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

Riding his bike to school one morning in 1985, Max Tegmark was killed by a truck. But it wasn't the Max Tegmark in the universe we know. In our particular universe, he narrowly avoided the forty tonnes of honking steel, and lived to become one of the most important, original cosmologists at work today, and to write this book. But, he asks, if we can't see that parallel world, how do we know that it is real?

Physics has uncovered a reality much stranger than we'd imagined. Our Mathematical Universeis a journey into this strangeness, to seek answers to the mysteries uncovered by contemporary cosmology and to discover the ultimate nature of reality. The Big Bang, our distant future, parallel worlds, the sub-atomic and the intergalactic - none of them are what they seem. But when we look at everything together, we find that there is a way to understand this immense strangeness and complexity, and to see it with a dazzling clarity- as Galileo said, Nature is 'a book written in the language of mathematics'.

Exploring the fundamental puzzle of why our universe seems so mathematical, Tegmark proposes an elegant and radical idea. Our physical world, he says, is not only described by mathematics; it is mathematics- the world that we inhabit is one vast mathematical object. This idea offers tantalizing answers to our deepest questions- How large is reality? What is everything ultimately made of? Why is our universe the way it is?

'OurMathematical Universeboldly confronts one of the deepest questions at the fertile interface of physics and philosophy- why is mathematics so spectacularly successful at describing the cosmos? Through lively writing and wonderfully accessible explanations, Max Tegmark - one of the world's leading theoretical physicists - guides the reader to a possible answer, and reveals how, if it's right, our understanding of reality itself would be radically altered.' Brian Green, physicist, author of The Elegant Universeand The Hidden Reality

'Daring, Radical. Innovative. A game changer. If Dr Tegmark is correct, this represents a paradigm shift in the relationship between physics and mathematics, forcing us to rewrite our textbooks. A must read for anyone deeply concerned about our universe.' Michio Kaku, author of Physics of the Future

'A lucid, engaging account of the various many-universes theories of fundamental physics that are currently being considered, from the multiverse of quantum theory to Tegmark's own grand vision.' David Deutsch, physicist, Dirac Laureate for pioneering quantum computing, author of The Beginning of Infinity

'Max Tegmark leads his readers, clearly and accessibly, right to the frontiers of speculative cosmology - and indeed far beyond.' Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal