The Fabric of the Cosmos cover art

The Fabric of the Cosmos

Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Fabric of the Cosmos

By: Brian Greene
Narrated by: Michael Prichard
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

From Brian Greene, one of the world's leading physicists, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way.

Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?

Greene uses these questions to guide us toward modern science's new and deeper understanding of the universe. From Newton's unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein's fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics' entangled arena where vastly distant objects can bridge their spatial separation to instantaneously coordinate their behavior or even undergo teleportation, Greene reveals our world to be very different from what common experience leads us to believe. Focusing on the enigma of time, Greene establishes that nothing in the laws of physics insists that it run in any particular direction and that "time’s arrow" is a relic of the universe's condition at the moment of the big bang. And in explaining the big bang itself, Greene shows how recent cutting-edge developments in superstring and M-theory may reconcile the behavior of everything from the smallest particle to the largest black hole. This startling vision culminates in a vibrant eleven-dimensional "multiverse," pulsating with ever-changing textures, where space and time themselves may dissolve into subtler, more fundamental entities.

Sparked by the trademark wit, humor, and brilliant use of analogy that have made The Elegant Universe a modern classic, Brian Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.

Cover photograph by DB Image/Brand X Pictures©2004 Brian Greene (P)2004 Books on Tape, Inc.
Astronomy Astronomy & Space Science Cosmology Science Black Hole Mathematics

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Elegant Universe cover art

Critic reviews

"Nobody ever said that cosmology was simple, not even Stephen Hawking, in whose tradition Dr. Greene impressively follows....He is both a skilled and kindly explicator....The Fabric of the Cosmos is as dazzling as it is tough." (The New York Times)

"It will be enjoyable and stimulating for the lay reader, who will even learn about time travel and teleportation. This is one popular-science book that won't be left on the coffee table half read." (The New York Times Book Review)

“Forbidding formulas no longer stand between general readers and the latest breakthroughs in astrophysics: the imaginative gifts of one of the pioneers making these breakthroughs has now translated mathematical science into accessible analogies drawn from everyday life and popular culture....Nonspecialists will relish this exhilarating foray into the alien terrain that is our own universe.” (Booklist, starred review)

“This is popular science writing of the highest order...Greene [has an] unparalleled ability to translate higher mathematics into everyday language and images, through the adept use of metaphor and analogy, and crisp, witty prose....He not only makes concepts clear, but explains why they matter.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

Most relevant  
Unable to listen to this as an audiobook, as the narrator's voice is quite cutting and harsh.

Narrator's voice extremely harsh

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Good structured overview. A little outdated as it’s about 20 years old but other than the Higgs now being found still very relevant

Captures all the key concepts well

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Brian Greene should be narrating this book himself,
Michael Prichard is quite simply horrific, reminiscent of a 1930’s broadcast.
I gave up after the first chapter.

Terrible Narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Completely impossible to listen to because of the nasal stacatto American narrative just awful

Completely impossible to listen to because of the nasal stacatto American narrative just awful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.