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Wonders of Brian Cox (with Andrew Cohen) #2
Wonders of the Universe: A Gorgeously Illustrated Companion Exploring the Cosmos and Natural Phenomena
Experience our universe as you've never seen it before
13.7 billion years old. 93 billion light-years across. It contains over 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. This infinite, vast and complex Universe has been the subject of human fascination and scientific exploration for thousands of years. The wonders of the Universe might seem alien to us and impossible to understand, but away from the telescopes, the labs and the white coats, Professor Brian Cox uses the evidence found in the natural world on Earth to brilliantly explain the truth of the cosmos.
Professor Cox will show how the vast and unfathomable phenomena of deep space can be explained, and even experienced, by re-examining the familiar here on Earth. He is determined to answer the most profound questions we can ask about ourselves and the world in which we live, but in a uniquely understandable way. The laws of light, gravity, time, matter and energy that govern us here on Earth are the same as those applied in the Universe. Using his expert knowledge and his infectious enthusiasm, Professor Cox shows us that if we can understand the impact of these governing laws on Earth it will bring us a step closer to an understanding of our Universe.
13.7 billion years old. 93 billion light-years across. It contains over 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. This infinite, vast and complex Universe has been the subject of human fascination and scientific exploration for thousands of years. The wonders of the Universe might seem alien to us and impossible to understand, but away from the telescopes, the labs and the white coats, Professor Brian Cox uses the evidence found in the natural world on Earth to brilliantly explain the truth of the cosmos.
Professor Cox will show how the vast and unfathomable phenomena of deep space can be explained, and even experienced, by re-examining the familiar here on Earth. He is determined to answer the most profound questions we can ask about ourselves and the world in which we live, but in a uniquely understandable way. The laws of light, gravity, time, matter and energy that govern us here on Earth are the same as those applied in the Universe. Using his expert knowledge and his infectious enthusiasm, Professor Cox shows us that if we can understand the impact of these governing laws on Earth it will bring us a step closer to an understanding of our Universe.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
322 people are currently reading
4787 people want to read
About the author
Brian Cox
62 books2,086 followersNot to be confused with actor [Author: Brian Cox].
Brian Edward Cox, OBE (born 3 March 1968) is a British particle physicist, a Royal Society University Research Fellow, PPARC Advanced Fellow and Professor at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester, and works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. He is working on the R&D project of the FP420 experiment in an international collaboration to upgrade the ATLAS and the CMS experiment by installing additional, smaller detectors at a distance of 420 metres from the interaction points of the main experiments.
He is best known to the public as the presenter of a number of science programmes for the BBC, boosting the popularity of subjects such as astronomy; so is a science popularizer, and science communicator. He also had some fame in the 1990s as the keyboard player for the pop band D:Ream.
Brian Edward Cox, OBE (born 3 March 1968) is a British particle physicist, a Royal Society University Research Fellow, PPARC Advanced Fellow and Professor at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester, and works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. He is working on the R&D project of the FP420 experiment in an international collaboration to upgrade the ATLAS and the CMS experiment by installing additional, smaller detectors at a distance of 420 metres from the interaction points of the main experiments.
He is best known to the public as the presenter of a number of science programmes for the BBC, boosting the popularity of subjects such as astronomy; so is a science popularizer, and science communicator. He also had some fame in the 1990s as the keyboard player for the pop band D:Ream.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 123 reviews
November 14, 2020
Ever wanted to jump the spaceship and go explore? This book is a decent second to it.
So very much fun info about the dark matter, black holes, giant stars, time and space and just how convoluted they are. etc.
We even seem to have our very special very personal time machine: light itself!
Q: Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines of our planet to other worlds that orbit the Sun without ever dreaming of spacecraft. To look up is to look back in time, because the ancient beams of light are messengers from the Universe's distant past. (c)
Stunning imagery. Physics made understandable for a layperson.
Very coherent explanations. The intricacies of enropy. The space and time travelogue!
Q:
Standing on the shoulders of giants, we peer into the darkness with eyes opened not in fear but in wonder. (c)
Q:
The last remaining matter in the universe will reside within black dwarves. We can predict how they will end their days. The last matter of the universe will evaporate away and be carried off into the void as radiation leaving absolutely nothing behind. There won’t be a single atom left; all that’s left will be particles of light and black holes. After an unimaginable period even the black holes will have evaporated; the universe will be nothing but a sea of photons gradually tending to the same temperature as the expansion of the universe cools them towards absolute zero. The story of the universe will come to an end. For the first time in its life the universe will be permanent and unchanging. Entropy will finally stop increasing because the cosmos cannot get any more disordered. Nothing happens and it keeps not happening for ever. There is no difference between past present and future, nothing changes, arrow of time has simply ceased to exist. It is an inescapable fact written into the laws of physics that entire cosmos will die; all the stars will go out extinguishing possibility of life in the universe. (c) Mindblowing! Or is it dwarfblowing?
So very much fun info about the dark matter, black holes, giant stars, time and space and just how convoluted they are. etc.
We even seem to have our very special very personal time machine: light itself!
Q: Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines of our planet to other worlds that orbit the Sun without ever dreaming of spacecraft. To look up is to look back in time, because the ancient beams of light are messengers from the Universe's distant past. (c)
Stunning imagery. Physics made understandable for a layperson.
Very coherent explanations. The intricacies of enropy. The space and time travelogue!
Q:
Standing on the shoulders of giants, we peer into the darkness with eyes opened not in fear but in wonder. (c)
Q:
The last remaining matter in the universe will reside within black dwarves. We can predict how they will end their days. The last matter of the universe will evaporate away and be carried off into the void as radiation leaving absolutely nothing behind. There won’t be a single atom left; all that’s left will be particles of light and black holes. After an unimaginable period even the black holes will have evaporated; the universe will be nothing but a sea of photons gradually tending to the same temperature as the expansion of the universe cools them towards absolute zero. The story of the universe will come to an end. For the first time in its life the universe will be permanent and unchanging. Entropy will finally stop increasing because the cosmos cannot get any more disordered. Nothing happens and it keeps not happening for ever. There is no difference between past present and future, nothing changes, arrow of time has simply ceased to exist. It is an inescapable fact written into the laws of physics that entire cosmos will die; all the stars will go out extinguishing possibility of life in the universe. (c) Mindblowing! Or is it dwarfblowing?
August 26, 2011
Having watched the four part TV series, I was delighted to acquire the accompanying book which is in four parts, matching the TV series. Professor Cox has a way of explaining the complex in the most simple of terms and I loved every moment of my read. I learned more from this one book regarding the universe than from anything else I have read. I began to understand entropy which I never thought I would. And the photos are stunning. Not only does it cover the beginning, progression and the current development of everything in the known universe, it also predicts the future. "...our understanding of fundamental physics allows us to make concrete predictions about how they will end their days." And he is talking of the ultimate destiny of the universe in about '10 to the power of 100' years - and as he says, that is a big number. To me, that is the biblical equivalent of sound prophecy - based on science. Thus, although believers in gods may not like it, as this accurately covers all known space/time, past, present and future, to me it is the ultimate Bible - and science is God and people like Cox are his prophets. My all time favourite learning experience, coupled with Dawkins' 'Greatest Show on Earth' through which I gained a similarly satisfying understanding of evolution.
January 30, 2013
The layout of this book is perfect for the individual with a fleeting attention span (e.g., me): there are lots of pictures, not to mention the occasional page that contains no more text than a single, giant-font sentence. These little "coffee breaks" are properly spaced to ensure that, any time my mind is about to start wandering, I get to flip a few pages in rapid succession and feel like I'm still making good progress.
That being said, the information provided here is excellent. (And the pictures sure are purdy, too!) My favorite sections were "Stardust" and "Falling," because they deal with things like the nuts-and-bolts workings of stars and the effects of gravity in (literally) shaping our universe.
I was less pleased with the final chapter ("Destiny"), either because I'd reached my threshold for being able to pay attention to non-fiction writing at that point or because I just couldn't stop thinking about the comic books I knew I'd be reading as soon as I was done.
In any case, this is a great book for anyone with even the slightest interest in how our universe works--Brian Cox does a great job (as he did with the more advanced Why Does E=mc²?) of dumbing things down for the casual reader without treating us like outright idiots.
Oh, and if you're into this sorta thing, I'd also recommend checking out the TV series How the Universe Works, with Mike Rowe. You can find it on Netflix streaming (or, at least, you could at one time), and it's positively excellent.
That being said, the information provided here is excellent. (And the pictures sure are purdy, too!) My favorite sections were "Stardust" and "Falling," because they deal with things like the nuts-and-bolts workings of stars and the effects of gravity in (literally) shaping our universe.
I was less pleased with the final chapter ("Destiny"), either because I'd reached my threshold for being able to pay attention to non-fiction writing at that point or because I just couldn't stop thinking about the comic books I knew I'd be reading as soon as I was done.
In any case, this is a great book for anyone with even the slightest interest in how our universe works--Brian Cox does a great job (as he did with the more advanced Why Does E=mc²?) of dumbing things down for the casual reader without treating us like outright idiots.
Oh, and if you're into this sorta thing, I'd also recommend checking out the TV series How the Universe Works, with Mike Rowe. You can find it on Netflix streaming (or, at least, you could at one time), and it's positively excellent.
August 17, 2012
If you enjoyed the show, you will enjoy the book. If you haven't seen the show, you might still enjoy the book, but you might also wonder why there are so many darkly vignetted photos of the sillouete of the author standing with his back turned to the camera, looking at stuff. It is a little cheesy, I admit, but I didn't mind it because Cox really does seem almost giddy about the universe. To him, everything is Awesome, Incredible, Inspiring, Beautiful, etc. At times his giddy enthusiam almost made me chuckle, and I'm almost positive that the "pale blue dot" photo and the Hubble deep field photo were "The most important photo mankind has ever witnessed. Ever."
That he seems to go overboard from time to time doesn't distract from the overall quality of the book, which is fantastic. It really is well written, the photographs are beautiful, and the drawings and diagrams are so cool they would look good hanging on the wall. Somebody with a real sense of design put them together with a simplistic, alsmot retro pop feel to them.
The book was a fun read. Now that I'm finished I will probably go back and read it again sometime, and I can definitely wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody who has even a passing interest in the universe.
That he seems to go overboard from time to time doesn't distract from the overall quality of the book, which is fantastic. It really is well written, the photographs are beautiful, and the drawings and diagrams are so cool they would look good hanging on the wall. Somebody with a real sense of design put them together with a simplistic, alsmot retro pop feel to them.
The book was a fun read. Now that I'm finished I will probably go back and read it again sometime, and I can definitely wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody who has even a passing interest in the universe.
June 21, 2019
Another complex issue/topic made to sound simple and very interesting by Brian Cox, another book that really expands your own knowledge, very very interestin all the way through the book, well presented, I am impressed with the book cover, no editorial issues, this books main target audience will be people use to love the UK TV program Sky at night, students studying the universe. It really is an amazing gathering of information, translated into a very easy to read format. Cannot falut the book at all.
October 10, 2012
one of the best book on cosmology I have ever read. Young British professor Brian Cox explaines the most complex and mysterious things such as the Big Bang Itself in a very simple language, sometimes even using highscool physics course experiments as an illustration. The book is beautifully illustrated.
August 31, 2015
If you want to read only one book about the universe, this is the book you should read! It is written in great style pooling all science has learnt about the universe till date. There are also excellent colour pictures to go with the chapters.
August 12, 2012
How many times can one person get their face in one book!?
April 12, 2017
What a Delightful Book
December 18, 2013
Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 103-4 | Added on Monday, December 02, 2013, 02:21 PM
On Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 passed into the darkness behind the Moon, and Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders became the first humans in history to lose sight of Earth.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 126-27 | Added on Monday, December 02, 2013, 02:25 PM
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in. —G.K. Chesterton
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 201-2 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:40 PM
Galaxies such as the spiral-shaped Dwingeloo 1 have recently been found hidden behind the Milky Way. This discovery supports what we already know: that there are many more wonders out there in the Universe that we have yet to discover.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 213-16 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:43 PM
The spectacular remains and towering pillars of Karnak Temple are a testament to the Egyptian belief in the power and importance of the Amun-Re, the Sun God, in their daily life, and of the Sun itself. Karnak Temple, home of Amun-Re, universal god, stands facing the Valley of the Kings across the Nile in the city of Luxor.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 225-27 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:44 PM
Egyptian religious mythology is rich and complex. With almost 1,500 known deities, countless temples and tombs and a detailed surviving literature, the mythology of the great civilisation of the Nile is considered the most sophisticated religious system ever devised.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 236-39 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:45 PM
The original mound of earth is the god Tatenen, meaning ‘risen land’ (he also represented the fertile land that emerged from the Nile floods), while the lotus flower is the god Nefertem, the god of perfumes. Most important is the Sun God, born of the lotus blossom, who took on many forms but remained central to Egyptian religious thought for over 3,000 years. It was the Sun God who brought light to the cosmos, and with light came all of creation.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 249-50 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:45 PM
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Amun is referred to as the ‘eldest of the gods of the eastern sky’, symbolising his emergence as the solar deity at sunrise.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 256-59 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:46 PM
The Great Hypostyle Hall, the dominant feature of the temple, is aligned such that on 21 December, the winter solstice and shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere, the disc of the Sun rises between the great pillars and floods the space with light, which comes from a position directly over a small building inside which Amun-Re himself was thought to reside.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 271-72 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:46 PM
a temple the size of Karnak will always be aligned with something in the sky, simply because it has buildings that point in all directions!
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 277-79 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:47 PM
It seems clear therefore that the columns are positioned and decorated to mark the compass directions around the temple, which is persuasive evidence that the heart of this building is aligned to capture the light from an important celestial event – the rising of the Sun in midwinter.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 312-13 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:51 PM
This is because we now think that around 95 per cent of the mass of galaxies such as our own Milky Way is made up of dark matter.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 323 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:51 PM
Geoffrey Chaucer: ‘See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë, Which men clepeth the Milky Wey, For hit is whyt.’
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 325-27 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:52 PM
M87, also known as Virgo A and Messier 87, is a giant elliptical galaxy located 54 million light years away from Earth in the Virgo Cluster. In this image the central jet is visible, which is a powerful beam of hot gas produced by a massive black hole in the core of the galaxy.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 331-33 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:52 PM
Taken in December 2010, this is the most detailed picture of the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, taken so far. It is our largest and closest spiral galaxy, and in this picture we can clearly see rings of new star formations developing.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 337-39 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:53 PM
Zwicky 18 was once thought to be the youngest galaxy, as its bright stars suggested it was only 500 million years old. However, recent Hubble Space Telescope images have identified older stars within it, making the galaxy as old as others but with new star formations.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 340-42 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:55 PM
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars, depending on the number of faint dwarf stars that are difficult for us to detect. The majority of stars lie in a disc around 100,000 light years in diameter and, on average, around 1,000 light years thick.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 346-49 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:56 PM
At the centre of our galaxy, and possibly every galaxy in the Universe, there is believed to be a super-massive black hole. Astronomers believe this because of precise measurements of the orbit of a star known as S2. This star orbits around the intense source of radio waves known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced ‘Sagittarius A-star’) that sits at the galactic centre. S2’s orbital period is just over fifteen years, which makes it the fastest-known orbiting object, reaching speeds of up to 2 per cent of the speed of light.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 353-54 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:57 PM
The only known way of cramming 4.1 million times the mass of the Sun into a space less than 17 light hours across is as a black hole, which is why astronomers are so confident that a giant black hole sits at the centre of the Milky Way.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 359-60 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:57 PM
The Quintuplet Cluster contains one of the most luminous stars in our galaxy, the Pistol Star, which is thought to be near the end of its life and on the verge of becoming a supernova
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 372-74 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:58 PM
In 2007, scientists using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile were able to observe a star in the Galactic Halo that is thought to be the oldest object in the Milky Way. HE 1523-0901 is a star in the last stages of its life; known as a red giant, it is a vast structure far bigger than our sun, but much cooler at its surface. HE 1523-0901 is
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 377-79 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:59 PM
This is why the detection of five radioactive elements in the light from HE 1523-0901 was so important. This dying star turns out to be 13.2 billion years old – that’s almost as old
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 384-86 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:02 PM
Until very recently, it was thought that our galaxy contained only four spiral arms – Perseus, Norma, Scutum–Centaurus and Carina–Sagittarius, with our sun in an off shoot of the latter called the Orion spur – but there is now thought to be an additional arm, called the Outer arm, an extension to the Norma arm.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 387-88 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:06 PM
The Sun was once thought to be an average star, but we now know that it shines brighter than 95 per cent of all other stars in the Milky Way.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 389-90 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:06 PM
Every second, the Sun burns 600 million tonnes of hydrogen in its core, producing 596 million tonnes of helium in the fusion reaction.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 390 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:06 PM
The missing four million tonnes of mass emerges as energy, which slowly travels to the Sun’s photosphere,
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 389-91 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:07 PM
Every second, the Sun burns 600 million tonnes of hydrogen in its core, producing 596 million tonnes of helium in the fusion reaction. The missing four million tonnes of mass emerges as energy, which slowly travels to the Sun’s photosphere, where it is released into the galaxy and across the Universe as light.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 400-401 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:07 PM
The Lagoon Nebula is one such star nursery; within this giant interstellar cloud of gas and dust, new stars are created.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 405-6 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:08 PM
Herschel 36. This star is thought to be a ‘ZAMS’ star (zero ago main sequence) because it has just begun to produce the dominant part of its energy from hydrogen fusion in its core.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 408-10 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:08 PM
Eta Carinae is a pair of billowing gas and dust clouds that are the remnants of a stellar explosion from an unstable star system. The system consists of at least two giant stars, and shines with a brightness four million times that of our sun. One of these stars is thought to be a Wolf-Rayet star.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 412 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:08 PM
In 1843, Eta Carinae became one of the brightest stars in the Universe when it exploded.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 441-42 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:13 PM
or ‘corpuscles’, as he called them in his Hypothesis of Light, published in 1675.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 444-45 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:13 PM
Leonhard Euler, who felt that the phenomena of diffraction could only be explained by a wave theory.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 445-46 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:13 PM
In 1801, the English doctor Thomas Young appeared to settle the matter once and for all when he reported the results from his famous double-slit experiment, which clearly showed that light diffracted, and therefore must travel in the form of a wave.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 465-67 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:16 PM
Michael Faraday was busy doing what scientists do best – playing around with wire and magnets. He discovered that if you push a magnet through a coil of wire, an electric current flows through the wire while the magnet is moving.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 470-72 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:17 PM
Ampère discovered that two parallel wires carrying electric currents experience a force between them; this force is still used today to define the ampere, or amp – the unit of electric current. A single amp is defined as the current that must flow along two parallel wires of infinite length and negligible diameter to produce an attractive force of 0.0000007 Newtons between them.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 476-78 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:17 PM
Maxwell, who, in a series of papers in 1861 and 1862, developed a single theory of electricity and magnetism that was able to explain all of the experimental work of Faraday, Ampère and others. But Maxwell’s crowning glory came in 1864, when he published a paper that is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements in the history of science.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 481-82 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:18 PM
Electricity and magnetism can be unified by introducing two new concepts: electric and magnetic fields. The idea of a field is central to modern physics;
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 494-97 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:19 PM
Where c is the speed of light and the quantities μ0 and ε0 are related to the strengths of electric and magnetic fields. The fact that the velocity of light can be measured experimentally on a bench top with wires and magnets was the key piece of evidence that light is an electromagnetic wave.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 507-10 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:26 PM
Maxwell’s equations also predict exactly how fast these waves must fly away from the electric charges that create them. The speed of the waves is the ratio of the strengths of the electric and magnetic fields – quantities that had been measured by Faraday, Ampère and others and were well known to Maxwell. When Maxwell did the sums, he must have fallen off his chair. He found that his equations predicted that the waves in the electric and magnetic fields travelled at the speed of light!
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 513 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:26 PM
In modern language, we would say that light is an electromagnetic wave.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 515 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:26 PM
it had first been measured by Ole Romer in 1676.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 521-24 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:29 PM
Empedocles and Galileo, separated by almost two millennia, felt that light must travel at a finite, if extremely high, velocity. Empedocles’s reasoning was elegant, pre-dating Aristotle by a century. He considered light travelling across the vast distance from the Sun to Earth, and noted that everything that travels must move from one point to another.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 527-30 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:29 PM
Galileo set out to measure the speed of light using two lamps. He held one and sent an assistant a large distance away with another. When they were in position, Galileo opened a shutter on his lamp, letting the light out. When his assistant saw the flash, he opened his shutter, and Galileo attempted to note down the time delay between the opening of his shutter and his observation of the flash from his assistant’s lamp. His conclusion was that light must travel extremely rapidly, because he was unable to determine its speed.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 548-50 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:31 PM
The point at which the Sun crosses the Meridian is also the point at which it reaches its highest position in the sky on any given day as it journeys from sunrise in the east to sunset in the west. We call this time noon, or midday.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 551-53 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:31 PM
to determine your longitude, set a clock to read 12 o’clock when the Sun reaches the highest point in the sky at Greenwich. If it reads 2pm when the Sun reaches its highest point in the sky where you are, you are thirty degrees to the west of Greenwich.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 560-61 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:36 PM
Galileo, having discovered the moons of Jupiter, was convinced he could use the orbits of these moons as a clock,
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 573-74 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:37 PM
1671, Romer and Picard observed over one hundred of Io’s eclipses, noting the times and intervals between each.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 579-81 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:38 PM
These sketches (published in Istoria e Dimonstrazione in 1613) show the changing position of the moons of Jupiter over 12 days. Jupiter is represented by the large circle, with the four moons as dots on either side.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 589-91 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:38 PM
Romer’s genius was to realise that this pattern implied there was nothing wrong with the clockwork of Jupiter and Io, because the error depended on the distance between Earth and Jupiter and had nothing to do with Io itself.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 594-95 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:40 PM
Factor in the time it takes light to travel between Jupiter and Earth and the theory works. Romer did this by trial and error, and was able to correctly account for the shifting times of the observed eclipses.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 598-99 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:41 PM
He simply stated that it takes light twenty-two minutes to cross the diameter of Earth’s orbit.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 600-601 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:41 PM
In his ‘Treatise sur la lumière’ (1678), Huygens quotes a speed in strange units as 110 million toises per second. Since a toise is two metres (seven feet), this gives a speed of 220,000,000 metres per second, which is not far off the modern value of 299,792,458
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 631-32 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:43 PM
the sound barrier was not breached until 14 October 1947, when Chuck Yeager became the first human to pilot a supersonic flight. Flying in the Bell–XS1,
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 663-64 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:59 PM
In Einstein’s theory, anything that has no mass is compelled to travel at the special speed through space. Conversely, anything that has mass is compelled to travel slower than this speed.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 694-96 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 02:02 PM
At the very edge of the Solar System, the round-trip travel time for radio signals sent and received by Voyager 1 on its journey into interstellar space is currently thirty-one hours, fifty-two minutes and twenty-two seconds, as of September 2010.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 702-4 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 02:05 PM
Great Rift Valley was such a place. We arrived in Tanzania on 10 May 2010 for the first day of filming. After a brief overnight stay close to the airport at Kilimanjaro, we were driven out into the Serengeti
- Highlight Loc. 103-4 | Added on Monday, December 02, 2013, 02:21 PM
On Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 passed into the darkness behind the Moon, and Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders became the first humans in history to lose sight of Earth.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 126-27 | Added on Monday, December 02, 2013, 02:25 PM
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in. —G.K. Chesterton
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 201-2 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:40 PM
Galaxies such as the spiral-shaped Dwingeloo 1 have recently been found hidden behind the Milky Way. This discovery supports what we already know: that there are many more wonders out there in the Universe that we have yet to discover.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 213-16 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:43 PM
The spectacular remains and towering pillars of Karnak Temple are a testament to the Egyptian belief in the power and importance of the Amun-Re, the Sun God, in their daily life, and of the Sun itself. Karnak Temple, home of Amun-Re, universal god, stands facing the Valley of the Kings across the Nile in the city of Luxor.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 225-27 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:44 PM
Egyptian religious mythology is rich and complex. With almost 1,500 known deities, countless temples and tombs and a detailed surviving literature, the mythology of the great civilisation of the Nile is considered the most sophisticated religious system ever devised.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 236-39 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:45 PM
The original mound of earth is the god Tatenen, meaning ‘risen land’ (he also represented the fertile land that emerged from the Nile floods), while the lotus flower is the god Nefertem, the god of perfumes. Most important is the Sun God, born of the lotus blossom, who took on many forms but remained central to Egyptian religious thought for over 3,000 years. It was the Sun God who brought light to the cosmos, and with light came all of creation.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 249-50 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:45 PM
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Amun is referred to as the ‘eldest of the gods of the eastern sky’, symbolising his emergence as the solar deity at sunrise.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 256-59 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:46 PM
The Great Hypostyle Hall, the dominant feature of the temple, is aligned such that on 21 December, the winter solstice and shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere, the disc of the Sun rises between the great pillars and floods the space with light, which comes from a position directly over a small building inside which Amun-Re himself was thought to reside.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 271-72 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:46 PM
a temple the size of Karnak will always be aligned with something in the sky, simply because it has buildings that point in all directions!
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 277-79 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:47 PM
It seems clear therefore that the columns are positioned and decorated to mark the compass directions around the temple, which is persuasive evidence that the heart of this building is aligned to capture the light from an important celestial event – the rising of the Sun in midwinter.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 312-13 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:51 PM
This is because we now think that around 95 per cent of the mass of galaxies such as our own Milky Way is made up of dark matter.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 323 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:51 PM
Geoffrey Chaucer: ‘See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë, Which men clepeth the Milky Wey, For hit is whyt.’
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 325-27 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:52 PM
M87, also known as Virgo A and Messier 87, is a giant elliptical galaxy located 54 million light years away from Earth in the Virgo Cluster. In this image the central jet is visible, which is a powerful beam of hot gas produced by a massive black hole in the core of the galaxy.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 331-33 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:52 PM
Taken in December 2010, this is the most detailed picture of the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, taken so far. It is our largest and closest spiral galaxy, and in this picture we can clearly see rings of new star formations developing.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 337-39 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:53 PM
Zwicky 18 was once thought to be the youngest galaxy, as its bright stars suggested it was only 500 million years old. However, recent Hubble Space Telescope images have identified older stars within it, making the galaxy as old as others but with new star formations.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 340-42 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:55 PM
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars, depending on the number of faint dwarf stars that are difficult for us to detect. The majority of stars lie in a disc around 100,000 light years in diameter and, on average, around 1,000 light years thick.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 346-49 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:56 PM
At the centre of our galaxy, and possibly every galaxy in the Universe, there is believed to be a super-massive black hole. Astronomers believe this because of precise measurements of the orbit of a star known as S2. This star orbits around the intense source of radio waves known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced ‘Sagittarius A-star’) that sits at the galactic centre. S2’s orbital period is just over fifteen years, which makes it the fastest-known orbiting object, reaching speeds of up to 2 per cent of the speed of light.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 353-54 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:57 PM
The only known way of cramming 4.1 million times the mass of the Sun into a space less than 17 light hours across is as a black hole, which is why astronomers are so confident that a giant black hole sits at the centre of the Milky Way.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 359-60 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:57 PM
The Quintuplet Cluster contains one of the most luminous stars in our galaxy, the Pistol Star, which is thought to be near the end of its life and on the verge of becoming a supernova
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 372-74 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:58 PM
In 2007, scientists using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile were able to observe a star in the Galactic Halo that is thought to be the oldest object in the Milky Way. HE 1523-0901 is a star in the last stages of its life; known as a red giant, it is a vast structure far bigger than our sun, but much cooler at its surface. HE 1523-0901 is
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 377-79 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 12:59 PM
This is why the detection of five radioactive elements in the light from HE 1523-0901 was so important. This dying star turns out to be 13.2 billion years old – that’s almost as old
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 384-86 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:02 PM
Until very recently, it was thought that our galaxy contained only four spiral arms – Perseus, Norma, Scutum–Centaurus and Carina–Sagittarius, with our sun in an off shoot of the latter called the Orion spur – but there is now thought to be an additional arm, called the Outer arm, an extension to the Norma arm.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 387-88 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:06 PM
The Sun was once thought to be an average star, but we now know that it shines brighter than 95 per cent of all other stars in the Milky Way.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 389-90 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:06 PM
Every second, the Sun burns 600 million tonnes of hydrogen in its core, producing 596 million tonnes of helium in the fusion reaction.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 390 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:06 PM
The missing four million tonnes of mass emerges as energy, which slowly travels to the Sun’s photosphere,
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 389-91 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:07 PM
Every second, the Sun burns 600 million tonnes of hydrogen in its core, producing 596 million tonnes of helium in the fusion reaction. The missing four million tonnes of mass emerges as energy, which slowly travels to the Sun’s photosphere, where it is released into the galaxy and across the Universe as light.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 400-401 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:07 PM
The Lagoon Nebula is one such star nursery; within this giant interstellar cloud of gas and dust, new stars are created.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 405-6 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:08 PM
Herschel 36. This star is thought to be a ‘ZAMS’ star (zero ago main sequence) because it has just begun to produce the dominant part of its energy from hydrogen fusion in its core.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 408-10 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:08 PM
Eta Carinae is a pair of billowing gas and dust clouds that are the remnants of a stellar explosion from an unstable star system. The system consists of at least two giant stars, and shines with a brightness four million times that of our sun. One of these stars is thought to be a Wolf-Rayet star.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 412 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:08 PM
In 1843, Eta Carinae became one of the brightest stars in the Universe when it exploded.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 441-42 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:13 PM
or ‘corpuscles’, as he called them in his Hypothesis of Light, published in 1675.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 444-45 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:13 PM
Leonhard Euler, who felt that the phenomena of diffraction could only be explained by a wave theory.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 445-46 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:13 PM
In 1801, the English doctor Thomas Young appeared to settle the matter once and for all when he reported the results from his famous double-slit experiment, which clearly showed that light diffracted, and therefore must travel in the form of a wave.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 465-67 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:16 PM
Michael Faraday was busy doing what scientists do best – playing around with wire and magnets. He discovered that if you push a magnet through a coil of wire, an electric current flows through the wire while the magnet is moving.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 470-72 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:17 PM
Ampère discovered that two parallel wires carrying electric currents experience a force between them; this force is still used today to define the ampere, or amp – the unit of electric current. A single amp is defined as the current that must flow along two parallel wires of infinite length and negligible diameter to produce an attractive force of 0.0000007 Newtons between them.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 476-78 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:17 PM
Maxwell, who, in a series of papers in 1861 and 1862, developed a single theory of electricity and magnetism that was able to explain all of the experimental work of Faraday, Ampère and others. But Maxwell’s crowning glory came in 1864, when he published a paper that is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements in the history of science.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 481-82 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:18 PM
Electricity and magnetism can be unified by introducing two new concepts: electric and magnetic fields. The idea of a field is central to modern physics;
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 494-97 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:19 PM
Where c is the speed of light and the quantities μ0 and ε0 are related to the strengths of electric and magnetic fields. The fact that the velocity of light can be measured experimentally on a bench top with wires and magnets was the key piece of evidence that light is an electromagnetic wave.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 507-10 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:26 PM
Maxwell’s equations also predict exactly how fast these waves must fly away from the electric charges that create them. The speed of the waves is the ratio of the strengths of the electric and magnetic fields – quantities that had been measured by Faraday, Ampère and others and were well known to Maxwell. When Maxwell did the sums, he must have fallen off his chair. He found that his equations predicted that the waves in the electric and magnetic fields travelled at the speed of light!
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 513 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:26 PM
In modern language, we would say that light is an electromagnetic wave.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 515 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:26 PM
it had first been measured by Ole Romer in 1676.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 521-24 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:29 PM
Empedocles and Galileo, separated by almost two millennia, felt that light must travel at a finite, if extremely high, velocity. Empedocles’s reasoning was elegant, pre-dating Aristotle by a century. He considered light travelling across the vast distance from the Sun to Earth, and noted that everything that travels must move from one point to another.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 527-30 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:29 PM
Galileo set out to measure the speed of light using two lamps. He held one and sent an assistant a large distance away with another. When they were in position, Galileo opened a shutter on his lamp, letting the light out. When his assistant saw the flash, he opened his shutter, and Galileo attempted to note down the time delay between the opening of his shutter and his observation of the flash from his assistant’s lamp. His conclusion was that light must travel extremely rapidly, because he was unable to determine its speed.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 548-50 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:31 PM
The point at which the Sun crosses the Meridian is also the point at which it reaches its highest position in the sky on any given day as it journeys from sunrise in the east to sunset in the west. We call this time noon, or midday.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 551-53 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:31 PM
to determine your longitude, set a clock to read 12 o’clock when the Sun reaches the highest point in the sky at Greenwich. If it reads 2pm when the Sun reaches its highest point in the sky where you are, you are thirty degrees to the west of Greenwich.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 560-61 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:36 PM
Galileo, having discovered the moons of Jupiter, was convinced he could use the orbits of these moons as a clock,
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 573-74 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:37 PM
1671, Romer and Picard observed over one hundred of Io’s eclipses, noting the times and intervals between each.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 579-81 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:38 PM
These sketches (published in Istoria e Dimonstrazione in 1613) show the changing position of the moons of Jupiter over 12 days. Jupiter is represented by the large circle, with the four moons as dots on either side.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 589-91 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:38 PM
Romer’s genius was to realise that this pattern implied there was nothing wrong with the clockwork of Jupiter and Io, because the error depended on the distance between Earth and Jupiter and had nothing to do with Io itself.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 594-95 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:40 PM
Factor in the time it takes light to travel between Jupiter and Earth and the theory works. Romer did this by trial and error, and was able to correctly account for the shifting times of the observed eclipses.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 598-99 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:41 PM
He simply stated that it takes light twenty-two minutes to cross the diameter of Earth’s orbit.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 600-601 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:41 PM
In his ‘Treatise sur la lumière’ (1678), Huygens quotes a speed in strange units as 110 million toises per second. Since a toise is two metres (seven feet), this gives a speed of 220,000,000 metres per second, which is not far off the modern value of 299,792,458
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 631-32 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:43 PM
the sound barrier was not breached until 14 October 1947, when Chuck Yeager became the first human to pilot a supersonic flight. Flying in the Bell–XS1,
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 663-64 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 01:59 PM
In Einstein’s theory, anything that has no mass is compelled to travel at the special speed through space. Conversely, anything that has mass is compelled to travel slower than this speed.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 694-96 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 02:02 PM
At the very edge of the Solar System, the round-trip travel time for radio signals sent and received by Voyager 1 on its journey into interstellar space is currently thirty-one hours, fifty-two minutes and twenty-two seconds, as of September 2010.
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Wonders of the Universe (Brian Cox)
- Highlight Loc. 702-4 | Added on Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 02:05 PM
Great Rift Valley was such a place. We arrived in Tanzania on 10 May 2010 for the first day of filming. After a brief overnight stay close to the airport at Kilimanjaro, we were driven out into the Serengeti
February 7, 2020
For someone who is by no means an expert in astronomy this is an excellent book for someone who wishes to learn more about the space that surrounds them. As we look into the skies we see a vast open vacuum, or so it seems. Cox does a brilliant job of describing the beauty and complexity that is up there in a non esoteric way appealing to the everyday reader. He also contrasts the principles of physics with not just phenomena related to space exclusively but touches the surface of phenomena on earth that we can observe with the naked eye which was extraordinary. One of these being the way light rays cause rainbows when they penetrate through water molecules in the atmosphere. This was the first book I have ever read on the universe and to this day much of what Cox describes remains. The great mysteries of the universe are unlocked in this bestseller. A must read to all. We cannot remain in ignorance on our existence.
January 1, 2018
Engaging and accessible, this is a pretty good introduction to the past present and future of our universe. It’s a tie in with a BBC tv show (which I have not seen) and this fact distorts the book in odd ways. For tv the author needed to make sure he had interesting images of places around the earth so that viewers had pretty things to look at. This may have made sense for tv, but these bits feel a little forced into the book. On the other hand, this book is packed with gorgeous pictures of space. There is a lot to see and to read and Wonders of the Universe is worth your time if the subject interest you (and how could it not interest you?)
November 12, 2024
A wonderfully written book that was very approachable for someone who had little interest in science and little scientific knowledge prior. Very well explained though Cox does have the tendency to ramble on about insignificant details sometimes. I also found the sequence of topics chosen to be a little incoherent and jumpy at times. I wish there was a more logical structure but perhaps this is meant more like one of those "pick up at any page" books that I've seen in places. The last 5 pages give me chills....
8/10
8/10
June 29, 2024
Astonishing... It's the only way I felt. Dr. Cox my hero restated the most significant message from Dr. Sagan the GOAT ~ Astronomy is humbling and charecter building experience. Our time is precious and fleeting, we shall make most use of it to pave way for future generations ♥️
January 3, 2021
A really good book. This is my second read of this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it (again). It leaves a sense of awe and wonderment. It addresses time on an unimaginable scale and the fundamental laws of physics. A real pleasure to read such an accessible book about the universe. The subject matter intrigues me and makes me want to know more.
May 7, 2012
Wonders of the Universe by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen
"Wonders of the Universe " is the wonderful book that enthusiastically explains the universe by examining the laws of physics here on Earth. What sets this book apart is Professor Cox's innate ability to make the wonders of the universe accessible to the masses and fun to learn. Well known physicist and science celebrity Brian Cox uses the latest in scientific understanding and creative analogies to teach us about our universe. This enlightening 245-page book is composed of the following four chapters: 1. Messengers, 2. Stardust, 3. Falling, and 4. Destiny.
Positives:
1. The innate ability to make science accessible and fun for the masses.
2. Fascinating and ambitious topic in the hands of a master educator.
3. Great use of charts and illustrations to assist the reader. This book is full of awe-inspiring photos.
4. A great explanation of the Big Bang Theory...Bazinga, I'm sorry I couldn't contain myself.
5. Just a great educational tool. Professor Cox uses very creative and practical analogies top explain how the universe works. His boyish enthusiasm is also contagious.
6. Full of fun factoids throughout the book. "We are seeing the sun as it was eight minutes in the past".
7. Physics has never been more fun. This is the kind of book you can give to any layperson to learn about the laws of physics and how it applies: light, sound, speed, heat, etc...
8. The fascinating world of astronomy. Stars, supernovae, black holes, nebulas, oh my...
9. This is an ambitious book that covers so much in less than 250 pages yet does it so well.
10. Great use of converging sciences to explain the universe: chemistry, biology, geology, etc...
11. Many great discoveries and their applications.
12. The four fundamental forces of nature.
13. A great explanation of our understanding of the structure of matter.
14. Fission versus fusion.
15. A fantastic explanation on gravity.
16. Professor Cox takes us on a journey of some of the most unique sites of our planet in order to explain interesting topics of physics.
17. Time like you've never seen before.
18. Laws of thermodynamics.
19. The life cycle of stars. The future of our universe.
20. If you liked the series (can get on DVD) you will love the book.
Negatives:
1. The kindle version suffers from some formatting issues that I understand are being corrected.
2. The book tends to repeat some facts. The number of stars in our galaxy comes to mind.
3. This book is intended for the masses so those in the field will find it quite basic.
4. No formal bibliography or notes section.
In summary, I really enjoyed this book. It's a kind of love affair that I have for science. It's accessible, covers a lot of territory, educational and it's just plain fun to read. The book is full of illustrations and clever analogies that help readers get a grasp of what otherwise are complex concepts. If you are looking for an ambitious yet introductory book on physics, this is the perfect gift. I loved the book and highly recommend it!
Recommendations: "Space Chronicles" by Neil deGrasse Tyson, " About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang" by Adam Frank, "Death From The Skies" by Philip Plait, "Physics of the Future" by Michio Kaku, "A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, "The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking, "The Age of Everything" by Mathew Hedman, and "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan.
"Wonders of the Universe " is the wonderful book that enthusiastically explains the universe by examining the laws of physics here on Earth. What sets this book apart is Professor Cox's innate ability to make the wonders of the universe accessible to the masses and fun to learn. Well known physicist and science celebrity Brian Cox uses the latest in scientific understanding and creative analogies to teach us about our universe. This enlightening 245-page book is composed of the following four chapters: 1. Messengers, 2. Stardust, 3. Falling, and 4. Destiny.
Positives:
1. The innate ability to make science accessible and fun for the masses.
2. Fascinating and ambitious topic in the hands of a master educator.
3. Great use of charts and illustrations to assist the reader. This book is full of awe-inspiring photos.
4. A great explanation of the Big Bang Theory...Bazinga, I'm sorry I couldn't contain myself.
5. Just a great educational tool. Professor Cox uses very creative and practical analogies top explain how the universe works. His boyish enthusiasm is also contagious.
6. Full of fun factoids throughout the book. "We are seeing the sun as it was eight minutes in the past".
7. Physics has never been more fun. This is the kind of book you can give to any layperson to learn about the laws of physics and how it applies: light, sound, speed, heat, etc...
8. The fascinating world of astronomy. Stars, supernovae, black holes, nebulas, oh my...
9. This is an ambitious book that covers so much in less than 250 pages yet does it so well.
10. Great use of converging sciences to explain the universe: chemistry, biology, geology, etc...
11. Many great discoveries and their applications.
12. The four fundamental forces of nature.
13. A great explanation of our understanding of the structure of matter.
14. Fission versus fusion.
15. A fantastic explanation on gravity.
16. Professor Cox takes us on a journey of some of the most unique sites of our planet in order to explain interesting topics of physics.
17. Time like you've never seen before.
18. Laws of thermodynamics.
19. The life cycle of stars. The future of our universe.
20. If you liked the series (can get on DVD) you will love the book.
Negatives:
1. The kindle version suffers from some formatting issues that I understand are being corrected.
2. The book tends to repeat some facts. The number of stars in our galaxy comes to mind.
3. This book is intended for the masses so those in the field will find it quite basic.
4. No formal bibliography or notes section.
In summary, I really enjoyed this book. It's a kind of love affair that I have for science. It's accessible, covers a lot of territory, educational and it's just plain fun to read. The book is full of illustrations and clever analogies that help readers get a grasp of what otherwise are complex concepts. If you are looking for an ambitious yet introductory book on physics, this is the perfect gift. I loved the book and highly recommend it!
Recommendations: "Space Chronicles" by Neil deGrasse Tyson, " About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang" by Adam Frank, "Death From The Skies" by Philip Plait, "Physics of the Future" by Michio Kaku, "A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, "The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking, "The Age of Everything" by Mathew Hedman, and "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan.
April 15, 2013
This is an excellent book that explains complex areas of science in a coherent way.
One of my frustrations with Brian Cox's TV works is he speaks in a such a slow way that it doesn't cover as much ground an hour could. This could be down to the BBC assuming that people can't take in information as fast as students in a physics lecture would be expected to but at least with the book you can read as fast or slow as you mind and level of knowledge allows.
After many people bought and few people read Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time there was a danger that the broader public had been put off physics books. This book and some others in recent years has changed all that (along with Brian Cow TV shows). This is a remarkable achievement since physics has got so mind-bending now that graduate students today are having to do mental gymnastics way beyond that of their counterparts from 50 years ago.
It is great that Cox can find time to do such books and TV shows and I am sure that his influence will encourage new generations of physicists to make sense of problems that are currently beyond anyone's grasp.
One of my frustrations with Brian Cox's TV works is he speaks in a such a slow way that it doesn't cover as much ground an hour could. This could be down to the BBC assuming that people can't take in information as fast as students in a physics lecture would be expected to but at least with the book you can read as fast or slow as you mind and level of knowledge allows.
After many people bought and few people read Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time there was a danger that the broader public had been put off physics books. This book and some others in recent years has changed all that (along with Brian Cow TV shows). This is a remarkable achievement since physics has got so mind-bending now that graduate students today are having to do mental gymnastics way beyond that of their counterparts from 50 years ago.
It is great that Cox can find time to do such books and TV shows and I am sure that his influence will encourage new generations of physicists to make sense of problems that are currently beyond anyone's grasp.
January 3, 2014
Ok my Brian Cox run is carrying on - moving on from the solar system to the universe. The book is as with the first sumptuously illustrated with glossy fascinating images to grab your attention and cleverly worded phrases to pull you in to the text of each section. However as you can imagine the subject matter has grown. This means that much more obscure subjects and facts can be explored - if you like it is building upon the first book (there are many references which although you do not need to have read the first book do certainly become more accessible if you have)
The book is a fascinating read and if anything proves that although the internet can store and access more information quicker and more thoroughly than any book. However a book can take you on a journey through it all and give you a sense of truly leaning something rather than just collecting facts along the way.
The book is a fascinating read and if anything proves that although the internet can store and access more information quicker and more thoroughly than any book. However a book can take you on a journey through it all and give you a sense of truly leaning something rather than just collecting facts along the way.
August 15, 2014
"Two and a half million years ago, when our distant relative Homo habilis was foraging for food across the Tanzanian savannah, a beam of light left the Andromeda Galaxy and began its journey across the Universe. As that light beam raced across space at the speed of light, generations of pre-humans and humans lived and died; whole species evolved and became extinct, until one member of that unbroken lineage, me, happened to gaze up into the sky below the constellation we call Cassiopeia and focus that beam of light onto his retina. A two-and-a-half-billion-year journey ends by creating an electrical impulse in a nerve fibre, triggering a cascade of wonder in a complex organ called the human brain that didn’t exist anywhere in the Universe when the journey began"
^ ^ ^
That kind of mind-blowing observation punctuates this rather thrilling book. Good stuff.
^ ^ ^
That kind of mind-blowing observation punctuates this rather thrilling book. Good stuff.
June 24, 2019
این کتاب توسط برایان کاکس، پروفسور فیزیک دانشگاه منچستر و اندرو کوین نوشته شده. کتاب اطلاعات بسیار کلی درباره کیهان در اختیار عموم قرار میده و به دلیل توضیحات پایه ای میتونه مورد استفاده هر سنی قرار بگیره، در کل کتاب بدی نیست.
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March 15, 2013This book is interesting and informative-you can tell Brian Cox is a professor who is passionate about his subject. If only I had a teacher like him... :) Definitely worth reading.
February 18, 2018
Very good! Learned a lot about the universe, descriptive pictures are beautiful :)
January 23, 2019
10 stars for me really. I am more knowledgeable about our Cosmos. It was great to learn about our History from Big Bang to how everything will come to an End(Degenerate Era). Highly recommend it.
October 21, 2019
4.5 stars.
May 17, 2021
Mr. Cox makes a far better pop-scientist than he does a philosopher.
As a pop-scientist, his explanations are clear, concise, and easy to follow. He does a great job of exploring the universe and the forces therein. Through Wonders of the Universe we are able to see how great and grand this universe really is.
Filled with photos and helpful illustrations and diagrams, this book is a good introduction or refresher to astrophysics. Told in an easy going manner, the authors make the science accessible and engaging - possibly even inspiring. For the science, it is worth the read.
Though this book is a good read, it does start off slow and meanders. It takes the authors a while to find their footing. Or perhaps I was just put off by the stream of consciousness writing style that takes us from one topic to the next and back again. Once the first part is cleared, this book is smooth sailing and compelling.
Still, Mr. Cox chose to throw in a bit of philosophy at the end, thereby cheapening all the good work he put in throughout the book. As he works his way through the history of the universe in his explanation of time, he reaches the scientific conclusion that eventually all life, matter, and energy will be extinguished. He fully acknowledges that this might be depressing, as it ought to be if one is an atheist. Logically, finding life and existence to be ultimately meaningless is pretty much the only conclusion an atheist can have. (If the universe itself will eventually fade out, there is no ultimate reason to have any objective purpose or meaning or value because in the end, it doesn't really matter when nothing is around to appreciate your hard work.)
But never mind all of that. Like so many other atheists who find it impossible to live an existentially meaningless life, Mr. Cox manufactures a reason to exist:
"This, ultimately, is why I believe we are important. Our true significance lies in our continuing desire to understand and explore this beautiful Universe - our magnificent, beautiful, fleeting home."
This is a glaringly obvious departure from logic, a meaning and purpose contrived, one supposes, to give meaning, purpose, and value to his own life. (How do you suppose science-haters react to his purpose statement?)
Disregarding Mr. Cox's illogical philosophy (in all fairness, it's the best that atheists can drum up), this is a good book. Fortunately the philosophical musings are scant and the science is myriad, so this book is, on sum, worth the read.
As a pop-scientist, his explanations are clear, concise, and easy to follow. He does a great job of exploring the universe and the forces therein. Through Wonders of the Universe we are able to see how great and grand this universe really is.
Filled with photos and helpful illustrations and diagrams, this book is a good introduction or refresher to astrophysics. Told in an easy going manner, the authors make the science accessible and engaging - possibly even inspiring. For the science, it is worth the read.
Though this book is a good read, it does start off slow and meanders. It takes the authors a while to find their footing. Or perhaps I was just put off by the stream of consciousness writing style that takes us from one topic to the next and back again. Once the first part is cleared, this book is smooth sailing and compelling.
Still, Mr. Cox chose to throw in a bit of philosophy at the end, thereby cheapening all the good work he put in throughout the book. As he works his way through the history of the universe in his explanation of time, he reaches the scientific conclusion that eventually all life, matter, and energy will be extinguished. He fully acknowledges that this might be depressing, as it ought to be if one is an atheist. Logically, finding life and existence to be ultimately meaningless is pretty much the only conclusion an atheist can have. (If the universe itself will eventually fade out, there is no ultimate reason to have any objective purpose or meaning or value because in the end, it doesn't really matter when nothing is around to appreciate your hard work.)
But never mind all of that. Like so many other atheists who find it impossible to live an existentially meaningless life, Mr. Cox manufactures a reason to exist:
"This, ultimately, is why I believe we are important. Our true significance lies in our continuing desire to understand and explore this beautiful Universe - our magnificent, beautiful, fleeting home."
This is a glaringly obvious departure from logic, a meaning and purpose contrived, one supposes, to give meaning, purpose, and value to his own life. (How do you suppose science-haters react to his purpose statement?)
Disregarding Mr. Cox's illogical philosophy (in all fairness, it's the best that atheists can drum up), this is a good book. Fortunately the philosophical musings are scant and the science is myriad, so this book is, on sum, worth the read.
February 26, 2025
I have a 2011 hardback from Collins.
This is a fascinating book. It is also a beautiful book, superbly produced with amazing illustrations, but the text is extraordinary first and foremost. The explanations carefully build on each other so that the reader learns just enough to move on to the next concept, and then the next. The context and history of the discoveries form a fascinating story too. In all, it’s a remarkable teaching tool. That takes some doing. I salute the skill of the authors.
Nevertheless, this is a big book which requires a lot of concentration over a significant period of time (hence many attempts to get stuck in before the final big effort to read from cover to cover). This is emphatically not an easy read for all of the skilful simplification. The prettiness of the book is a distraction, encouraging the reader to leaf through and gaze at the pictures, just enjoy the coffee table nature of the product. But that narrative requires commitment to read from cover to cover. A dogged read is necessary to benefit from the methodical build up of didactic elements towards understanding without getting lost.
I am impressed, no doubt about it. I loved the BBC documentary series as well, but this is more than a companion volume. It’s an excellent introduction to the marvels of astronomy and day to day physics, and it is also a philosophical treatise demonstrating the power and beauty of rational thought.
A book to treasure.
This is a fascinating book. It is also a beautiful book, superbly produced with amazing illustrations, but the text is extraordinary first and foremost. The explanations carefully build on each other so that the reader learns just enough to move on to the next concept, and then the next. The context and history of the discoveries form a fascinating story too. In all, it’s a remarkable teaching tool. That takes some doing. I salute the skill of the authors.
Nevertheless, this is a big book which requires a lot of concentration over a significant period of time (hence many attempts to get stuck in before the final big effort to read from cover to cover). This is emphatically not an easy read for all of the skilful simplification. The prettiness of the book is a distraction, encouraging the reader to leaf through and gaze at the pictures, just enjoy the coffee table nature of the product. But that narrative requires commitment to read from cover to cover. A dogged read is necessary to benefit from the methodical build up of didactic elements towards understanding without getting lost.
I am impressed, no doubt about it. I loved the BBC documentary series as well, but this is more than a companion volume. It’s an excellent introduction to the marvels of astronomy and day to day physics, and it is also a philosophical treatise demonstrating the power and beauty of rational thought.
A book to treasure.
February 23, 2019
Like the other books in the series I really enjoyed reading this one. It went a bit further and deeper into things than wonders of the solar system and wasn't as fragmented.
Brian Cox explains how events in the cosmos relate to events on Earth such as how a star turning into a black dwarf is similar to a 100 year old ship rotting away rotting away in a desert. I enjoyed these examples however I did think sometimes that there was too much, when I want to read a book about the universe and the physics surrounding it I'd prefer just a quick reference to something on Earth rather than a detailed explanation of it which took away my universe time!
That aside though I have one issue, I'm incredibly jealous of the places this man has been!! Just to film a tv series, I'm definitely in the wrong job!
A very good book and well worth a read, even if it's only for the final chapter where the poetic writing sums up the collapse of the Universe into the heat death and how we should be privileged to be alive now, in the fraction of a second when life can exist in a universe which is inexorably hurtling towards entropy and the end of all things.
Great book
Brian Cox explains how events in the cosmos relate to events on Earth such as how a star turning into a black dwarf is similar to a 100 year old ship rotting away rotting away in a desert. I enjoyed these examples however I did think sometimes that there was too much, when I want to read a book about the universe and the physics surrounding it I'd prefer just a quick reference to something on Earth rather than a detailed explanation of it which took away my universe time!
That aside though I have one issue, I'm incredibly jealous of the places this man has been!! Just to film a tv series, I'm definitely in the wrong job!
A very good book and well worth a read, even if it's only for the final chapter where the poetic writing sums up the collapse of the Universe into the heat death and how we should be privileged to be alive now, in the fraction of a second when life can exist in a universe which is inexorably hurtling towards entropy and the end of all things.
Great book
October 12, 2020
Basically the companion book for Professor Brian Cox's mini-series "Wonders of the Universe", this introduces the reader to the universe beyond our own solar system although he does visit many locations about the world. Seems to like Namibia quite a bit.
Anyway, ranging from the birth of the universe - the so-called Big Bang - to its slow death billions of years in the future. Galaxies and black holes, with pulsars and stellar explosions. Gravity as it helps discover exoplanets and even binary star systems and can prevent planetary formation as demonstrated by the theory of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.
Even the most general reader would find the topics accessible and understandable even as the subjects delve into physics, electromagnetics, gravity theory, entropy, stellar formation, spacetime, the smallest pieces of matter and more. Lavishly illustrated with spectacular astronomical photos as well as numerous diagrams to help with various explanations.
One thing to keep in mind is that this book was published in 2011. There have been considerable innovations and discoveries since then.
2020-206
Anyway, ranging from the birth of the universe - the so-called Big Bang - to its slow death billions of years in the future. Galaxies and black holes, with pulsars and stellar explosions. Gravity as it helps discover exoplanets and even binary star systems and can prevent planetary formation as demonstrated by the theory of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.
Even the most general reader would find the topics accessible and understandable even as the subjects delve into physics, electromagnetics, gravity theory, entropy, stellar formation, spacetime, the smallest pieces of matter and more. Lavishly illustrated with spectacular astronomical photos as well as numerous diagrams to help with various explanations.
One thing to keep in mind is that this book was published in 2011. There have been considerable innovations and discoveries since then.
2020-206
September 8, 2023
Brian Cox has gifted me with another perspective of bacteria and life! Our body is an ecosystem, water and bacteria make up who we are. Its amazing to think about life and fragile ecosystems in relation to bacteria. There are so many other points Brian Cox has made but thinking about social and emotional intelligence prompted me to think about life and the right bacteria in our gut, our second brain, and how we interact. Looking for similarities between earth and Mars and the need to find water suggests our unsustainable drives to abuse the earth's resources is like bad bacteria in the gut, a more than grumpy approach to lived interactions. The shift in, perhaps what he meant the book and tv series for, my own perspective meant science opened doors to other unexpected areas for discussion. This book, for me, was great for discussions.
October 8, 2020
I watched the TV show for this first, which prompted me to read the book to compare the two and see if there was any new content. I don't remember a lot of specifics of the show now, but the book was very educational. It talked a lot about physics, which I've never been that good at understanding, but did a decent job explaining the concepts you need to know. A better job than my high school teachers did anyway! I still didn't totally get everything, but enough to understand the point. I feel kind of lied to by my school teachers honestly, especially about gravity... neat photos and lots of cool information. Worth checking out the show too if you aren't too into the science lingo.
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