Marcus Chown

Why do we breathe? What is money? How does the brain work? Why did life invent sex? Does time really exist? How does capitalism work - or not, as the case may be? Where do mountains come from? How do computers work? How did humans get to dominate the Earth? Why is there something rather than nothing?In What a Wonderful World, Marcus Chown, bestselling author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and the Solar System app, uses his vast scientific knowledge and deep understanding of extremely complex processes to answer simple questions about the workings of our everyday lives. Lucid, witty and hugely entertaining, it explains the basics of our essential existence, stopping along the way to show us why the Atlantic is widening by a thumbs' length each year, how money permits trade to time travel why the crucial advantage humans had over Neanderthals was sewing and why we are all living in a giant hologram.

Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt A Guide to the Universe [Hardcover] Chown, Marcus

Bestselling author Marcus Chown explores some of the most profound and important science about us, our world and beyond by examining some astonishing facts that reveal the vast complexities of the universe.There is much about our world that seems to make perfect sense, and important 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 huge leaps in technology over the last century have also revealed a universe far stranger than we could ever have 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. Did you know that you could fit the whole human race in the volume of a sugar cube? Or that the electrical energy in a single mosquito is enough to cause a global mass extinction? Or that, out there in the cosmos, there are an infinite number of copies of you reading an infinite number of copies of this?Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand is 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.

Why the force that keeps our feet on the ground holds the key to understanding the nature of time and the origin of the universe. Gravity is the weakest force in the everyday world yet it is the strongest force in the universe. It was the first force to be recognized and described yet it is the least understood. It is a "force" that keeps your feet on the ground yet no such force actually exists.Gravity, to steal the words of Winston Churchill, is "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." And penetrating that enigma promises to answer the biggest questions in what is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?Award-winning writer Marcus Chown takes us on an unforgettable journey from the recognition of the "force" of gravity in 1666 to the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015. And, as we stand on the brink of a seismic revolution in our worldview, he brings us up to speed on the greatest challenge ever to confront physics.

Look around you. The reflection of your face in a window tells you that the universe is orchestrated by chance. The iron in a spot of blood on your finger tells you that somewhere out in space there is furnace at a temperature of 4.5 billion degrees. Your TV tells you that the universe had a beginning. In fact, your very existence tells you that this may not be the only universe but merely one among an infinity of others, stacked like the pages of a never-ending book. Marcus Chown, author of "Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You", takes familiar features of the world we know and shows how they can be used to explain profound truths about the ultimate nature of reality. His new book will change the way you see the world: with Chown as your guide, cutting-edge science is made clear and meaningful by a falling leaf, or a rose, or a starry night sky.

Learn how the big bang may have been spawned by a collision between 'island universes'; how a single remarkable number contains the answer to every question we could ever ask; how the most widely accepted theory of the universe's origin suggests that Elvis never died; and how a computer program a mere four lines long could be generating the stars, the galaxies and the tip of your nose. Chown fearlessly addresses the big questions on the nature of the universe, the nature of reality, and the place of life in the universe. Ultimately, he says, science is about the down-to-earth things that matter to all of us. Where did the universe come from? Where did we come from? What the hell are we doing here?

"Every breath you take contains atoms forged in the blistering furnaces deep inside stars. Every flower you pick contains atoms blasted into space by stellar explosions that blazed brighter than a billion suns." Thus begins The Magic Furnace , an eloquent, extraordinary account of howscientists unraveled the mystery of atoms, and helped to explain the dawn of life itself.The historic search for atoms and their stellar origins is truly one of the greatest detective stories of science. In effect, it offers two epics the birth of atoms in the Big Bang and the evolution of stars and how they work. Neither could be told without the other, for the starscontain the key to unlocking the secret of atoms, and the atoms the solution to the secret of the stars. Marcus Chown leads readers through the major theories and experiments that propelled the search for atomic understanding, with engaging characterizations of the major atomic thinkers-fromDemocritus in ancient Greece to Binning and Rohrer in twentieth-century New York. He clarifies the science, explaining with enthusiasm the sequence of breakthroughs that proved the existence of atoms as the "alphabet of nature" and the discovery of subatomic particles and atomic energy potential.From there, he engagingly chronicles the leaps of insight that eventually revealed the elements, the universe, our world, and ourselves to be a product of two ultimate the explosion of the Big Bang and the interior of stars such as supernovae and red giants.Chown successfully makes these massive concepts accessible for students, professionals, and science enthusiasts. His story sheds light on all of us, for in essence, we are all stardust.

What is space? What is time? Where did the universe come from? The answers to mankind's most enduring questions may lie in science's greatest enigma: black holes.A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. This can occur when a star approaches the end of its life. Unable to generate enough heat to maintain its outer layers, it shrinks catastrophically down to an infinitely dense point.When this phenomenon was first proposed in 1916, it defied scientific understanding so much that Albert Einstein dismissed it as too ridiculous to be true. But scientists have since proven otherwise. In 1971, Paul Murdin and Louise Webster discovered the first black hole: Cygnus X-1. Later, in the 1990s, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope found that not only do black holes exist, supermassive black holes lie at the heart of almost every galaxy, including our own. It would take another three decades to confirm this phenomenon. On 10 April 2019, a team of astronomers made history by producing the first image of a black hole.A Crack in Everything is the story of how black holes came in from the cold and took cosmic centre stage. As a journalist, Marcus Chown interviews many of the scientists who made the key discoveries, and, as a former physicist, he translates the most esoteric of science into everyday language. The result is a uniquely engaging page-turner that tells one of the great untold stories in modern science.

The idea that an atom can be in two places at once defies logic. Yet this is now an established scientific fact. In The Universe Next Door , science writer Marcus Chown examines a dozen mind-bending new ideas that also fly in the face of reason--but that, according to eminent scientists, mightjust be crazy enough to be true.Could time run backwards? Is there a fifth dimension? Does quantum theory promise immortality? To explore these questions, Chown has interviewed some of the most imaginative and courageous people working at the forefront of science, and he has come away with a smorgasbord of mind-expandingideas. For instance, Lawrence Schulman at New York's Clarkson University believes there could be regions in our Universe where stars unexplode, eggs unbreak and living things grow younger with every passing second. Max Tegmark, at the University of Pennsylvania, believes there could be an infinityof realities stacked together like the pages of a never-ending book (with an infinite number of versions of you, living out an infinite number of different lives). And David Stevenson of Cal Tech argues that life may exist on worlds drifting in the cold, dark abyss between the stars, worlds withoutsuns to warm them. Indeed, these worlds may be the most common sites for life in the universe.Was our universe created by super-intelligent beings from another universe? Is there evidence of extraterrestrial life lying right beneath our feet? The Universe Next Door ponders these and many other thought-provoking questions. You may not agree with all the answers but your head will bespinning by the time you reach the last page.

The spellbinding stories of the scientists whose eureka! breakthroughs in modern physics reveal science's astonishing predictive power.'An excellent popular science book.'DARA Ó BRIAIN'A thoroughly informative and entertaining read.'ANNA BURNS, Booker Prize-winning author of Milkman'One of the best-written books about phsyics I have ever come across.'POPULAR SCIENCE'Highly entertaining and accessible.' IRISH TIMES'Fascinating, life enhancing entertainment.' PROSPECT'Thoroughly enjoyable . . . Chown has down it again.' BBC SKY AT NIGHTThe Magicians takes us on a breathtaking, mind-altering tour of the eureka! moments of modern physics. Charting the spellbinding stories of the scientists who predicted and discovered the existence of unknown planets, black holes, invisible force fields, ripples in the fabric of space-time, unsuspected subatomic particles and even antimatter, Marcus Chown reveals science's greatest its astonishing predictive power.

From gravity to black holes, tides to global warming, this authoritative and entertaining book from bestselling author Marcus Chown breaks down complex science into manageable chunks, explaining the one thing you really need to know to get to grips with the subject.In a world in which most people are time poor, telling them the one thing they need to know to understand a topic and showing how everything else follows as a logical consequence is a novel and fun way to communicate a lot of deep stuff in a compact and digestible form. Divided into twenty-one short chapters , this will be a fascinating look at the one thing you need to know to understand some of science’s most important ideas , from global warming to vaccine resistance, electricity to respiration.Bestselling author Marcus Chown is a master at breaking down complex science into understandable bite-sized chunks and, in a similar vein to Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand , this will be perfectly suited to the curious nonscientist.

Take an astonishing visual journey through time and space with Solar System , a mesmerizing way to experience the magnitude of the universe through fascinating text, original graphics, and stunning photographs, some rarely- or never-before-seen.Never before have the wonders of our solar system been so immediately accessible to readers of all ages. Award-winning writer and broadcaster Marcus Chown combines science and history to visually and narratively explore our neighboring planets, dwarf planets, moons and asteroids, as well as all of the historical figures who aided in their discoveries. From the explosive surface of the sun to the frosty blue dunes on Mars; from the gargantuan rings of Saturn to the volcanoes of Io; from geological maps of bedrock on the Moon, to a simulation of what the Oort Cloud might look like, Solar System offers a window seat from which to view the beauty and magnificence of space.

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The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einstein's general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world we live in. But, almost a century after their advent, most people haven't the slightest clue what either is about. Did you know that there's so much empty space inside matter that the entire human race could be squeezed into the volume of a sugar cube? Or that you grow old more quickly on the top floor of a building than on the ground floor? And did you realize that 1% of the static on a TV tuned between stations is the relic of the Big Bang? These and many other remarkable facts about the world are direct consequences of quantum physics and relativity.Quantum theory has literally made the modern world possible. Not only has it given us lasers, computers, and nuclear reactors, but it has provided an explanation of why the sun shines and why the ground beneath our feet is solid. Despite this, however, quantum theory and relativity remain a patchwork of fragmented ideas, vaguely understood at best and often utterly mysterious. They have even gained a reputation of being beyond the understanding of the average person.Author Marcus Chown emphatically disagrees. As Einstein himself said, "Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone."If you think that the marvels of modern physics have passed you by, it is not too late. In Chown's capable hands, quantum physics and relativity are not only painless but downright fun. So sit back, relax, and get comfortable as an adept and experienced science communicator brings you quickly up to speed on some of the greatest ideas in the history of human thought.

In 140 pages, two masterly popularisers present 140 explanations of the biggest questions in physics - in the form of 10 or so tweets per page. They set themselves the challenge of boiling down what is essential on each subject into sentences of 140 characters, and the results are both entertaining and brilliantly informative. Not a word is wasted. The reader is not patronized and learns something on every page. If only all science writing could be so precise and so economical. Only science writers of a very high calibre could achieve such compression. Marcus Chown - "the finest cosmology writer of our day" (Matt Ridley) - has known the Dutch writer Govert Schilling for twenty years. Schilling pioneered this very swift form of explanation in a Dutch newspaper, and suggested to Chown that they collaborate on bringing it to a wider audience. "Tweeting the Universe" is unlike any other science book.

Look around you. The reflection of your face in a window tells you about the most shocking discovery in the history of that at its deepest level the world is orchestrated by chance; that ultimately, things happen for no reason at all. The iron in a spot of blood on your finger shows you that somewhere out in space there is a furnace at a temperature of 4.5 billion degrees. Static on your TV screen proclaims that the universe had a beginning. The bulb above your head emits light, and the light waves emerging from it are about five thousand times bigger than the atoms that spit them out—as paradoxical a thought as the idea of a matchbox swallowing a forty-ton truck.Marcus Chown takes familiar features of the everyday world and shows us, with breathtaking clarity, wit, and suspense, how they can be used to explain profound truths about the ultimate nature of reality. This is an essential cosmology primer for anyone curious about their surroundings and their place in the universe.

When Felicity Frobisher is paid a visit by a Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil, she has the most extraordinary day of her life. Travelling through wormholes, beating the school bullies, using the "Pan-Galactic Speaking Dictionary" to wow her French teacher, and even visiting an international space station - it's all possible when you are friends with a Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil.

Todos sentimos cierta atracción por la mecánica cuántica, los agujeros negros, la relatividad y lo que creemos que puede ocurrir a partir de esos lugares tanto enigmáticos como desconocidos; pero ¿Qué tanto de la cultura pop es cierto en relación con estos temas?, y ¿Cómo entenderlo sin una lectura compleja y aburrida que solo interesa a científicos?Marcus Chown investiga cada tema y lo explica para todo público, toma un eje central del que deriva el resto, sin comenzar desde lo confuso, más bien lo básico para llevarnos, de a poco, por sus vertientes. Entonces logramos entenderlo como un el lenguaje, la voz y materia del espacio que conforma una flor, una galaxia o las transformaciones de la materia y hasta las posibilidades de estar en dos lugares a la vez.Relata de manera sencilla los sucesos asombrosos que logra manifestar durante veintiún capítulos breves; eventos como el big bang, las ondas gravitacionales, la termodinámica y las posibilidades que todo ello representa, como la evolución, el calentamiento global y hasta los viajes en el tiempo.

Saviez-vous qu'un tiers de votre ADN est commun avec celui d'un champignon ? qu'à chaque inspiration vous respirez un atome expiré par Marilyn Monroe ? que si le soleil était fait de bananes, cela ne changerait rien ? Les dernières avancées scientifiques et technologiques, nos aventures dans l'espace ainsi que notre compréhension approfondie du monde quantique nous ont révélé un Univers bien plus complexe et étrange que nous ne l'aurions imaginé.Cet ouvrage est un voyage fascinant à travers 15 observations scientifiques insolites expliquées avec humour et clarté.

关于时间大爆炸差不多已经逝去，我们还不知道有什么东西会替代它。宇宙的“创生”业已结束。它和地球上的我们有什么关系？我们的生活行将因时钟、喷气引擎、铁路、无线电，以及互联网的发明所带来的改变而再一次被剧烈地震颤。在《关于时间》中，亚当·弗兰克解释了我们生活的特质是如何随着我们对宇宙起源的认识而改变的。自从5万年前我们的自我意识觉醒以来，我们对时间的体验——从狩猎和采集到农业发展，到工业革命，再到Outlook日历的发明——已转变并重建了许多次。但是宇宙学中全新的理论——无起点的时间、平行宇宙、永恒暴涨——即将把我们送入一个新的方向。时间是我们宏大同时也是私密的宇宙概念。许多书籍讲述了更宏大的故事，详述了科学宇宙学的进展。而弗兰克则讲述了人类深刻的问题——万物于何时并如何起源？——以及人类是如何感受时间的。他着眼于我们和这个世界间的交互——我们的发明和习惯等，已让我们探索宇宙的特性，以及这些发现反过来又是如何体现在我们的日常生活中的。这本令人惊骇的书将会改变我们思考时间，以及它如何影响我们生活的方式。

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The spellbinding stories of the scientists whose eureka! breakthroughs in modern physics reveal science's astonishing predictive power.'An excellent popular science book.' DARA Ó BRIAIN'A thoroughly informative and entertaining read.' ANNA BURNS, Booker Prize-winning author of Milkman'One of the best-written books about phsyics I have ever come across.' POPULAR SCIENCE 'Highly entertaining and accessible.' IRISH TIMES 'Fascinating, life enhancing entertainment.' PROSPECT 'Thoroughly enjoyable . . . Chown has down it again.' BBC SKY AT NIGHT Breakthrough takes us on a breathtaking, mind-altering tour of the eureka! moments of modern physics. Charting the spellbinding stories of the scientists who predicted and discovered the existence of unknown planets, black holes, invisible force fields, ripples in the fabric of space-time, unsuspected subatomic particles and even antimatter, Marcus Chown reveals science's greatest its astonishing predictive power. *** Breakthrough was previously published in 2020 in hardback under the title The Magicians.