Waves in an Impossible Sea

How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean

By: Matt Strassler

Narrated by: Christopher Grove

A theoretical physicist takes listeners on an awe-inspiring journey-found in "no other book" (Science)—to discover how the universe generates everything from nothing at all: "If you want to know what's really going on in the realms of relativity and particle physics, read this book" (Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe).

In Waves in an Impossible Sea, physicist Matt Strassler tells a startling tale of elementary particles, human experience, and empty space. He begins with a simple mystery of motion. When we drive at highway speeds with the windows down, the wind beats against our faces. Yet our planet hurtles through the cosmos at 150 miles per second, and we feel nothing of it. How can our voyage be so tranquil when, as Einstein discovered, matter warps space, and space deflects matter?

The answer, Strassler reveals, is that empty space is a sea, albeit a paradoxically strange one. Much like water and air, it ripples in various ways, and we ourselves, made from its ripples, can move through space as effortlessly as waves crossing an ocean. Deftly weaving together daily experience and fundamental physics—the musical universe, the enigmatic quantum, cosmic fields, and the Higgs boson—Strassler shows us how all things, familiar and unfamiliar, emerge from what seems like nothing at all.

©2024 Matthew J. Strassler (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

thought provoking

and well written with care. written by a teacher who surely has changed the path of many young lives

Very well written

The narration was very well done. I understand more of the subject. I’m not nearly smart enough to understand it all but it is well worth your time

Thought provoking

This is a thought provoking book. I read Professor Strassler’s blog Of Particular Significance and also loved his recent interview with Brian Keating. I enjoyed the musical analogies. The work is presented without the math so amateur enthusiasts of astrophysics can enjoy and learn. Great job!

Great teaching analogies

This book and it’s very basic presentation of quantum theories, is very good. It gives lots of really good analogies that has helped me to understand the theories and particle waves much better. The writing style or the reading style, was so flat and so monotone that I had a very difficult time staying with it, it kept putting me to sleep. But I’m glad I stuck to it and finished.S

It is a book i have listened to twice. Its one i will purchase hard cover because it is something i want to understand better…

made my desire to understand stronger. I am searching for ideas that support my ideas relating to phase related interactions give the universe substance