A User's Guide to the Universe: Surviving the Perils of Black Holes, Time Paradoxes, and Quantum Uncertainty - Hardcover

Goldberg, Dave; Blomquist, Jeff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470496517 ISBN 13: 9780470496510

Publisher: Trade Paper Press, 2010

Synopsis

Answers to science's most enduring questions from ""Can I break the light-speed barrier like on Star Trek?"" and ""Is there life on other planets?"" to ""What is empty space made of?""

This is an indispensable guide to physics that offers readers an overview of the most popular physics topics written in an accessible, irreverent, and engaging manner while still maintaining a tone of wry skepticism. Even the novice will be able to follow along, as the topics are addressed using plain English and (almost) no equations. Veterans of popular physics will also find their nagging questions addressed, like whether the universe can expand faster than light, and for that matter, what the universe is expanding into anyway.

• Gives a one-stop tour of all the big questions that capture the public imagination including string theory, quantum mechanics, parallel universes, and the beginning of time
• Explains serious science in an entertaining, conversational, and easy-to-understand way
• Includes dozens of delightfully groan-worthy cartoons that explain everything from special relativity to Dark Matter

 Filled with fascinating information and insights, this book will both deepen and transform your understanding of the universe.

About this title

About the Author

DAVE GOLDBERG, an award-winning professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Physics at Drexel University, writes the “Ask a Physicist” column for the popular science site io9.com and blogs at usersguidetotheuniverse.com. He lives in Philadelphia.

From the Back Cover

"What a delightful book! It pulls no punches—or punch lines—in explaining all the fun topics in physics and cosmology. From quarks to quasars, from electrons to extraterrestrials—it's all here. Whether you are interested in how to build a time machine or a transporter, or would like to know why curiosity killed Schrödinger's Cat, you will find clear and memorably illustrated explanations. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the recent exciting developments in physics and astronomy."
—J. Richard Gott, Professor of Astrophysics, Princeton University, and author of Time Travel in Einstein's Universe

"I wish I'd had Goldberg and Blomquist as my physics teachers. Strangelets that grow until they strangle the world! Instructions for building an awesome teleportation device, and then transforming it into a super-awesome time machine! Speculations on the odds against our own existence! [and even deeper speculations on being in two places at once!] I'm going to recommend this book to my students, who are science journalists—and to any and all readers who want to have more fun in the universe."
—Jonathan Weiner, Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism,and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Beak of the Finch

We don't like to mince words. If you have your heart set on building a faster-than-light drive or a time machine out of a DeLorean, knock yourself out. If you want to know whether these things are even possible and you like anthropomorphized fundamental particles, read A User's Guide to the Universe.

This plain-English, plain-hilarious handbook ushers you through all of the major discoveries of modern physics, from relativity to the Large Hadron Collider, without furrowing your brow even once. Put your mind at ease and jump into modern physics in a way you never imagined possible—comfortably. Now is your chance to impress people at cocktail parties with your insights into the world of quantum weirdness, time and space, the expanding universe, and much, much more.

Who knows? You might even learn something.

From the Inside Flap

If you head off in a spaceship traveling at nearly the speed of light, what horrors await you when you return? Can you change reality just by looking at it? Is it possible to build a Star Trek–type transporter or a working time machine? Why would we build a billion-dollar particle accelerator that Nostradamus and the Mayan calendar have clearly predicted will destroy Earth? Can you be in two places at once? Or three? Or three thousand? If you, or someone you know, live in the universe, you can't afford to remain in ignorance any longer. You need to know the answers to these questions—and most of them will surprise you.

In A User's Guide to the Universe, physicists Dave Goldberg and Jeff Blomquist make good on two promises: you'll get answers and you won't have to decipher any equations to understand them. (Well, maybe just one very short and very familiar equation.)

This quirky and fun book takes you on a fascinating tour of the universe as we know it by asking (and answering) weird and provocative questions on subjects as diverse as special relativity, quantum mechanics, randomness, time travel, the expanding universe, and much more.

You'll discover:

• How fast a light beam travels if you're running beside it

• Whether God does, in point of fact, play dice with the universe

• What happens if you fall into a black hole

• What lies outside the universe

• What happened before the Big Bang

• What dark matter might be

• And much, much more

Complete with the funniest footnotes you've ever seen in a physics book and dozens of charmingly absurd yet helpful illustrations, A User's Guide to the Universe turns mind-blowing science into enjoyable, comprehensible, and fascinating reading.

Reviews

With a large measure of humor and a minimum of math (one equation), physics professor Goldberg and engineer Blomquist delve into the fascinating physics topics that rarely make it into introductory classes, including time travel, extraterrestrials, and "quantum weirdness" to prove that physics' "reputation for being hard, impractical, and boring" is wrong by at least two-thirds: "Hard? Perhaps. Impractical? Definitely not... But boring? That's where we really take issue." Breaking up each topic into common sense questions ("How many habitable planets are there?" "What is Dark Matter?" "If the universe is expanding, what's it expanding into?"), the duo provides explanations in everyday language with helpful examples, analogies, and Blomquist's charmingly unpolished cartoons. Among other lessons, readers will learn about randomness through gambling; how a Star Trek-style transporter might function in the real world; and what may have existed before the Big Bang. Despite the absence of math, this nearly-painless guide is still involved and scientific, aimed at science hobbyists rather than science-phobes; it should also prove an ideal reference companion for more technical classroom texts. 100 b&w photos.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0470496517
• ISBN 13: 9780470496510
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304