Robert J. Nemiroff

With apologies to Robin Williams ... Reality. What a concept! I started my college back a long time ago as a physics major but I was too impatient to do the basics, wanting to get right into the juicy QED/QCD/relativistic/strange strangeness. Eventually, I landed in mechanical engineering, but I still love this stuff. So I was quite happy and grateful to get approved by the author and BookSirens for a review copy.

If you don't have a mind for physics, this book might challenge you. If you do have a mind for physics... this book might challenge you. The author says:
“As a professional physicist I have given presentations to other professional physicists and been asked, effectively, to stop my presentation because I said that laser spots on walls can move faster than light. I had no alternative but to backtrack, argue, and try to give clear counterexamples to the much-repeated adage that “nothing can go faster than light.” These curmudgeons were wrong. I was able to provide proof, but they could not. Many other professional physicists have been happy to hear the talk and even complimented it.
As a researcher, I have submitted papers to recognized physics journals and had them rejected because the journal editors—themselves professional physicists—agreed that the paper must be flawed because “nothing can go faster than light.” They were wrong. Other journals accepted the work. To those who study the topic, these results are not controversial.”

And a physicist with a sense of humor? I'm in. Hell, even the publisher has one! On the copyright page:
“If you are reading a print version of this book, please be advised that an electronic version exists that links many technical terms to relevant background information on the internet. If you are reading an electronic version of this book, please be advised that a print version of this book exists that may look better on a bookshelf.”

The author makes his case and gives his reasoning, and the science, behind it. He asks 283 multiple-choice questions to allow the reader to reason, or guess, where he's going. (One answer is invariably nonsense, and smart standardized test takers know that if you can eliminate one or two choices, but don't know the answer, guess away. Except one nonsense answer was actually the correct one!)

He keeps the math to a minimum. In one Aside, he says,
“Many scientists like math, in particular mathematics that tracks some aspects of reality. Many scientists also like data, in particular modern data taken by cutting-edge experiments or spacecraft designed to explore an unknown facet of our universe. For me, mathematical structures are usually cool, and experimental data are frequently enlightening, but concepts are my favorite. In this view, math is invented to help explain the data, and concepts are invented to help understand the math. In this book, I skip over most of the data. I try to hand-wave away most of the math and get right to the really cool concepts.”

And he warns the reader when he gets down to nitty gritties:
“Caveat—Please read only if you like minutia and gory details:”

And he offers his take on reading non-fiction:
“Now I will admit that c2c [cover-to-cover]reading can also be a fulfilling way to read nonfiction books. One reason is because, typically, concepts developed in earlier chapters will help in the understanding of later chapters. Even so, it is difficult for me to read many nonfiction books front to back. I just can’t wait to find out the good stuff! In my view, nonfiction books are more about satisfying curiosity than whole-book storytelling. Therefore, I typically end up flipping through a nonfiction book, finding the stuff that I am most curious about, and reading that first. In my mind, the book becomes a meadow of flowers, and I become a butterfly. Sometimes the book’s good stuff makes me curious about other stuff in the book, stuff that I didn’t know to be curious about before. In those cases, I do end up reading the whole book, but only one disconnected section at a time.
Although I suspect that there are relatively few “butterfly readers” like me who flutter around nonfiction books, I have tried to write this book for both cover-to-cover and butterfly readers.
That said, there is not only one arc that runs through this book, but two. The first follows attempts to communicate faster than light, and the second is how faster-than-light motion relates to backward time travel. Regarding these arcs: yes, reading the early chapters does help in the understanding of later chapters. Nevertheless, most chapters are able to stand on their own, so butterfly readers should have many satisfying places to land.”

Interesting. I tend to be a c2c reader.

I enjoyed reading this and I will probably need to revisit it again (and again?) to absorb the concepts. I had a great advisor/professor back when I was that physics major (Dr. V. V. Raman; his grandfather won a Nobel) but the immature me lost out. I would have loved to have sat in Dr Nemiroff's class.

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Not a lot of notes from this. I was too engaged in trying to follow the logic...

“To reiterate: it is only the spacing between the photons that is expanding faster than c. The photons themselves always move with speed c.”

“Now, just because the wavelength of a particle with mass can expand (or contract) faster than light does not mean that momentum or any information moves faster than light.”

“Aside 24: Understanding Quantum Mechanics
“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” —Richard Feynman (Character of Physical Law)
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” —Rita Mae Brown
“[Quantum mechanics] refers to ensembles of systems and not to individual systems.” —Albert Einstein
Since quantum mechanics depends on performing the same experiments over and over (creating Einstein’s “ensemble”) and expecting different results, then by Brown’s definition and Feynman’s observation, understanding quantum mechanics requires that you be insane.”

For the publisher, in Aside 26, this looks like a typo:
“Math note (please ignore is annoying)” ... “if” annoying?… (altro)