Faber & Faber

I like science.

Regular readers of With Extra Pulp (all six of you), may be wondering who suddenly hijacked this blog and started talking all this science nonsense. Science and logic are probably my weakest points. But I have a confession to make. Ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to be good at science.

It never happened. You can read all the Horrible Science books before you’re ten, you can buy New Scientist to try to read on the train/bus, you can even take Chemistry in high school and nod along to everything your Physics mates are saying, pretending to understand. Doesn’t make you good at science.

Enter We Need to Talk About Kelvin. Not to (or perhaps intended to) be confused with the Orange Prize winning We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Because this book is for people like me. People who don’t actually have the brain capacity to learn the inner workings of the universe, but prefer to let someone else do the hard work and then reap the benefits. Marcus Chown seems to know this already.

Basically, he’s written a book explaining how some of the most mundane realities we face can tell us large-scale facts about the greater workings of the universe. If you believe the premise on the blurb, it even borders on philosophical:

The reflection of your face in a window tells you that the universe at its deepest level is orchestrated by chance

The static on a badly tuned TV screen tells you that the universe began in a big bang

The book’s structure is framed around this concept of teaching us the greater truths of the universe through small, seemingly insignificant details. In three parts, it breaks down into what the everyday world tells us about atoms; stars; and the Universe, respectively.

If you are someone who assumes the foetal position and hyperventilates whenever the words ‘electron’ or ‘quark’ is mentioned, it would be best to skim read through part one. There are two very distinct voices within the pages: The hardcore ‘expert cosmologist’ voice, because, well, the author IS an expert cosmologist, and these large blocks of extreme science, in which the movement of atoms and the wave-like movement of particles are explained thoroughly.  There’s also that ‘did you know?’ cool science voice that sums up pages of jargon into a relatable story. In part one, the scientific terms swamp the lay-people explanations. But that’s necessary to establish early on because as it progresses, it moves into the cool and interesting information: multiple universes, the feebleness of stars and extraterrestrial life forms.

Why do we care? I’m not in high school anymore, do I really need to know the half-life of various radioactive substances? Who gives a toss about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (which, for your informitar,  “imposes a ‘fuzziness’ on nature” p246)?

We care because knowledge is power. And power is having interesting things to say at dinner parties. Because you can impress people by telling them things like how the fact that humans are able to live comfortably on this planet because of Earth’s co-dependent relationship with the Moon and the magic of gravitational pull.

Or things like the fact that..

“Some of the ‘snow’ on the [TV] screen is caused by the microscopic jitter of electrons in the circuits of the TV. Some is from the radio waves picked up from buildings , trees, the sky, keys turning in the ignition of cars, passing taxis, and so on. But about 1 per cent of the static is from radio waves which have come directly from the Big Bang itself. Before being intercepted by your TV aerial, they had been travelling for 13.7 billion years across space. And the last thing they touched before your aerial was the blisteringly hot fireball at the birth of the Universe.” (p151)

Rad, no?

Unless you are truly interested in what this book has to say, it will be a struggle to read through. And if you are a total science noob you may initially struggle through the early chapters. But it’s kind of worth it in the end. Who knows, it may even change the way you look at the world around you.

Folks, next week Marcus Chown will be stopping by as part of a blog tour. Stay tuned for details of a giveaway and for more updates, you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Blog tour info can be found here.