Strictly speaking this book should be entitled, ‘Physics Cannot Hurt You,’ as the second half of it is devoted to what Chown calls ‘Big things.’ The quantum world, of course, deals with very small things. The title gives it away as a light-hearted quick run round the current state of theoretical physics. This sort of jocular science writing for the masses, as it were, has become fashionable of late but I found the humour here laboured and many of the metaphors unoriginal. On the other side of the equation, however, the book undoubtedly works as vehicle for explaining difficult concepts lucidly and simply for us non-physicists. The depth of his scholarship and the love he has for his subject are also evident throughout. I particularly liked his sparing use of footnotes as a way of giving us the real science without spoiling the narrative.
The book is divided into two parts – Part 1: Small Things and Part 2: Big Things (of course) with a vain attempt at the end to reconcile the two. His approach is to amaze us with the sheer improbability of the world we live in and to demonstrate just how counter-intuitive both quantum theory and General Relativity are. The Foreword begins with a bulleted list of unlikely things that, of course, turn out to be true. The first one, for example, states that every breath one takes contains at least one atom that was breathed out by Marilyn Monroe. There is much more of this sort of stuff in the book.
Each chapter is devoted to one physical characteristic beginning with a quote and an italicised introduction. The story begins with the discovery of the atom and what this meant for the then current state of scientific knowledge. He tries to illustrate the properties of the atom with various metaphors. For example, he quotes Tom Stoppard’s famous analogy suggesting that if the nucleus of a Hydrogen atom were the size of a fist then the whole thing would be equivalent to the interior of St Paul’s and its single electron would flutter about the cathedral like a tiny moth.
We are taken on a historical journey as one improbable atomic fact after another is discovered: wave/particle duality; uncertainty; the collapse of the wave function; non-locality; alpha decay; vacuum fluctuation; and how such an apparently diverse world can be constructed from identical building blocks. He admits where he is over-simplifying and lets us know that picturing the true nature of the atom is beyond our imagination.
Part two follows a similar pattern and is substantially devoted to Einstein’s two theories of relativity. The entire book is a mere 158 pp (excluding the glossary) so confining it to the subject of its title would make it a very slender volume indeed. Also, Chown is a cosmologist by profession and this is his bread and butter, so I expect that this part of the book did not take him very long to write. The final chapter deals with some post-Einsteinian discoveries such as Big Bang (the idea had been around for a while but it was only confirmed as a theory in the early 1960s), the existence of Dark Matter and the recent revelation that the universe is not only expanding but also accelerating driven by the mysterious Dark Energy (of which we know almost nothing). The final paragraph expresses the hope that one day (soon?) we will be able to reconcile quantum theory with General Relativity.
I would certainly recommend the book for newcomers to the subject or for those, like me, who are not specialists but would like to keep up with the present state of knowledge (it was first published in 2006). It is an easy read and a lengthy train journey or two should get it finished.
Marcus Chown is a science writer and the cosmology advisor for New Scientist
