Six Impossible Things (eBook)

The ‘Quanta of Solace’ and the Mysteries of the Subatomic World

John Gribbin

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY INSIGHT INVESTMENT SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2019.

'An accessible primer on all things quantum' – Sunday Times

Quantum physics is strange. It tells us that a particle can be in two places at once. Indeed, that particle is also a wave, and everything in the quantum world can be described entirely in terms of waves, or entirely in terms of particles, whichever you prefer.

All of this was clear by the end of the 1920s. But to the great distress of many physicists, let alone ordinary mortals, nobody has ever been able to come up with a common sense explanation of what is going on. Physicists have sought 'quanta of solace' in a variety of more or less convincing interpretations. Popular science master John Gribbin takes us on a delightfully mind-bending tour through the 'big six', from the Copenhagen interpretation via the pilot wave and many worlds approaches.

All of them are crazy, and some are more crazy than others, but in this world crazy does not necessarily mean wrong, and being more crazy does not necessarily mean more wrong.

John Gribbin's numerous bestselling books include In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, The Universe: A Biography, and 13.8: The Quest to Find the True Age of the Universe and the Theory of Everything. He is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex, and was described as 'one of the finest and most prolific writers of popular science around' by the Spectator.

Beyond Coincidence (eBook)

Brian King

Martin Plimmer

UPDATED EDITION WITH OVER FIFTY NEW STORIES

'A FIRST-RATE BOOK' - THE OBSERVER

Laura Buxton, aged ten, releases a balloon from her garden. It lands 140 miles away in the garden of another Laura Buxton, aged ten. Coincidence? Or something beyond coincidence?

Is someone playing snap with our lives? Could it be the hand of God? Or are we, as some scientists have suggested, being granted an insight into a hyper-connected universe whose ubiquitous web-like workings we can only dimly discern?

Beyond Coincidence is a celebration of the universe’s most beguiling phenomenon, containing more than 250 amazing stories of coincidence. From sympathetic magic to the science of probability, from the vicissitudes of gamblers to the mysterious communions of subatomic particles, this book chases coincidence in all its many guises, analysing how it affects every aspect of our lives and why it means so much to even the most sceptical of us.

Martin Plimmer is a journalist and broadcaster and author of the fictionalised memoir King of the Castle. Once, while in the waiting room of a hospital after banging his head, Martin found a two-year-old magazine open at an article he had written on the subject of headaches. 

Brian King is an award-winning pioneer of radio fly-on-the-wall documentaries and producer of hundreds of BBC radio features, dramas and comedy programmes including, coincidentally, a Radio 4 series about coincidence, presented by Martin Plimmer. As well as Beyond Coincidence, he’s the author of books about lying (The Lying Ape) and embarrassment (Walking in on Mum and Dad). When he’s not making radio programmes or writing books, he can be found fighting slugs on his allotment, strumming his guitar or organising folk festivals.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy (eBook)

The Hidden 95% of the Universe

Brian Clegg

'Clear and compact … It's hard to fault as a brief, easily digestible introduction to some of the biggest questions in the Universe' Giles Sparrow, BBC Four's The Sky at Night, Best astronomy and space books of 2019: 5/5

All the matter and light we can see in the universe makes up a trivial 5 per cent of everything. The rest is hidden. This could be the biggest puzzle that science has ever faced.

Since the 1970s, astronomers have been aware that galaxies have far too little matter in them to account for the way they spin around: they should fly apart, but something concealed holds them together. That 'something' is dark matter – invisible material in five times the quantity of the familiar stuff of stars and planets.

By the 1990s we also knew that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. Something, named dark energy, is pushing it to expand faster and faster. Across the universe, this requires enough energy that the equivalent mass would be nearly fourteen times greater than all the visible material in existence.

Brian Clegg explains this major conundrum in modern science and looks at how scientists are beginning to find solutions to it.

Brian Clegg is a popular science writer whose Dice World and A Brief History of Infinity were both longlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. He has written for publications including Nature, The Times and BBC Focus.