Author : Brian Clegg
What is it about : Everything you have always wanted to know about Gravity and the characters and stories involved and here's a line-up of the usual suspects : Galileo Vs The Establishment, Newton's Apple, the un-compliant Einstein, General Relativity, String Theory, Quantum Mechanics, Anti-Matters, Black Holes, Time-Space Warping, Einstein Rings, Hawking Energy, Electrons, Positrons, Gravitons, Bosoms; they are all there. The book rounds up with the latest development and an encouraging message at the end - don't worry if you cannot understand how they (the bits and pieces in The Universe) all come together, they just do, otherwise we wouldn't exist !
Some thoughts after having read the book : Thought-provoking when the book details that the Earth is orbiting the Sun at a speed of 60,000 miles an hour and all creatures large and small manage to stay on to this rolling ball at this speed ! I found it amazing how the thirst of human curiosity had propelled our quest for knowledge on this topic through the centuries and yet more amazingly, human endeavour, experimental and theoretical scientists alike had persevered to come up with theories after theories and often had been proved to match up with experimental data ! I did feel, unlike the "Life Science" topics such as Evolution, Gravity would prove to be a bit of a struggle for most lay-person without a more solid fundamental groundings in this field.
Would I recommend this book to you : Tough going if you are not from this background; a bit dry if you are after a roller-coaster detective type story in unraveling the villain called Gravity but the book will do great for budding physicists as a fine introduction to this huge topic past, present and future.
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