Beauty of Falling

<p><b>A world-renowned physicist seeks gravity's true nature and finds wisdom in embracing its force in her life</b> <p/>Claudia de Rham has been playing with gravity her entire life. As a diver experimenting with her body's buoyancy in the Indian Ocean. As a pilot soaring over Canadian waterfalls on dark mornings before beginning her daily scientific research. As an astronaut candidate dreaming of the experience of flying free from Earth's pull. And as a physicist discovering new sides to gravity's irresistible personality by exploring the limits of Einstein's general theory of relativity. In <i>The Beauty of Falling</i> de Rham shares captivating stories about her quest to gain intimacy with gravity to understand both its feeling and fundamental nature. Her life's pursuit led her from a twist of fate that snatched away her dream of becoming an astronaut to an exhilarating breakthrough at the very frontiers of gravitational physics. <p/>While many of us presume to know gravity quite well the brightest scientists in history have yet to fully answer the simple question: what exactly is gravity? De Rham reveals how great minds--from Newton and Einstein to Stephen Hawking Andrea Ghez and Roger Penrose--led her to the edge of knowledge about this fundamental force. She found hints of a hidden side to gravity at the particle level where Einstein's theory breaks down leading her to develop a new theory of massive gravity. De Rham shares how her life's path turned from a precipitous fall to an exquisite flight toward the discovery of something entirely new about our surprising gravity-driven universe.</p>