Science Archive

By Marcus Chown. Available on amazon.com Click on image to buy.

“A Guide to the Universe.”

I bought this book for my son. But I couldn’t wait to read it myself! It’s primarily aimed at teens but for people like myself, (I struggle a bit to get my head around quantum theory) it’s highly educational and fun.

I love Marcus Chown’s sense of humour. As illustrated in his dedication:

“To Partick, who, when I’m down and wondering why everyone seems to be against me, consoles me by saying: “That’s because you’re a complete bastard, Marcus!”

He uses storytelling to illustrate basic concepts.

For example, this is from the first chapter:

“We never had any intention of using the weapon. But they were such a terribly troublesome race. They insisted on seeing us as the “enemy” despite all our efforts at reassurance. When they fired their entire nuclear stockpile at our ship, orbiting high above their blue planet, our patience simply ran out.

The weapon was simple but effective. It squeezed out all the empty space from matter.

As the commander of our Sirian expedition examined the shimmering metallic cube, barely 1 centimetre across, he shook his primary head despairingly. Hard to believe that this was all that was left of the “human race”!

If the idea of the entire human race fitting into the volume of a sugar cube sounds like science fiction, think again. It is a remarkable fact that 99.9999999999999 per cent of the volume of ordinary matter is empty space. If there were some way to squeeze all the empty space out of the atoms in our bodies, humanity would indeed fit into the space occupied by a sugar cube.”

By Marcus Chown

Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, p3.

♥Ali.