The Consolations of Physics: Why the Wonders of the Universe Can Make You Happy

Description

THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHYSICS is an eloquent manifesto for physics. In an age where uncertainty and division is rife, Tim Radford, science editor of the Guardian for twenty-five years, turns to the wonders of the universe for consolation. From the launch of the Voyager spacecraft and how it furthered our understanding of planets, stars and galaxies to the planet composed entirely of diamond and graphite and the sound of a blacksmith's anvil; from the hole NASA drilled in the heavens to the discovery of the Higgs Boson and the endeavours to prove the Big Bang, THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHYSICS will guide you from a tiny particle to the marvels of outer space.

Tim Radford joined the New Zealand Herald as a reporter aged sixteen and moved to the UK in 1961. He is a freelance journalist and a founding editor of Climate News Network. He worked for the Guardian for thirty-two years, becoming - among other things - letters editor, arts editor, literary editor and science editor. He won the Association of British Science Writers award for science writer of the year four times and a lifetime achievement award in 2005. He is an honorary Fellow of the British Science Association, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He is the author of The Crisis of Life on Earth: Our Legacy from the Second Millennium and The Address Book: Our Place in the Scheme of Things.

Tim Radford's The Consolations of Physics is a love letter to the Voyager space probes. The poetry of their journey stimulated Radford to wax lyrical about the purpose of science. It is a beautiful, moving book that roams through the grand physics of recent decades. - New Statesman, Books of the Year Lyrical hymn to space exploration, knowledge and the enquiring mind... Helps quench our curiosity, yet deepens the mystery, about the cosmos and our attempts to discover more about it. - Irish Independent Beautiful, joyful, inspiring. A celebration of physicists' quest to understand the universe, from one of the best science writers around. It's rare that you get a book that connects Dante's Divine Comedy to the Higgs boson and the geology of limestone cliffs, and this weaving together two thousand's years of intellectual thought is one of the many delights of this book. It's a hymn to scientific endeavour. Wow... Tim Radford's writing is so beautiful, it reads like poetry. A book more about life and passion than physics. People who have never cared a jot about physics (like me) must read this book. A beautiful, inspiring reflection on science, humanity, space, and matter - this would blow Boethius's mind. An appreciative survey of the vast canvas on which physicists do their creative work - the entire observable universe, from the beginning of time to its end (assuming there is one)... Beneath his jocularity, Radford is an unapologetic intellectual. - Guardian Beautifully crafted 'love letter to physics'... His deft narrative interweaves discoveries such as the Higgs boson, the Hubble Deep Field and gravitational waves with Dante Alighieri's epic fourteenth-century poem The Divine Comedy, which intuited the laws of motion found by Galileo Galilei some 300 years later. - Nature