Status
Publication
Description
Science. Nonfiction. Humor (Nonfiction.) HTML:Prepare to learn everything we still donâ??t know about our strange and mysterious universe Humanity's understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore â??there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don't know about the universe: the enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and unusually entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available for a lot of questions that are still perplexing scientists, including: * Why does the universe have a speed limit? * Why aren't we all made of antimatter? * What (or who) is attacking Earth with tiny, superfast particles? * What is dark matter, and why does it keep ignoring us? It turns out the universe is full of weird things that don't make any sense. But Cham and Whiteson make a compelling case that the questions we can't answer are as interesting as the ones we can. This fully illustrated introduction to the biggest mysteries in physics also helpfully demystifies many complicated things we do know about, from quarks and neutrinos to gravitational waves and exploding black holes. With equal doses of humor and delight, Cham and Whiteson invite us to see the universe as a possibly boundless expanse of uncharted territory that's still ours to ex… (more)
User reviews
I loved the book. It's illustrated with cartoons throughout. Some are maybe a bit annoying and trite but generally they are quite helpful in visualising the various issues raised. So a really helpful partnership between artist Jorge Cham and CERN particle physicist Daniel Whiteson. Strongly recommend it...in fact, I gave the book as a present to a couple of relatives who, I thought, would benefit from reading.
In «We have no Idea», Daniel Whiteson and Jorge Cham go a bit against conventional wisdom and talk about the things we don't know about. But, how can you even know that? Long story short: what we know is a big help in defining the unknown, similar to how negative space is defined in design.
The book accomplishes what many other pop-sci writers try, which is to establish more questions than it answers. Heck, that's what good science does. While guiding us through the edge of physics and the universe, the authors are careful to distinguish that which we are pretty certain of and what some possible answers might be, all peppered with the soft and charming humor that you might know from PHD Comics. The book chapters are neatly organized in Big Themes (e. g. «what is matter?», «what is time»...) and conveniently paced so you almost always have either something to look forward to and something to base your new knowledge upon.
The humor is hit-or-miss for me (and certainly not as funny as What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by fellow webcomic author Randall Munroe) but it never gets in the way of the explanation. If you can visualize some physics concepts using ferrets, llamas and practical jokes, this might be for you.
A book worth picking up either to learn about how much we don't know or to peek into the sometimes dirty windows of how science is done.
Inane.