I love Lee Smolin - he never seems to be afraid to push past assumption, to seek lines of inquiry outside of the narrow bounds of physics specialties and he doesn't lose his wonder in the world.

Right from the start, Smolin says this book is speculative. Not that it's founded on no science or bad science, but that he pushes "what if" into some areas that might blow our minds (my words).

Without giving too much away, he wonders whether or not the constants that we assume to be unchanging might actually be parameters that have changed slightly over time in a universe (universes) that actually is more like an ecosystem that evolves. Pretty cool stuff and lots of brain food.

Since we can't see what happens on the other side of a event horizon of a black hole, what if what actually happens is that a new universe is born there, and ours is just one in an evolutionary chain and our black holes are birthing others?

And how is it that our place, Earth, stays in a perpetual state that denies the law of entropy such that it can support life? i.e. non-equilibrium?

Ultimately this is also a book about how we might jump start our next inquiries into the Grand Unified Theory by rejecting that our assumptions that things like constants and atomic interactions have always been as they are.

Neat!