How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate our Universe

Knocking On Heaven's Door

One of the most illuminating science books in years, Knocking on Heaven's Door makes clear the biggest scientific questions we face and reveals how answering them could ultimately tell us who we are and where we came from.

Lisa Randall is hugely gifted... Full of passion and jaw-dropping facts... Fascinating

An impressive study...essential reading for anyone interested in science

Dazzling ideas... Read this book today to understand the science of tomorrow

Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor and author of How the Mind Works

Science has a battle for hearts and minds on its hands... How good it feels to have Lisa Randall's unusual blend of top flight science, clarity, and charm on our side

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion

In this fascinating book, Lisa Randall, professor of theoretical physics at Harvard, explains the experimental research at the LHC and the theories that try to anticipate what they will find

Her touch is light and deft; these are not topics that come easily to life, and they are unavoidably complex at times, but Randall's calm authority and clarity of explanation are exemplary

Lisa Randall does a great job of explaining to the non-physicist the basic scientific approaches of modern physics and what the latest experiments might reveal. This is a must read to appreciate what is coming in our future.

I didn't think it was possible to write a complex, detailed look at the world of physics that the non-scientist could understand, but then Lisa Randall wrote this amazing, insightful and engaging book and proved me wrong.

Carlton Cuse, award-winning writer of television series Lost

Lisa Randall is the rarest rarity--a theoretical physics genius who can write and talk to the rest of us in ways we both understand and enjoy. This book takes the nonspecialist as close as theyll ever get to the inner workings of the cosmos.

Written with dry wit and ice-cool clarity...Knocking on Heaven's Door is a book that anyone at all interested in science must read. This is surely the science book of the year.

Randell...tries to illuminate something of the underlying themes driving current scientific thinking.

Professor Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University. Randall's studies have made her among the most cited and influential theoretical physicists. She has also had a public presence through her writing, lectures, and radio and TV appearances. Her book Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions was included in the New York Times' 100 notable books of 2005. Professor Randall was included in the list of Time magazine's '100 Most Influential People' of 2007 and was featured in Newsweek's 'Who's Next in 2006' as 'one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation'. Randall has received numerous awards and honors for her scientific endeavors. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Randall is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

Sunday Times Science Book of the Year 2011. 
 
We are poised on the edge of discovery in particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest), and when these breakthroughs come, they will revolutionise what we think we know about the universe, and the modern world. 
 
Lisa Randall guides us through the latest ideas, charting the thrilling progress we have made in understanding the universe – from Galileo and Newton to Einstein and the Large Hadron Collider and the search for the Higgs boson. Yet it's about more than just physics - Randall explains how we decide what questions to ask; how risk, beauty, creativity and truth play a role in scientific thinking; and how answering the big questions will ultimately tell us who we are and where we came from.

The Power of Empty Space

Higgs Discovery

What is the Higgs boson? And where will its discovery lead? Renowned physicist Lisa Randall explains this landmark event in modern science and its startlingly beautiful implications.

A lucid, deft and engaging summation of dogged determination and “heroic engineering”

Lisa Randall is Professor of Phsyics at Harvard University. She is one of today's most influential and most cited cited theoretical physicists, and has received numerous awards and honours. 
 
Randall is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Physical Society, and is the recipient of several honorary degrees. 
 
When not solving the problems of the universe, she can be found rock climbing, skiing, or contributing to art–science connections.

On July 4th, 2012, one of physics' most exhilarating results was announced: a new particle – and very likely a new kind of particle – had been discovered at the Large Hadron Collider, the huge particle accelerator designed to reproduce energies present in the universe a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. The particle's existence had been speculated on for nearly fifty years: here, finally, was proof. 
 
Professor Lisa Randall of Harvard University is one of the world's most influential theoretical physicists, and author of the bestselling Knocking on Heaven's Door and Warped Passages. In Higgs Discovery she deftly explains both this epochal discovery and it's startlingly beautiful implications.

Unravelling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions

Warped Passages

'A lucid explanation of the strange and powerful new ideas that physicists are working with to explain the nature of physical reality' Steven Pinker

Lisa Randall is on a quest to explain the fabric of reality. She is a leading theoretical physicist -  the world's most cited - and an expert on string theory. She was the first tenured woman in the Princeton Physics department and the first tenured woman theorist at MIT and Harvard.

In Warped Passages one of the world's most exciting scientists gives us a glimpse into our future. Incredibly readable - and illustrated throughout - it allows the general reader to understand the questions that scientists are dealing with at the frontiers of research today. Lisa Randall allows the reader to understand the kind of problems that extra dimensions might solve and the kind of speculation that is needed even to imagine them. She also gives an introduction to developments in early twentieth century physics, particle physics and string theory and addresses current debates about relativity, quantum mechanics and gravity - and she describes the questions that are still to be solved.

Lisa Randall

A bold intellectual synthesis from one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, blending cosmology, astronomy, particle physics and the history of life on Earth to suggest the existence of an entirely new force of nature. This book certainly ventures into the unknown, but that's where great physicists like to be.

Fascinating… Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a sign that readers of popular science have finally grown up… A very grown-up quest… Randall’s writing is as laid back and unfussy as ever. If you appreciated her clear, straightforward style in Warped Passages and Knocking on Heaven’s Door, you won’t be disappointed by Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs.

Only Lisa Randall can take us on such a thrilling scientific journey—from dinosaurs to DNA to comets to dark matter and to the past and future of our species. Randall’s research is so thorough, the story so powerful, and her storytelling so compelling that I could not put this book down.

Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies

World-renowned physicist Lisa Randall brings a fresh twist to one of the world’s oldest murder mysteries: the death of the dinosaurs. With lively writing and wonderfully accessible explanations, she now convincingly implicates a new suspect as ultimately responsible for the hit: a novel kind of dark matter.

Max Tegmark, physicist and author of Our Mathematical Universe

As strong in its poetic argument as it is in its speculative scientific argument, this book leads us pebble by pebble, step by step toward a sublime and unexpected vista. A book that should be required reading for those pursuing full citizenship in the universe.

Walter Kirn, author of Blood Will Out and Up In The Air

Engaging, and written from an accessible personal perspective… Randall’s excitement about the areas she has studied…is evident.

Your inner five-year-old and inner geek are going to be thrilled.

The wonder and curiosity Lisa Randall so obviously feels about our world and the universe itself is evident on every page and brings this book to vivid life. Part of Randall’s significant genius is her ability to render complex subject matter into a gripping page-turner that is impossible to put down. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a fascinating, mind-expanding experience.

Augusten Burroughts, author of This Is How and Running With Scissors

Lisa Randall has produced an intriguing, insightful book that brilliantly weaves together the disparate subjects of cosmology and biology … A simple, elegant theory that finally makes sense of mass extinctions. A must read for anyone interested in the precariousness of life on earth.

Jack Horner, author of How To Build A Dinosaur

Randall has woven a beautiful account of how life on Earth is intimately connected to the cosmos… A satisfyingly elegant idea, linking cosmology and dark matter to the architecture of our solar system, cometary impacts and mass extinction… Randall argues with admirable clarity.

One of the sharpest scientific minds of our time presents a fascinating speculative theory linking the extinction of the dinosaurs to dark matter… an insightful exploration.

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a hugely ambitious and lucid account of broad swaths of modern science, and their surprising interconnections. It’s a masterpiece of science writing: a detective story that illuminates the nature of scientific research while explaining how our very existence may be connected to unexpected properties of the dark matter that fills the universe. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and emerged with my head swimming in fascinating new ideas.

Who would’ve thought that the mysterious dark matter of the Universe could have caused the extinction of dinosaurs on Earth? Physicist Lisa Randall, that’s who.  Yes it’s speculative, but tantalizingly plausible.  And that’s the best kind of science there is.

A provocative and revealing account of how scientists like herself are uncovering deep connections between human existence and the wider universe. A terrific read.

Timothy Ferris, author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way and Seeing in the Dark

A cracking read, combining storytelling of the highest order with a trove of information on subjects as diverse as astrophysics, evolutionary biology, geology and particle physics. What’s remarkable is that is all fit’s together.

This is the grown-up version of science we need to see.

Extremely engaging… the chapters on dark matter go far beyond most other popular books on the subject.  Randall paints a truly fascinating picture of the possibility that dark matter is as rich and varied as normal matter… This book is not about the destination, but the journey.  And that is often delightful.

A compelling writer who presents a broad range of up-to-date science…in a lively and accessible way… Engagingly written.

A fascinating, and surprisingly simple, theory…and a tantalising premise.

Engaging summary of cosmology and quantum physics.

A whistle-stop tour of modern physics… A fascinating read.

A wildly exciting idea… Randall’s style is plain, clear to understand and engaging… A great read.

[Randall] is a lucid explainer, street-wise and informal.  Without jargon or mathematics, she steers us through centuries of…astronomical history and is particularly illuminating when briefing us on the cosmic objects that sometimes land on planet Earth with unpleasant consequences.

Fascinating… [Randall] is a lucid explainer. Without jargon or mathematics, she steers us through astronomical history and is particularly illuminating when briefing us on the cosmic objects that sometimes land on planet Earth with unpleasant consequences.

Here’s the recipe for an intriguing popular science book: take two parts cosmological mystery, two parts death of the dinosaurs and one part origin of mankind.  Add a dash of personal flavour and mix thoroughly.  Serve with imagination and enthusiasm.  If theoretical physicist Lisa Randall is your chef, you’re in for a wonderful treat.

Very enjoyable… a compelling and fascinating portrait of a compelling and fascinating place: the universe.

The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe

The most thrilling, genre-busting, unlikely science book you’ll ever read, from the world-renowned, multi-award-winning, superstar physicist Lisa Randal. 
 
 
66 million years ago, a ten-mile-wide object from outer space hurtled into the Earth at incredible speed. The impact annihilated the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet. But what if this catastrophe was the sign of something greater: an opening vista onto the interconnectedness of the universe itself? 
 
 
This is the story of the astounding forces that underpin our existence; a horizon-expanding tour of the cosmos that unifies what we know about the universe with new thinking. From the far-flung reaches of space, the makeup of the universe and our solar system's place within it, to the mysterious and elusive stuff of dark matter and how it affects life here on Earth. 
 
 
‘A fascinating, and surprisingly simple, theory…and a tantalising premise’ The Times 
 
‘Extremely engaging’ BBC Focus

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

sectionTitle

isEnabled

anchor

anchorLabel

prhuk/featured-book

prhuk/praise-section

maxBooks

showViewMore

prhuk/books-section

hideAuthorAlert

formName

iterableDivision

iterableBrand

buttonText

description

heading

legalText

successHeading

successText

image

alignment

variation

prhuk/email-section

prhuk/series-section

prhuk/biography-section

prhuk/articles-section

prhuk-authors

The perfect gift? A Penguin Shop gift card

Lisa Randall

Praise for Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs

A bold intellectual synthesis from one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, blending cosmology, astronomy, particle physics and the history of life on Earth to suggest the existence of an entirely n ...

Fascinating… Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a sign that readers of popular science have finally grown up… A very grown-up quest… Randall’s writing is as laid back and unfussy as ever. If you apprecia ...

Weird and wonderful new book.

A bold intellectual synthesis from one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, blending cosmology, astronomy, particle physics and the history of life on Earth to suggest the existence of an entirely n ...

Fascinating… Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a sign that readers of popular science have finally grown up… A very grown-up quest… Randall’s writing is as laid back and unfussy as ever. If you apprecia ...

Weird and wonderful new book.

A bold intellectual synthesis from one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, blending cosmology, astronomy, particle physics and the history of life on Earth to suggest the existence of an entirely n ...

Fascinating… Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a sign that readers of popular science have finally grown up… A very grown-up quest… Randall’s writing is as laid back and unfussy as ever. If you apprecia ...

Weird and wonderful new book.

Books by Lisa Randall

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter