Physics on the Fringe

Physics on the Fringe

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For fifteen years, science writer Margaret Wertheim has been collecting alternative theories of the universe. Some are poems, others include hand-drawn diagrams, and a few, at first glance, look like academic papers written by professional physicists. They have been sent to her from all over the world by people desperate to share insights about our universe that have either been rejected, or, more likely, ignored by the scientific establishment.

In Physics on the Fringe, Wertheim approaches these “outsider physicists” with sincerity and generosity—if not quite an open mind—but is less concerned with their ideas than with what drives them to piece together their own theories of the universe in the first place.