Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe - Hardcover

Rees, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465036724 ISBN 13: 9780465036721

Publisher: Basic Books, 2000

Synopsis

How did a single “genesis event” create billions of galaxies, black holes, stars and planets? How did atoms assemble—here on earth, and perhaps on other worlds—into living beings intricate enough to ponder their origins? What fundamental laws govern our universe?This book describes new discoveries and offers remarkable insights into these fundamental questions. There are deep connections between stars and atoms, between the cosmos and the microworld. Just six numbers, imprinted in the “big bang,” determine the essential features of our entire physical world. Moreover, cosmic evolution is astonishingly sensitive to the values of these numbers. If any one of them were “untuned,” there could be no stars and no life. This realization offers a radically new perspective on our universe, our place in it, and the nature of physical laws.

About this title

About the Author

Martin Rees is Britain's Astronomer Royal. He is the author of several books, including Gravity's Fatal Attraction: Black Holes in the Universe (with Mitchell Begelman) and Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others. A member of the Royal Society, the United States National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and numerous foreign academies, Rees is Royal Society Research Professor at Cambridge University.

Reviews

Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, advances the arresting proposition that the six numbers of his title play "a crucial and distinctive role in our universe, and together they determine how the universe evolves and what its internal potentialities are." Indeed, the numbers constitute a recipe for a universe, and "the outcome is sensitive to their values: if any one of them were to be 'untuned,' there would be no stars and no life." His cast of numbers is: N, measures the strength of the electrical forces that hold atoms together; E, defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made; (, measures the amount of material in the universe; L, represents "an unsuspected new force--a cosmic 'antigravity,'" that controls the expansion of our universe; Q, represents the ratio of two fundamental energies; D, states the number of spatial dimensions in our world. Rees, smoothly traversing a scale of size from the cosmos to the atom, ponders a profound question about the fine-tuning of the six numbers as they affect our universe. "Is this tuning just a brute fact, a coincidence? Or is it the providence of a benign Creator? I take the view that it is neither. An infinity of other universes may well exist where the numbers are different. Most would be stillborn or sterile. We could only have emerged ... in a universe with the 'right' combination."

Science writer and astronomer Rees summarizes the history of the universe, pointing out that six numbers related to basic physical constants (for example, the relative strengths of the gravitational and electromagnetic attraction) determine how the universe developed. In addition, he shows how, if these numbers were only slightly different, stars and galaxies would not form, complex chemistry would not be possible, and life could not evolve. This raises the interesting philosophical question, Why? One could dismiss the question by saying that, if it were otherwise, we wouldn't be here to ask or that there is some underlying theory as yet unknown that would show that these values must be what they are. However, Rees suggests that these numbers were set shortly after the big bang and could well have been different. Indeed, there may be a multitude of other universes, forever inaccessible to us, in which they are different. Thus, with a huge choice of possible universes, one must exist that could support intelligent beings who can observe and question. Whether one agrees or not with Rees's ideas, his book is recommended for its cogent synopsis of modern cosmologic thought. [BOMC alternate selection.]--Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUN.
---Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUNY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465036724
• ISBN 13: 9780465036721
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192