--- product_id: 5768795 title: "The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos" price: "€ 36.20" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.pt/products/5768795-the-hidden-reality-parallel-universes-and-the-deep-laws-cosmos store_origin: PT region: Portugal --- # The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos **Price:** € 36.20 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos - **How much does it cost?** € 36.20 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.pt](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/5768795-the-hidden-reality-parallel-universes-and-the-deep-laws-cosmos) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description The bestselling author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos tackles perhaps the most mind-bending question in modern physics and cosmology: Is our universe the only universe? There was a time when "universe" meant all there is. Everything. Yet, a number of theories are converging on the possibility that our universe may be but one among many parallel universes populating a vast multiverse. Here, Briane Greene, one of our foremost physicists and science writers, takes us on a breathtaking journey to a multiverse comprising an endless series of big bangs, a multiverse with duplicates of every one of us, a multiverse populated by vast sheets of spacetime, a multiverse in which all we consider real are holographic illusions, and even a multiverse made purely of math--and reveals the reality hidden within each. Using his trademark wit and precision, Greene presents a thrilling survey of cutting-edge physics and confronts the inevitable question: How can fundamental science progress if great swaths of reality lie beyond our reach? The Hidden Reality is a remarkable adventure through a world more vast and strange than anything we could have imagined. Review: No Road Untraveled. - This challenging, but fascinating, book from Brian Greene is another winner. It turns out that there's not just one version of the multiverse proposal but several, ranging from the Quilted and Inflationary Multiverses to the Brane and Quantum Multiverses. If you'r not careful you could get lost on this mathematical road trip. Drawing on everyday analogues to help explain the various examples of the Multiverse, Greene delves into the mysteries of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity searching for some common ground. As always his writing is geared for the well-read layperson but it helps to have a good background in reading this type of book. If you've read his previous books or similar titles by other authors then this one shouldn't be much of a problem. The whole idea of the Multiverse is based on extreme mathematics but you don't have to be a math wizard to enjoy the book. While the approach is non mathematical Greene does provide some equations (in the notes) for anybody so inclined. Some of the information is given as a kind of "refresher course" in String Theory and Quantum Mechanics but the author gives you the opportunity skip ahead if you wish to. Not being a physicists myself I tend to appreciate that kind of approach. The book is presented in 11 chapters with each chapter devoted to one or two kinds of Multiverse so the reader gets an in depth look at each variety. I found that some chapters were easier to read than others and there were some sections that were a little overwhelming in content. It took me two passes to read The Elegant Universe and three attempts on The Hidden Reality but in the end I got through both of them. I liked the section on the Inflationary Multiverse and it's "Swiss Cheese" analogy, it was the easiest to get through while the section on Quantum Mechanics, Probability Waves and Entropy was the most difficult. A good portion of the book is devoted to the history of theoretical physics and multiverse scenarios, giving you a look at the important people and events that made the most impact. To some people things like String Theory and Multiverses are more of a philosophy than a science since proof of their existence lies beyond our currant technology to access. To that end, the book closes with a section of extreme speculation on the future of computer simulation, artificial intelligence and the Multiverse. Read at your own risk. Scientist the world over are pushing the boundaries of knowledge with mathematics and observations, as well as complicated experiments but, so far, have not been unable to come up with any defining answers. And if the answers are not there or they lead in a different direction, then we will have to come up with a whole new set of metaphors to explain the world around us. The Hidden Reality gives you a well written glimpse at this strange landscape. But keep in mind that neither Greene or anyone else know for certain whether or not there are indeed Multiverses out there and he's the first one to admit that. Theoretical Physics is an active, fast changing field and researchers like Greene will continue probing the fringes of the known universe, looking for a way to combine electromagnetism and gravity into one coherent theory and also looking for the back door into other worlds and universes that may be lurking just out of sight, in some hidden reality. I recommend this book to any science reader who has an open, but skeptical, mind. While I had no technical or formatting problems with this Kindle edition it would have been nice if the publisher had saw fit to include the index, from the hard bound edition, to aid in searching the book. LastRanger Review: Lucid and impressive survey of multiverse models - This is an impressive survey of 9 multiverse models by Greene featured in lucid, engaging and effortless prose. This should be a go to book for the public as well as physics students for a conceptual understanding of the multiverse models available. He began with the "Quilted multiverse" model. This model sets up the most basic bare bone structure of the rationale of multiverse theory. Consider our own visible universe's cosmic horizon of a 14 billion year old universe. The cosmic horizon visible to us is only 41 billion light years (distance based on the light coming from objects receding from us). Our cosmic horizon or patch is all there is ever visible to us. The entire universe in the infinite space can contains infinite number of patches each with it's own cosmic horizon, constituting a quilted universe. Each patch is out of reach of the other patches. This is a basic multiverse model showing each multiverse in its own cosmic horizon patch. The "inflationary model" from Alan Guth and Andrei Linde offers further mechanism to account for how the vast expanse of the multiverse can be built out. The idea is an inflation that is triggered by quantum jitter in high energy inflation field level causing it to expand and bubble out into different multiverses. This inflationary mechanism is also commonly used in other multiverse models. Greene, as a String theorist, offers the String Theory model of multiverse by considering our 3 dimensional expanse universe on a 3-brane sheet. Another multiverse would be on another 3-brane sheet, and there can be as many 3-brane sheets on which each multiverse exists. This multiverse model is the "Brane Multiverse" model. Another String Theory model is the "Landscape" model offered by Suskind. In this model, an inflationary mechanism for bubbling into multiverse is augmented with a further feature of quantum tunneling. A multiverse suffused with higher energy level or cosmological constant can expand via repulsion and inflate, but tunnels or drops down to a lower energy level for bubbling into another multiverse. The multitude of landscape with different cosmological constants represented by unique Calabi Yau manifolds can continue and repeat this tunneling process for proliferating further multiverses. Greene also offers a thorough discussion of the Everttian "multiple-world quantum" model. In this model, the Everttian interpretation of quantum mechanics by branching the possible outcomes of quantum state into different worlds is treated as another multiverse model. Instead of collapsing probability amplitudes as in Copenhagen interpretation, Evertt suggested to let probability outcomes to branch out into different worlds such that each outcome constitute its own world. Greene highlighted that Everttian rationale is that multi-world interpretation actually stays faithful to Schrodinger equation and let the equation results speak for itself instead of ad hoc adding probability amplitudes together which are not reflected in the equation. Greene also discussed if such a multi-world interpretation takes quantum probability seriously, which he thinks each multi-world is still a probabilistic outcome. Another model Greene discussed in this work is the conceptually challenging "Holographic multiverse" model. In this model, our universe is a mere holographic phenomena taking place on a distant bounding surface, a physically equivalent parallel universe. In the holographic principle, open strings movement on 3-branes is described by quantum field particle theory in four dimensional space-time. The physics described is the same as the closed loop strings on 10 dimensional black branes as long as the strings at low energy are closed to the event horizon surface. Hence the holographic model reveals universes as holograms of equivalent parallel universes. Three other models discussed are the Cyclic multiverse model and the mathematical models of "Simulated Multiverse" and "Ultimate Multiverse" models which consider mathematical multiverses to be as real as physical multiverses. There is also a chapter devoted to methodological issues such as experimental accessibility, predictions, and the limits of mathematical applicability to physics. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #81,102 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #40 in Cosmology (Books) #43 in Astrophysics & Space Science (Books) #46 in Quantum Theory (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,766 Reviews | ## Images ![The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71l-hF3evZL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ No Road Untraveled. *by L***R on May 4, 2014* This challenging, but fascinating, book from Brian Greene is another winner. It turns out that there's not just one version of the multiverse proposal but several, ranging from the Quilted and Inflationary Multiverses to the Brane and Quantum Multiverses. If you'r not careful you could get lost on this mathematical road trip. Drawing on everyday analogues to help explain the various examples of the Multiverse, Greene delves into the mysteries of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity searching for some common ground. As always his writing is geared for the well-read layperson but it helps to have a good background in reading this type of book. If you've read his previous books or similar titles by other authors then this one shouldn't be much of a problem. The whole idea of the Multiverse is based on extreme mathematics but you don't have to be a math wizard to enjoy the book. While the approach is non mathematical Greene does provide some equations (in the notes) for anybody so inclined. Some of the information is given as a kind of "refresher course" in String Theory and Quantum Mechanics but the author gives you the opportunity skip ahead if you wish to. Not being a physicists myself I tend to appreciate that kind of approach. The book is presented in 11 chapters with each chapter devoted to one or two kinds of Multiverse so the reader gets an in depth look at each variety. I found that some chapters were easier to read than others and there were some sections that were a little overwhelming in content. It took me two passes to read The Elegant Universe and three attempts on The Hidden Reality but in the end I got through both of them. I liked the section on the Inflationary Multiverse and it's "Swiss Cheese" analogy, it was the easiest to get through while the section on Quantum Mechanics, Probability Waves and Entropy was the most difficult. A good portion of the book is devoted to the history of theoretical physics and multiverse scenarios, giving you a look at the important people and events that made the most impact. To some people things like String Theory and Multiverses are more of a philosophy than a science since proof of their existence lies beyond our currant technology to access. To that end, the book closes with a section of extreme speculation on the future of computer simulation, artificial intelligence and the Multiverse. Read at your own risk. Scientist the world over are pushing the boundaries of knowledge with mathematics and observations, as well as complicated experiments but, so far, have not been unable to come up with any defining answers. And if the answers are not there or they lead in a different direction, then we will have to come up with a whole new set of metaphors to explain the world around us. The Hidden Reality gives you a well written glimpse at this strange landscape. But keep in mind that neither Greene or anyone else know for certain whether or not there are indeed Multiverses out there and he's the first one to admit that. Theoretical Physics is an active, fast changing field and researchers like Greene will continue probing the fringes of the known universe, looking for a way to combine electromagnetism and gravity into one coherent theory and also looking for the back door into other worlds and universes that may be lurking just out of sight, in some hidden reality. I recommend this book to any science reader who has an open, but skeptical, mind. While I had no technical or formatting problems with this Kindle edition it would have been nice if the publisher had saw fit to include the index, from the hard bound edition, to aid in searching the book. LastRanger ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Lucid and impressive survey of multiverse models *by P***E on January 21, 2023* This is an impressive survey of 9 multiverse models by Greene featured in lucid, engaging and effortless prose. This should be a go to book for the public as well as physics students for a conceptual understanding of the multiverse models available. He began with the "Quilted multiverse" model. This model sets up the most basic bare bone structure of the rationale of multiverse theory. Consider our own visible universe's cosmic horizon of a 14 billion year old universe. The cosmic horizon visible to us is only 41 billion light years (distance based on the light coming from objects receding from us). Our cosmic horizon or patch is all there is ever visible to us. The entire universe in the infinite space can contains infinite number of patches each with it's own cosmic horizon, constituting a quilted universe. Each patch is out of reach of the other patches. This is a basic multiverse model showing each multiverse in its own cosmic horizon patch. The "inflationary model" from Alan Guth and Andrei Linde offers further mechanism to account for how the vast expanse of the multiverse can be built out. The idea is an inflation that is triggered by quantum jitter in high energy inflation field level causing it to expand and bubble out into different multiverses. This inflationary mechanism is also commonly used in other multiverse models. Greene, as a String theorist, offers the String Theory model of multiverse by considering our 3 dimensional expanse universe on a 3-brane sheet. Another multiverse would be on another 3-brane sheet, and there can be as many 3-brane sheets on which each multiverse exists. This multiverse model is the "Brane Multiverse" model. Another String Theory model is the "Landscape" model offered by Suskind. In this model, an inflationary mechanism for bubbling into multiverse is augmented with a further feature of quantum tunneling. A multiverse suffused with higher energy level or cosmological constant can expand via repulsion and inflate, but tunnels or drops down to a lower energy level for bubbling into another multiverse. The multitude of landscape with different cosmological constants represented by unique Calabi Yau manifolds can continue and repeat this tunneling process for proliferating further multiverses. Greene also offers a thorough discussion of the Everttian "multiple-world quantum" model. In this model, the Everttian interpretation of quantum mechanics by branching the possible outcomes of quantum state into different worlds is treated as another multiverse model. Instead of collapsing probability amplitudes as in Copenhagen interpretation, Evertt suggested to let probability outcomes to branch out into different worlds such that each outcome constitute its own world. Greene highlighted that Everttian rationale is that multi-world interpretation actually stays faithful to Schrodinger equation and let the equation results speak for itself instead of ad hoc adding probability amplitudes together which are not reflected in the equation. Greene also discussed if such a multi-world interpretation takes quantum probability seriously, which he thinks each multi-world is still a probabilistic outcome. Another model Greene discussed in this work is the conceptually challenging "Holographic multiverse" model. In this model, our universe is a mere holographic phenomena taking place on a distant bounding surface, a physically equivalent parallel universe. In the holographic principle, open strings movement on 3-branes is described by quantum field particle theory in four dimensional space-time. The physics described is the same as the closed loop strings on 10 dimensional black branes as long as the strings at low energy are closed to the event horizon surface. Hence the holographic model reveals universes as holograms of equivalent parallel universes. Three other models discussed are the Cyclic multiverse model and the mathematical models of "Simulated Multiverse" and "Ultimate Multiverse" models which consider mathematical multiverses to be as real as physical multiverses. There is also a chapter devoted to methodological issues such as experimental accessibility, predictions, and the limits of mathematical applicability to physics. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A guide through the multiverse possibilities that emerge as consequences of theoretical physics *by A***N on May 16, 2011* Brian Greene is truly an excellent science writer. Though there are many ideas that cant be communicated to the lay reader and specifics almost never can, Brian Greene manages to illustrate the general ideas behind what many physicists are thinking and working on and why. The Hidden Reality is an overview of where modern day physics has taken us in terms of the potential nature of reality. In particular he explores the potential initial configurations of the universe and as well the subsequent potential mechanics and what these potentials mean for the nature of reality. He also discusses the nature of reality from the perspective of general relativity, string theory and quantum mechanics. I realize this is vague, but its hard to give a specific overview of what is talked about as the author is almost as concise as he can be to convey the ideas he attempts to. Nonetheless i'll give it a try. The book starts out with the first example of how if we consider our planet and current aggregate configuration and history as unique, then the law of large numbers might cause some alarm in an infinite universe. In particular if we do thought experiment of assuming the universe is truly infinite (spatially with matter in all regions) then it implies that there must be copies of us out there. This results can be deduced from several vantage points and in the book, it is the fact that any negligbly small probability will be hit an infinite number of times if we have an infinite number of experiments. Though the "initial conditions" presented are just a hypothesis, this first chapter sets an eerie start which the book continues to build momentum on. The author then discusses inflationary universes and how they too give rise to multiverse scenarios in which parallel universes will remain unseen as they have inflated at distances that will never be reached. He also discusses what seem to be paradoxes of differing views of infinity, for example, those inside an expanding universe will consider it infinite space with finite time whereas outside they will consider it finite space with infinite time. One gets a glimpse of some of physicists insights but the ideas can be tough and i think to truly understand much of it deeply requires studying the math. The author then gives a brief outline of string theory and gets into the potential multiverse of branes that we might live in (i wont bother to try to paraphrase this part). Subsequent to this the author then introduces what I thought was the first model for parallel universes which is the quantum multiverse in which there is no collapse of the wave function and all possibilities are realized and the wave patterns we see are the parallel worlds interfering. The history of this is given as well as the philosophical misgivings of many scientists. The author then gets into the holographic universe which is pretty hard to grasp, (im pretty sure its hard to grasp even for the expert!) in which our sensations might all be a product of what happens on a lower dimensional space as there is a mathematical mapping between information of a surface with its higher dimensional body. This evolved from some blackhole information theory result... Clearly the book discusses things which are pretty out there but does a good job in trying to communicate what can be communicated to the reader. The book then ventures further into philosophy rather than science and discusses some ideas about what is the "reality" of a computed world and what is the "reality" that mathematical equations exist in. Intertwined throughout the book is the authors discussion of what is science. How much of these interesting ideas about the universe is science rather than philosophy. Much theoretical physics, in particular string theory, has come under a lot of pressure for producing no real testable experiments to its validity (though the experiments being thought up are getting closer to testable) and the author discusses his ideas as to what is legitimate and what is not. The book is primarily on various multiverse possibilities for the universe and how basically all modern theories have multiverse interpretations. Embedded in the writing is also the authors philosophy to legitimize his views on science - he includes some fairly out there theories of computational universes (ie extraordinarily complex simlife type computations) and the multiverse of logically correct statements and equations to show where he draws the line. I pretty much think this is a 5 star book but it is not always consistent. For example, infinity is a complicated issue as there are levels of infinity, integers are countably infinite, the real line is not. In his first chapter, the author argues as to why a multiverse will have a copy of us, he invokes quantum mechanics to legitimize the discreteness of space and thus uses a limiting exercise in the countable sense to get to the conclusion. In the last chapter though he questions this implicitly (but doesnt discuss how it affects his previous arguments) by using the continuum of schrodingers equations values to say we cant escape an infinite configuration space. This is obviously subtle and in aggregate this is a very interesting read in which complicated arguments and phenomenon are well described and the nature of reality and ideas are tackled. I learned a lot and I think everyone can get something out of it. ## Frequently Bought Together - The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos - Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe - The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.pt/products/5768795-the-hidden-reality-parallel-universes-and-the-deep-laws-cosmos](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/5768795-the-hidden-reality-parallel-universes-and-the-deep-laws-cosmos) --- *Product available on Desertcart Portugal* *Store origin: PT* *Last updated: 2026-09-09*