Wow, what can you say apart from “great title!”. Move beyond that, though, and this is a fantastic piece of popular science writing. Marcus Chown has a real talent for explaining complex scientific ideas to the layperson, and his latest offering employs the premise of using everyday observations of the world around us to explain why deeper scientific truths must indeed be a reality (and also why we take for granted some fairly remarkable things).

As in his previous book, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, there is a focus on quantum and atomic physics and how these things interact with the larger forces (for example gravity) that we instinctively understand. As in the previous book, I would say that for me, the most challenging ideas are in the first few chapters. Describing the dual nature of light as both a particle (which is infinitesimally small) and a wave (which, relatively speaking, isn’t), Chown explains that an electron emitting light waves is as surprising as opening a matchbox and a 40-ton truck emerging. Colourful comparisons such as this litter the book, and they certainly engage in a way that more prosaic descriptions could not hope to.

I admit to finding the quantum behaviour stuff the most perplexing (because ultimately, at our level of reality, it doesn’t make sense!) but it is fascinating. Where I was on firmer ground was when Chown moved on to talk about the construction of atoms – nucleii, protons, neutrons, etc. – and the way that the same basic building blocks, combined in different ways, make up all of the elemental materials that we take for granted, and that ultimately make us up. I was fascinated by the valley of elemental stability, the notion that it’s the elements with the fewest atoms (hydrogen, helium) and the most (uranium, radium) that are the least stable, while iron, slap bang in the middle, is the essence of stability and permanence, the element that everything ultimately wants to end up as.

Chown also offers some good insights in to the Big Bang, what makes a supernova, what fuels our sun, the heat death of the universe and much else besides. As well as explaining the theories in the simplest possible way, the author also gives us some great portraits of the scientists who came up with them, the insights that they had and the techniques that they used. He finishes with one theory for which there is no definitive answer – what the fact that there are no aliens on earth tells us. He explains the various competing hypotheses with great clarity and invites us to draw our own conclusions. Personally, I think it’s because they’re planning on demolishing earth to build a new hyperspace bypass, and they can’t bring themselves to look us in the eye, but I may have been reading too much Douglas Adams.

A great book that makes we want to understand the universe better – and surely there can be no higher praise.

Listen to an interview with Marcus Chown on our sister site, Bookhugger.co.uk

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