tiny (I mean really tiny) things, in big exciting things like the Large Hadron Collider or who just take pleasure knowing how vast and powerful the human mind can be will love this book.

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1 person found this helpful

Love the book, hate the title

If you could sum up Knocking on Heaven's Door in three words, what would they be?

Gives a good tour of current high energy particle physics. It's broken into sections. The first is for those questioning faith and just discovering the wonders of nature and science.
You could easily skip to part two and still love the book. She includes many technical details of the LHC.

What other book might you compare Knocking on Heaven's Door to and why?

The particle at the end of the universe. The reason is that it is the most up to date book regarding information on the HIGGS candidate and subsequent announcement in July of 2012

Any additional comments?

the title sucks and Lisa knows that it does. She even devoted time in the book talking about how calling the Higgs the God particle was a mistake

Highly recommend

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5 people found this helpful

Too Political

Would you try another book from Lisa Randall and/or Carrington MacDuffie?

I was enjoying this book even though it was a little dry and dragged in many areas. The subject was still interesting enough to keep my interest until I realized that the author had a political agenda and accented it with barbs about, for instance, Sarah Palin. Once I reached this realization I saw no reason to subject myself to such a book that I was only enjoying marginally to begin with. To be honest, I don't recommend this book because it doesn't really have anything origuinal to offer.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Carrington MacDuffie?

Yes, The narrator was quite talented

Did Knocking on Heaven's Door inspire you to do anything?

Yes, Stop reading it.

Any additional comments?

Keep politics out of your writing.

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22 people found this helpful

Makes the hard to understand understandable

She is able to make a complex subject interesting and understandable. Wished she would have added some equations.

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1 person found this helpful

Why, oh why, didn't Lisa Randall narrate...

Where does Knocking on Heaven's Door rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The book is amazing, but my review knocks stars down because Lisa Randall really should have read her own book. She is an excellent professor, passionate speaker and delivers excellently in interviews and other media. Since I was also reading it in book form, I can compare and contrast the experience. The subject matter was engaging and very accessible to the layperson. I hoped listening to the audiobook would really enhance my experience of the words (as many books have done in the past when I took them with me for walks/hikes). However, instead of adding to the experience, listening to the audiobook was tough. Ms. MacDuffie could have used her lovely voice to read just about anything and I can't help but feel it would all be the same.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

I don't want to disrespect Carrington MacDuffie, but this subject matter is a little too dry for her soft, almost clinically calm voice. Lisa Randall did a diservice to the layperson by not narrating the book herself, but I guess she's busy finding answers to - you know- the universe.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No way. I needed to break every hour or so to switch it up.

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6 people found this helpful

LEADERSHIP IN SCIENCE

Lisa Randall believes the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the wonders of the world, competing with the pyramids of Egypt in its colossal achievement. Located near the border of France and Switzerland, it is the largest construction project ever built.

“Knocking on Heaven’s Door” is the story of the Collider’s creation, inner workings, and scientific objectives. It is also a story of America’s loss of leadership in science.

A quibble one may have with Randall’s book is that she digresses into derivative finance to suggest that more scientific analysis would obviate the kind of financial disaster that occurred in 2007. She suggests that proper analysis of real estate derivatives would have stopped the madness. The naiveté of that argument is that there were a few that saw the collapse coming but their scientific analysis only convinced a small number of people. Few financial “geniuses” chose to believe real estate derivatives were a financial instrument of destruction. How different is that from the scientific community’s position on global warming?

Scientific analysis misses part of what makes human’s human; i.e. minds can know something and still act irrationally; not to mention, rationality is often in the mind of the beholder. Randal admits as much in writing about beauty and truth and clearly notes that they are not necessarily equivalent because of human subjectivity. If one can make millions of dollars off a quant’s mistaken calculations, what incentive does that person have to ignore the opportunity?

Randall convinces one of the formidable reality of the LHC and its potential contribution to science. America may have missed a chance to be a leader rather than follower of one of the 21st century’s great contributions to science, the Large Hadron Collider.

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4 people found this helpful

Scientific Indulgent Gush

I couldn't even finish it - Sure she's smart, but not an author for philosophy junkies like the title suggests. More a work for the scientific community.

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13 people found this helpful

The Scale & Beauty of the Universe and Unknown

“Try to remember that artists in these catastrophic times, along with the serious scientists, are the only salvation for us, if there is to be any.”
― William H. Gass

“Science certainly is not the static statement of universal laws we all hear about in elementary school. Nor is it a set of arbitrary rules. Science is an evolving body of knowledge. Many of the ideas we are currently investigating will prove to be wrong or incomplete. Scientific descriptions certainly change as we cross the boundaries that circumscribe what we know and venture into more remote territory where we can glimpse hints of the deeper truths beyond.”
- Lisa Randall, Knocking on Heaven's Door

Loved it. In this book Lisa Randall writes about scale and science, while surveying the state of modern physics just as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was getting warmed up (2011).

Randall is a theoretical physicist working on both particle physics and cosmology. She teaches at Harvard and specializes in supersymmetry, the Standard Model, cosmological inflation, dark matter, etc. She is one of the most cited modern theoretical physicists and is yearly on the short-list for the Nobel Prize in Physics. She is also a bit of a renessainse woman. Beyond her ability to scale from the super small to the super big, she enjoys art, literature, and the outdoors. There are some geniuses who seem to exist comfortably only in the small box they excel in. That is definitely not Lisa Randall. She seems to enjoy those spaces where literature, art, and the sciences overlap.

Lisa's collection of interests (beyond physics) is the prime reasons why she is such a gifted translator of theoretical physics. I'm a pretty smart guy, but would have been even more lost without her sharp metaphors and patient untangling of the bleeding edge of physics. I'm still pretty damn confused, but feel just a bit more confident WHERE I'm confused. I think her gift comes both from her varied interests, her wide friendships, and her basic humanity.

Amazingly, it was during a recent gift from the Universe that I met Lisa. Last year in August (on the 21st) a total eclipse of the sun was going to throw its umbral shadow over my sister-in-law's house in Southern Idaho. My brother Matt and I and his friend from the CIA decided to do a road trip. Soon, it wasn't just us three, but friends of friends, were on our way to Rigby, Idaho. Walter Kirn asked if he could meet us, and soon he asked if his friend from Harvard could come. Lisa showed up with a couple friends (one was an artist from LA, (Landon Ross, whose art is informed and influenced heavily by science) and we climbed up the South Menan Butte (owned by a Mormon Capitalist selling tickets) for a prime viewing spot. There we watched the shadow of the eclipse racing towards us.

Anyway, on this butte in Southern Idaho theoretical physicists, artists, writers, and a motley crue of naturalists, retirees, and Mormons were together humbled by the size of the Universe, the scale of what we know and don't know. We were also thrilled that, with the help of science, we knew where to be and together watched the moon's shadow roll over us. In some ways, it seemed a brief echo of how Lisa must have felt watching the LHC go online. Evidence would either show that the Standard Model worked or didn't work as far as the Higgs Boson particle (often called the "God Particle") was concerned. Shortly after this book was published in hard cover, and right before it came out in paperback, the LHC provided evidence that once again theoretical physicists were correct.

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7 people found this helpful

Complicated Subject Made Easy

Would you listen to Knocking on Heaven's Door again? Why?

Yes and I have gone back to listen again to parts of it.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Knocking on Heaven's Door?

The explanation of dark matter and the quest to find it.

Any additional comments?

Lisa Randall is very good at explaining this subject and makes it reachable for everyone.

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Well written and nicely read.

An enjoyable and informative read. However Lisa Randal has included a couple of long (chapter long) rants on religion and it's relevance or lack thereof. It would be a pity to give up. Just move on to the next chapter and enjoy informative and well presented information.

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