Customer Reviews
Reader-friendly take on cosmology, relativity, and quantum mechanics - By: Dennis Littrell, 17 Feb 2008 
I was touring this black hole with my trusty guide to the "neverending" universe by my favorite science writer Marcus Chown. I wanted to get just inside the horizon where time slows down so magnificently that I wouldn't age. The idea was then to somehow escape the black hole & come back home & see my investments so wonderfully grown.
But somehow I must have missed a chapterin Chown's book or maybe a section or something because no matter how hard I tried I didn't seem to be getting anywhere. The problem is that the gravity well is so intense that time is crawling by so incredibly slowly that I may never get home. I don't seem to be moving at all!
But since the universe is "neverending" & I got stuck such a long, long time ago (your time), what with Hawking's dissipation, things are beginning to look rather good. The hole is about to evaporate & I should be free. Ah, but now I remember: this evaporation is taking place something like one particle at a time & I will come out a bit thin. On the other hand despite having entered the horizon some billions of years ago, I really haven't made much progress &in fact I'm not really IN the black hole yet even though it's dissipating.
Curiouser & curiouser. Such is the world as it apparently REALLY IS.
Chown has a lot of fun with all the quantum weirdness along with a retrospective on Einstein's relativity. He writes with his usual charm & grace although don't be fooled: we are NOT enlightened. I still cannot imagine that very real but "cloudy" electron, probabilistically surrounding the proton. I cannot imagine something that is both a single-pointed particle & a wave. The duality of all matter suggests to me that there is a level of reality that we haven't reached yet. And probably one beyond that.
Chown starts out with "Small Things" (title of Part One). He goes on to--yes!--"Big Things" (Part Two) & finishes up with a rather good 31-page Glossary. I learned that the force of gravity "doesn't exist" (Chapter 9). That instead, as Einstein divined it over a hundred years ago, gravity is merely mass bending space & time. But space & time do not exist without matter & energy, so what's to bend? Of course I should be writing "spacetime." Chown has reminded me that Einstein declared space & time to be equivalent, just as gravity & acceleration are equivalent. But if gravity is just a force field, why are physicists still expecting to detect gravitons? Gravity waves I can understand rippling through spacetime, but gravitons?
Then again maybe this is not so confusing since waves are particle & particles are waves. (Such a mixed up world it is!)
Chown tries to dazzle us with such observations that we age less when flying than we do on the ground or that a cup of coffee weighs more when it's hot than when it's cold. But we know the differences are not measurable. And when he advises us that if the empty spacein atoms were removed, the entire human race would fit inside the volume of a sugar cube, we are not impressed. After all, according to Big Bang theory the entire universe was once the size of an atom. If you can believe that.
I believe it. I just can't comprehend it. I take all of what I read on relativity & quantum mechanics & cosmology with a grain of salt. After all it wasn't so many years ago, as Chown notes, that our galaxy was thought to be the entire universe, & not too many generations before that, it was believed that the earth was the center of the cosmos & we its finest product. (Always with the hubris, we are!)
Anyway as I was grappling with the ancient conundrum, Why is there something rather than nothing? & reading Chown's explanation of why space can't be empty (since it would violate Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), & while I was imagining all those ghostly particles poppingin & out existence, it occurred to me that nothing is impossible. No, not that nothing is impossible, but that the state of there being nothing is impossible. Or rather I mean to say that there has to be SOMETHING otherwise Heisenberg would be sorely embarrassed.
The subtitles to the chapters are how & why questions such as "How we discovered that light is the rock on which the universe is founded & time & space are shifting sands" (Chapter 7), or "Why we can never know all we would like to know about atoms & why this fact makes atoms possible" (Chapter 4). Typically following the subtitles are some witty sayings by (mostly) physicists or cosmologists. Here are three:
"Passing farther through the quantum land our travelers met quite a lot of other interesting phenomena, such as quantum mosquitoes, which could scarely be located at all, owing to their small mass." --George Gamow
"I woke up one morning & all of my stuff had been stolen, & replaced by exact duplicates." --Steven Wright
"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute--it's longer than an hour. That's relativity!" --Albert Einstein.
Andin QM land, that's show biz!
Chown follows the subtitles & quotes with short fanciful stories such as a weapon that squeezes all the empty space from matter, reducing the enemy to practically nothing, beer creeping up the sides of glasses, & eye glasses that allow the viewer to see X-rays & microwaves.
Bottom line: this is a reader-friendly, non-technical guide to recent insights into cosmology, relativity, & quantum mechanics written by a guy who knows how to make those words dance.
Not a well-thought-out story - By: Stephen A. Haines, 10 May 2007 In the "real" world, the one we can see & feel, things are generally predictable. Rain doesn't fall from a cloudless sky, & the sun rises at the eastern horizon. Downin the invisible world of atoms & their components, things are less organised. The story doesn't flow like a good novel, it skips around, chapters are out of sequence, & the conclusions aren't just illogical, they're impossible. At least compared to what we're accustomed to. In this excellent - & much-needed work, Marcus Chown is able to make some sense of a rather poorly conceived tale.
As Chown is at pains to point out, understanding the universe's basic mechanisms doesn't come easily. He ought to know - he's beenin the trade. Yet his close knowledge provides a solid foundation for explaining it. More important here, he enjoys a fine talent for turning complex issues into understandable & readable accounts. He shows us how these things work, succeeding admirably at the task. Predictability, he explains, isn't part of how the universe works. Thus, the reader must shed a few misconceptions about reality derived over the years & let Chown guide you through an unknown world. He's a talented writer & provides a wealth of tips to aidin the tour of the fascinating atomic realm. He's able to make sense of the seemingly chaotic story underlying the world we live in.
"What is light?" seems a straightforward question, but Chown describes how much effort has gone into making that definition. For centuries light was thought to be a wave. After all, it exhibits various frequencies [according to colour], can be "bent" by obstacles & so on. Yet, as the author reminds us, light's speed is finite - a critical point. Einstein demonstrated the flawsin thinking of light as a wave and,in Chown's words, you can "Say Good-bye to Certainty". To help bridge the gap between what is happeningin the atomic realm & our world, he opens each chapter with a thought experiment exercise. Can you imagine a river flowing uphill? Chown challenges your thinking with that & similar scenarios, then goes on to demonstrate how such a phenomenon can occur.
As Chown goes on to explain, what we've learned about light can be applied to conditions within the atom. Light doesn't come from torches or burning embersin a simple, continuous manner. It emerges from jumping electrons which are prodded & poked by other forces & "microscopic" elements within atoms [Chown's use of "microscopic" throughout this book is slightly misleading - none of what he writes can be seen by a microscope. But continuous use of "sub-microscopic" would be boring.] The "jumping" is the hint of what quantum mechanics means - there is very little smooth, undisturbed & continuous actionin the atomic world. Things may occur with seeming regularity, then quickly shift to another condition. This state of affairs, as Chown notes, applies across the cosmos. Predictability is abandoned & any semblance of a coherent narrative is lost. Read this & find out why you should learn something of quantum physics. It's a finer tale than Shakespeare. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Relativity and quantum physics with a human face - By: EMG, 06 Oct 2006 What I really like about Chown's books is his stories about the people who come up with all this wonderful physics. (By the way if you are interestedin the story behind this year's Nobel Prize for Physics, his 1996 book Afterglow of Creation is a surprisingly emotional & gripping tale of how the background radiation was found, with extraordinarily vivid portraits of the people who did it. How often can you say that about a science book? But I digress.) The Quantum Zoo also brings it home that science is done by real people, & how difficult it can be, even for the most brilliant minds: "It is ironic that Einstein himself missed the messagein his own theory." He gives us historical perspective too, & reminds us that it is just as importantin science to come up with the questions as the answers: "The fact that the Universe beganin a Big Bang explains another great mystery - why the night sky is dark. The German astronomer Johannes Kepler,in 1610, was the first to realize this was a puzzle."
Chown also includes some wonderful asides. "The night after Houtermans & Atkinson did the calculation, Houtermans reportedly tried to impress his girlfriend with a line that nobodyin history had used before. As they stood beneath a perfect moonless sky, he boasted that he was the only personin the world who knew why the stars were shining. It must have worked. Two years later, Charlotte Riefenstahl agreed to marry him. (Actually, she married him twice, but that's another story.)" (Can we look forward to the full storyin the next book please?)
I found the science a bit mind-bogglingin places, but Chown is a good explainer & I dare say the book is hard because the science is, um, hard.
My complaint about the book is its lack of pictures. For example Chown describes the orbits of electrons using the analogy of organ pipes, & a diagram showing this would have been a great help. The first half of the book, on Small Things, is largely about waves, & the second half, Big Things, is all about planets & stars & things, both of which lend themselves to diagrams & photos. I can imagine pictures from scanning tunneling microscopes & telescopes making it a rather attractive coffee-table book.
But that is a minor thing as the book paints some very good picturesin one's brain. Thoroughly recommended.
Great Read - By: Raja Hussain, 07 Jul 2006 A wonderful book, simple to read yet full of amazing concepts, expainedin a to the point, well articulated manner. Even if you have no previous experience with quantum theory, or general relativity this is a great starting point.
Highly recomended, especially for the price.
A good introduction to two tricky subjects - By: A Reader, 26 Jun 2006 
This is an interesting & non-mathematical introduction to quantum theory ("atoms & their constituents") & the general theory of relativity ("our picture of space, time & gravity"). These subjects are fiendishly difficult to understand, but Chown's use of many fresh explanations & analogies should help you get to grips with them. Chown has putin a great deal of effort to try & make these subjects as accessible as possible. As a result, this book has given me a much better understanding of these subjects. And far fewer headaches than many of the other books, articles & documentaries I've encountered before.
At the moment, there's no free preview chapter on this site for the Quantum Zoo; but if you Google Chown's website you can sample a free chapter before making a decision.
