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The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality cover art

The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality

Written by: Don Lincoln,The Great Courses
Narrated by: Don Lincoln
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Publisher's Summary

At the end of his career, Albert Einstein was pursuing a dream far more ambitious than the theory of relativity. He was trying to find an equation that explained all physical reality - a theory of everything. He failed, but others have taken up the challenge in a remarkable quest that is shedding light on unsuspected secrets of the cosmos.

Experimental physicist and award-winning educator Dr. Don Lincoln of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory takes you on this exciting journey in The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality. Suitable for the intellectually curious at all levels and assuming no background beyond basic high-school math, these 24 half-hour lectures cover recent developments at the forefront of particle physics and cosmology, while delving into the history of the centuries-long search for this holy grail of science.

You trace the dream of a theory of everything through Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Weinberg, and other great physicists, charting their progress toward an all-embracing, unifying theory. Their resulting equations are the masterpieces of physics, which Dr. Lincoln explains in fascinating and accessible detail. Studying them is like touring a museum of great works of art - works that are progressing toward an ultimate, as-yet-unfinished masterpiece.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2017 The Great Courses (P)2017 The Teaching Company, LLC

What listeners say about The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality

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  • WTL
  • 2019-09-17

Needs to be re-recorded

This audiobook sounds like it's the audio lifted from a video - there are many references to "as you can see here" or "this chart shows" which is extremely impractical to try to find the PDF, open it, and find the relevant chart/graph/image.

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17 people found this helpful

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Great course but highly recommend the prime video version

This so interesting and accessible to anyone interested. However, I also followed the same course on Amazon Prime on demand and I must say that seeing some of the example helps a lot to better understand. So, although the audio book is great I strongly recommend the video version to better understand.

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9 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars

Get the course at Great Courses Plus not this book

Don Lincoln continues to be an excellent presenter of complex topics to lay people such as myself but this book is merely the audio portion of the Great Courses. Imagine you are in a class room, any classroom, taking almost any course but you are seated facing the back of the class. You cannot see the chalkboard, video monitor or other material so when the instructor makes reference to a diagram, picture or object you have no idea what they are referring to. That is what listening to this book is like. There are many occasions when Dr Lincoln refers to a diagram or object and you cannot see it and thus it is harder to follow a topic that is already daunting to most of us. I would recommend just getting the course and skip this book.

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7 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars

Awesome Physics, Disclaimer about Diagrams

I've been reading pop physics and science for 20+ years, and this fits in with some of the best. it's a very up to date modern physics course that tackles our biggest and best understandings of the universe. The three main branches are the Standard Model of particle physics, Einstein's theories of Relativity, and Big Bang cosmology. There are multiple lectures on "what we don't know" / "what we think might be next" hypotheticals.

I am removing one star for a very specific reason. This was clearly a recording meant for a classroom or environment with a visual component, because Dr. Lincoln makes many references to diagrams or equations. in the audio format, the meaning here gets confused or entirely lost, for rather obvious reasons. this makes already somewhat challenging material even tougher. for this reason, I must subtract from the score if an audio review.

nevertheless, LOVE it!

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digesting physics has never been easier

I've somewhat struggled to visualize/conceptualize Physics, and its overall goals and concepts but this lectures helped me take it, and at the very least have me a general idea on how everything goes...

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2 people found this helpful

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The most complete book on the quest of science

This book is fascinating. Up to date as of the statue of the art and science of quantum gravity.
Highly recommended if you want to be at the edge of knowledge.

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GUD

Tiny bits of info is visualy orianted as this lecture has probably a video behind it also. Overall its great.
Here is a civilian guess about the everything theory: The big bang is eternaly active. New matter keeps being blown out and expanded and the black holes connect to the big bang source as a white hole expelling everything back at the begining! So the universe accelerates expansion because it is new matter plus recycled matter through black holes creating an exponential increase. Heck this alone here is enough to write my own bible.

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Prob even better as video as someone mentioned

Excellent. Though as another reviewer mentioned, it was probably meant as a video.. despite the PDF. I still loved it, I just think it would be even better in video format, Considering the appaent price of the videos, though, I still think this was awesome.

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Could you show me that picture again, please?

This fails utterly as an audiobook.

It's full of equations, formulas, and illustrations, none of which I can see in this format.

The topic is fascinating, but the printed version (or the video version, if there was such a thing) would not have been much help to me. I wouldn't be able to follow the math.

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I have the power #mastersoftheuniverse

since knowledge is power this is very empowering.

In 1925, Einstein went on a walk with a young student named Esther Salaman. As they wandered, he shared his core guiding intellectual principle: "I want to know how God created this world. I'm not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element

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  • MikeB
  • 2018-12-08

Audible’s Best Science Offering, A Gem

I had the opportunity to watch the Great Course Plus videos of these lectures. Those were and are incredible. When Audible offered the series I immediately bought it. I was concerned that some of clarity of what Doctor Lincoln is lecturing about would be lost in a purely audio presentation...and, to a certain extent that is true. The 247 page PDF, however, has everything you need. Print it out. And you will gain a lot just from listening to the audio. I liked the original series so well, I thought this would be a great refresher. I was wrong. I am picking up things I missed in the videos. The PDF is a gem and well worth reading and keeping on your tablet or phone for reference.

Doctor Lincoln is easy to listen to, but he packs a lot of information into his seemingly informal lectures. You will learn more about matter and subatomic particles in just the first lecture than you will gain from reading any book on the subject. This series is so good that I cannot fathom why Doctor Lincoln has not done more science lectures. His sense of humor, cadence and clarity of speech, organization, and thorough mastery of the subjects makes this seemingly difficult subject fun. It is, by far, my favorite science series.

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241 people found this helpful

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  • Spherical Chickens
  • 2019-01-23

Better suited for video rather than audiobook

I love the Great Courses books, I've purchased 10+ of them, but this is a course best suited for a video presentation, not an audio one. If you're good creating mental images of complex scenarios, by all means get this. Just be ready for a bit of mental gymnastics.

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149 people found this helpful

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  • J.C.
  • 2019-06-14

Not an audiobook...

As many other reviewers mention this is not designed to be just listened to. It is the soundtrack to a video with many complex concepts, equations and theories. It's often super obtuse and impossible to follow without the video.

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  • pondo
  • 2019-01-09

Exactly what I was hoping for, and more

Don gets deeper into the quantum physics more than anything I've come across to date which I was hoping for. Usually I listen too a physics book and the author will give me a magazine article type overview of the weak nuclear force. Not Mr Lincoln, we are his students and he is going to teach us the real deal of the weak nuclear force(and every other force/particle/spin/color/QED/QCD/anti etc) with great analogies to keep us on track. Also he will surprise me with some damn silly wit that pops up at unusual times, and actually gets me to laugh. Another nice thing about this book is it's up-to-date, I don't know how many books I've listened to where the phrase pops up "The higgs boson which is soon to be found at the LHC" ugh! (Don was working at both the LHC AND FermiLab during the Higgs hunt and his 1st person insight is brilliant). So to sum up If you haven't already deduced, I would think this book a bargian at 2 credits!
P.S. I didn't give it 5 stars because I don't "love" it, after all it is a physics book (Sorry Don)

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  • A. Guerich
  • 2019-01-13

Don Lincoln is the real science guy

There are many so called science experts on TV who get a lot of publicity. Don Lincoln is a real scientist who spends most of his time doing real science. But he also has a gift for explaining difficult concepts in an entertaining way.

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  • Amazon Customer
  • 2019-03-20

Fantastic program

This was the best program on the theory of everything I have ever listened to. Well informed and relatively easy to follow. Paints a very sharp picture of our current understanding of the universe.

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  • Amazon Customer
  • 2019-05-26

Best book of 10+

I have listened to more than 10 books on similar topics and this is the best. Technical enough but undersandable. Highly recomend it!

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  • Wayne
  • 2019-06-23

Not even close to a unified 'theory of everything'

The PDF file helps immensely, but an audio book is likely the weakest possible medium for the information presented.

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING is well organized and presented by Professor Don Lincoln, but the 24 lectures do not come close to realizing the goal expressed in the title. Where it fails most spectacularly is in the area of gravity and the fanciful proposed particle of a graviton and its proposed concept of strings and superstrings. (See lectures 20 through 24.) Nevertheless, the first 19 lectures are mostly outstanding.

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  • Gonzalo Alberto Gomez A
  • 2019-02-03

Great book for everyone!

I love not just the scientific facts but Tha analogies, the jokes and the puns with intention.

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  • Jeremy
  • 2019-04-30

Great Course, less great audiobook

Overall the material presented is great. The lecturer is engaging and energetic, and they obviously know there stuff. The only opportunities i experienced were around some components being heavy in math and the references to the visual materials were kind of hard while listening on the road. That being said, if you like math, and you want to follow along with the materials, I bet it's a better experience.

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14 people found this helpful