Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Series) by Neil de Grasse Tyson (PDF)

Description

Over a year on the New York Times bestseller list and more than a million copies sold.The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist.What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The author makes the material as simple to understand as he can. It’s kind of like a crash course in astrophysics; Starting from the big bang and ending in modern times, the reader learns about tons of concepts, discoveries, etc. I love the little jokes the author sprinkles into the book. I learned a lot about astrophysics.

⭐I read this book because I wanted to learn the basics about astrophysics. But as I quickly discovered, this is not astrophysics for dummies. Yes it’s a relatively quick read but Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to wrote it with the assumption of basic knowledge from the readers.Nevertheless, the general feel about the subject can still be understood.Firstly, we can assert without further hesitation that the universe had a beginning. The universe also continues to evolve, with every atom in our body is traceable to the Big Bang and to “the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars that exploded more than five billion years ago.”Moreover, while the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago, it took another 380,000 years before we can see any matter forming, and few more billion years to form a planet that we call home. Yes, time moves slowly in the universe, and in the grand scale of things our 70-100 years of life, by contrast, is ridiculously short.Furthermore, there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on any beach, more stars than seconds have passed since Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. In fact, there are about 100 billion galaxies that we have discovered so far in the universe, one of which is our Milky Way galaxy that in turn contains approximately 100 billion more stars, with one of them is our Sun. We truly are nothing but a speck of dust in the face of the massive universe.Meanwhile, as one star (our Sun) can have several planets orbiting it, other stars also have planets orbiting them and quite a lot of these planets are at a similar distance like the Earth to the Sun, not too close that it evaporates the water but not too far that it freezes the water. In other words, there are thousands of planets that have been found so far that are habitable and have the potential to support life just like on Earth.I also find it particularly intriguing that Newton’s Law of Gravity also guides planets, asteroids, and comets in their orbit around the Sun and organised the orbit of the billion stars within our Milky Way Galaxy. This, as it turns out, is a common thing in the world of science: that everything from nature to space all follow certain laws of physics, while everything else, as Tyson remarks, is opinion.The book also mentions so many fascinating facts such as different colour have different temperature, it also features the explanations of most of the elements in the periodic table, amusing speculations like the possibility that Earthlings might just be a descendant of Martians, and many, many space-science stuff that I find it challenging to digest.Needless to say, I came here to find answers but come out with more questions. Questions like what’s in the space between galaxies? Who or what neatly organised the gravitational orbits of the planets and the stars? What is a supermassive black hole? What’s on the dark side of the moon? What’s that bright thing in the center of the Milky Way galaxy?But I guess that’s what a stimulating book is supposed to do, and the amount of mysteries about the space that we still haven’t uncovered yet are intriguing to closely follow.

⭐I’ve watched Neil Degrasse Tyson on TV shows about the universe and the big bang theory(the event and tv comedy). This is the first book I’ve read of his and I was surprisingly entertained. I don’t claim to be an astrophysicist but I was able to understand his explanations in each chapter. This book gave me a look into astrophysics and an interest to delve deeper.

⭐Beautiful hardcover book – made a great gift!!

⭐I really admire Mr. Tyson. I like this book, but it surprises me that he published it. After watching numerous interviews with him, I’ve determined that he doesn’t have any humility. Why would he write a book to the common person?Joe Rogan is about the only person who I’ve ever seen who challenges him. It’s almost like it pisses him off. It’s like he’s thinking “how dare he question me?” This doesn’t mean that he isn’t a genius. It just means that he seems very Arrogant to me. I think that he thinks that he’s the most intelligent person alive.It’s still a great book.

⭐Very informative, well written and easy to understand without compromising the integrity of astrophysics.

⭐Easy reading

⭐All things are defined via their relations to other things. For example, the reason I believe myself to be a patient person is because I have experienced other people who had little of the stuff. Jeff Bezos isn’t rich because he has a trillion dollars; he is rich because he has a trillion dollars and the rest of us have far less. One hour is a long time when compared to a second, yet it is minuscule when compared to a year.Reading about the solar system within which we all reside has made me feel truly tiny. We are all generally aware that Earth is small in comparison to the sun and to other galaxies of stars, but the actual numbers are beyond staggering. Not only are there hundreds of billions of stars in a galaxy, and not only are there hundreds of billions of galaxies in a universe, but there are hundreds of billions of universes. Astronomers have concluded that “there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on any beach, more stars than seconds have passed since Earth was formed, [and] more stars than words and sounds ever uttered by all the humans who ever lived.” Compared to the celestial bodies above, we humans are infinitesimal.The field of astrophysics is interesting because it not only concerns itself with the biggest of entities, but also with the smallest, because in order to better understand the cosmos within which we reside, we must better understand it’s building blocks. For example, we know that “the element carbon can be found in more kinds of molecules than the sum of all other kinds of molecules combined.” Or we might be interested in knowing the chemical compounds that comprise a drop of water so that we might some day be able to find it (or create it) on another planet. Conversely to the unfathomable expanse of space, “there are more molecules of water in a cup of the stuff than there are cups of water in all the world’s oceans.” Compared to a molecule of water, we humans are gargantuan.So, for those of us to whom astronomy and astrophysics are interesting yet largely beyond basic comprehension, the take-away is simple: Life is about perspective.

⭐With no background in Astrophysics and just an A level in physics more than 20 years ago I found the book fascinating and easy yo follow… After a bit. The key challenge here is the opening chapters do take some effort to follow as only in the last few chapters is spectrometry and other astrophysics tools are explained. This meant a bit of floundering in the early bits as I struggled to follow. However by the middle chapters I understood enough to get a grasp and in the last 2 chapters a lot of it did come together (enough that it warrants a second read through of the opening). The only thing missing I would say is a quick refresher course on the structure of stuff…what is a proton, atom ,neutron etc.

⭐The first chapter waffles on about about leptons, quarks, bosons, antiquarks, anti-electrons (positrons), anti-neutrons, matter-antimatter pairs, and hadrons etc.Do these topics really need to be discussed (and not explained at all) in a book, which according to the back cover is ‘nothing too arcane for a non-space cadet to follow’.The inside of the cover leaflet says the universe/earth is brought down to the reader ‘succintly and clearly’.I disagree with both statements. This appears to be a book for people who already know the topic well. I literally learned nothing from reading what I did.

⭐What a well-rounded and lovely book, I would recommend this to anyone who wants to know more but doesn’t have a degree in the sciences or maths! It really does cover the lot, everything you could want to know about astrophysics (aka space and sciencey stuff!). It is well thought out with nice neat chapters covering the different areas, which range from the very small to the very large, a bit of history and some modern information and facts too of course. All explained in a really friendly down to earth way (excuse the pun) making the complicated stuff as uncomplicated as possible. I think this really is a book for everyone (they should give it out in schools) – if you don’t understand it all then that’s ok, you will have an idea and an understanding of it at least from this book. It really does seem to encompass all of an astrophysicists world in a nutshell – perhaps more. In my opinion the ending was not necessary, however I thought it was a nice touch, albeit a little preachy. Overall please do go and out find a copy of this book to read.

⭐I had big expectations for this book. But Bill Bryson style intrigue and excitement it is not. It reads like Tyson collected up a bunch of academic papers he had written and slapped them in a book with an awesome cover so as to make a few bucks. I found some of the presented facts to be somewhat along the lines of “It could be like this but we don’t really know. But isn’t the possibility amazing anyway?”I enjoy looking at the stars on a clear night. It fills me with a sense of infinite wonder. I expected this book to explain some of that wonder, but really I just found it boring. And I really wanted to like this book!

⭐I’m not qualified to say whether this guy’s a genius or not, but I strongly suspect he is; what’s more, like his mentor, Carl Sagan, he certainly has a genius for communicating hugely complex and, frankly mind-blowing, concepts to those of us without PhDs in astrophysics. And he does it without a hint of patronising the reader. I only wish I’d had Mr de Grasse Tyson as my Physics teacher before I abandoned science at school. Life would have been v different. An absolute delight of a book, written with a wonderful verve, wit, and enthusiasm that’s irresistible.

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