Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe by Marcus Chown (PDF)

Description

A mind-bending journey through some of the most weird and wonderful facts about our universe, vividly illuminating the hidden truths that govern our everyday lives. “The tone is consistently light and breezy…an addictive, intriguing, and entertaining read…a handy guide for anyone yearning to spice up their conversational skills.” ― Booklist Fact: You could fit the whole human race in the volume of a sugar cube. Fact: The electrical energy in a single mosquito is enough to cause a global mass extinction. Fact: You age more quickly on the top floor than on the ground floor. So much of our world seems to make perfect sense, and scientific breakthroughs have helped us understand ourselves, our planet, and our place in the universe in fascinating detail. But our adventures in space, our deepening understanding of the quantum world, and our leaps in technology have also revealed a universe far stranger than we ever imagined. With brilliant clarity and wit, bestselling author Marcus Chown examines the profound science behind fifty remarkable scientific facts that help explain the vast complexities of our existence.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Prolific science writer Chown (The Ascent of Gravity, 2017) explains in the foreword to this book that he’s always looking for fun facts to liven up book readings and entertain strangers at cocktail parties. With that end in mind, he presents 50 seemingly dubious scientific proclamations, or, as he dubs them, ‘things’― Human Things, Solar System Things, Extraterrestrial Things, and so on―intended to dazzle audiences. Each declaration (‘Human beings are one-third mushroom’; ‘You age faster on the top floor of a building than on the ground floor’) gets its own two or three-page entry, consisting of the claim, a supporting quote from luminaries ranging from Albert Einstein to Walt Whitman to Pink Floyd, and an accessible presentation of Chown’s scientific reasoning. The tone is consistently light and breezy, even when the science, which is backed up by chapter notes, gets a little technical. The end result is an addictive, intriguing, and entertaining read, plus, as a bonus, a handy guide for anyone yearning to spice up their conversational skills.” ― Booklist A genial tour of the universe and its mysteries. According to Einsteinian and other theories of relativity, light should take about 8.5 minutes to zoom from the sun to Earth. Yet, as New Scientist cosmology consultant Chown (The Ascent of Gravity: The Quest to Understand the Force that Explains Everything, 2017, etc.) notes, it takes much longer―30,000 years, in fact. The delay has to do with the density of the sun and the circuitous route that light must take in order to leave: “Photons are like Christmas shoppers fighting their way down a crowded street,” writes the author. “They cannot go in a straight line but are forced to zigzag.” In the case of light from the sun, it can advance no more than a centimeter before pinging elsewhere, and before you know it―well, as Chown notes, the light now bathing us was born during the last Ice Age. The author writes with gods-for-clods, rocks-for-jocks enthusiasm: “Some slime molds have thirteen sexes. (And you think you have difficulty finding and keeping a partner!).” Though the rhetorical ploy gets old, there’s plenty for more advanced students to ponder, such as Chown’s passing note that all life is really cellular life. Indeed, there are lots of moments that will stir the imaginations of meditative stoners. For example, the air we breathe was also very likely breathed by Marilyn Monroe, Julius Caesar, and “the last Tyrannosaurus Rex ever to have stalked the earth.” Also, the laws of probability suggest that the number of possible earths and their possible inhabitants are uncountably unknowable: “There are an infinite number of galaxies that look just like our own galaxy containing an infinite number of versions of you, whose lives, up until this moment, have been absolutely identical to yours.” Heavy stuff lightly spun―just the thing for the science buff in the house. ― Kirkus Review “[Chown is] a science popularizer in the [Carl] Sagan mold…The reason Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand works so well is that it does not ‘dumb down’ abstruse science: instead, it shows how utterly wonderful and wonder-filled scientific discoveries are, even when (especially when) applied to mundane life and things we generally accept without thinking much about them. There is something exhilarating in Chown’s writing, something captivating in the way he casually tosses about a variety of fascinating facts and discoveries while explaining how many things remain unknown and perhaps, given the inherent limitations of the human mind, unknowable (although don’t bet on it).”―InfoDad blog “This book describes fifty wondrous phenomena of the Universe. Topics range from the indivisibly small to the unknowably vast. No chapter exceeds a half-dozen pages, and readers will never feel bogged down in convoluted or technical language…This popular-science overview of the Universe is perfect for lay readers with inquiring minds.”―Internet Review of Books About the Author Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is cosmology consultant of New Scientist. His books include The Ascent of Gravity (named the Sunday Times’ 2017 Science Book of the Year), What A Wonderful World, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, and We Need to Talk About Kelvin (shortlisted for the 2010 Royal Society Book Prize). Marcus has also tried his hand at apps and won the Bookseller Digital Innovation of the Year award for Solar System for iPad.

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

⭐50 very short, well written, chapters, each providing sometimes startling, always thought provoking, facts or speculations regarding the past, present, or future of our universe. It made me pause and reflect differently on what I believe I am experiencing as “reality.”

⭐I enjoyed the book from the very first page because the author has such a clever writing style. I especially liked the material being presented in short burst of 4 or 5 pages. It takes a great deal of skill and plain hard work for one who has such a vast knowledge of the scientific world make this ideas simple for us.This work could easily have earned five stars from me except the author could not control his hatred for former president Trump. On at least two occasions he made demeaning remarks about President Trump that had absolutely nothing at all to do with science. I really don’t think introducing hatred in a book of science does any positive except make the author feel good. It detracts from some excellent writing.

⭐I truly enjoyed reading this. When I come to the last page and want more, I know I’ve been affected. Great job!

⭐Lucid and easy to read. A topic a chapter. Mostly two to three pages to a chapter Stunned by the facts previously unknown to me. Lured to read on chapter after chapter. A treasure trove indeed.

⭐Well written and very readable short essays on some of the strange and fascinating things in the world of modern physics.

⭐Loved the section on the Neanderthals

⭐A good read.

⭐Lots of fun snippets and temptations to dig deeper

⭐This is a fascinating and rewarding book for everyone who wish to learn and understand more about the natural world and universe we live in. I like the short chapters because at the end of each chapter I needed time to reflect on the rich content I had just absorbed. Read and savour this book slowly, say a chapter a day.The writer is clear and concise and very skilled in presenting facts and information that could be hard to understand from another writer.

⭐The facts in this book are mind bogglingIt was a very enjoyable and humbling glimpse into our current understanding of existence

⭐Mostly basic. But the advanced make up for an interesting book, plainly written.

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