Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality

by Max Tegmark

Physicists have known for a century that solid steel is really mostly empty space, because the atomic nuclei that make up 99.95% of the mass are tiny balls that fill up merely 0.0000000000001% of the volume, and that this near-vacuum only feels solid because the electrical forces that hold these nuclei in place are very strong.

At high temperatures, colliding particles change identity; to me, an electron colliding with a positron and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship. On microscopic scales, particles schizophrenically appear in two places at once, leading to the quantum conundrums mentioned above.

Alas, I soon grew disillusioned, concluding that economics was largely a form of intellectual prostitution where you got rewarded for saying what the powers that be wanted to hear.

physics is the ultimate intellectual adventure, the quest to understand the deepest mysteries of our Universe.

I feel that the most important lesson physics has taught us about the ultimate nature of reality is that, whatever it is, it’s very different from how it seems.