We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What everyday things tell us about the universe

If you struggled with, but more or less got "Brief History of Time," you'll find this to your liking. Chown does an excellent job of relating truly abstract ideas to familiar situations. Like Hawkings', Chown's writing requires some mental gymnastics, but it's well worth the effort; not at all stodgy or pedantic. Good book!

Sorry I was impatient.

Very informative, consistent and easy to read. A good way to keep up to date on current quantum and Cosmo theory.

I am giving this book only one star not because it is a bad book, it's actually quite good. The problem is that it's the identical book to "The Matchbox that Ate...." by the same author, which I had already read. Don't be like me and buy both!

Marcus Chown has an engaging and easy to read manner that is conducive to relaying complex topics.This book contains an excellent level of detail, it considers both historical content as well as some very recent discoveries.If you're a new reader of scientific literature then this is a GREAT place to start. I feel I can now take a bigger bite of the physics of the universe.To improve readability of a difficult subject and complex ideas, the book contains comic quips and anecdotes of some of the 'giants of science' and their theories.But that is not to belittle Chown's ability to add depth of concept, above and beyond what you'll find in most basic physics texts.Finally this wouldn't be an honest review without some constructive criticisms, whilst Chown does a very good job of linking and putting logical proofs into the building of the theories in the book, there are quite a few leaps of faith required of the reader. Perhaps my knowledge of physics is too basic to 'get' some of these specific concepts but I felt that these leaps were definitely present in this book. Keep in mind, it may well be some of the content was condensed by editing and these passages have suffered from it.All in all a great read. This book has enriched my palette for science factual reading and my further personal study in the subject.

Barack Obama started his "Dreams from my father" with aquote from Chronicles (29:15):" For we are strangers before them,and sojourners, as were all our fathers".Reading Marcus Chowns "We need to talk about Kelvin"easily brings you to the same frame of mind.For starters: We are ghosts! 99.999999 per cent ofmatter is empty space. Not only are the atomswe are made of, very, very tiny indeed. The atoms themselvesare mostly nothingness circling more nothingness.And what little substance there is to mattersoon evaporates when you realize that allof the atoms that make up 'you' are quantum things,endowed with quantum weirdness - or madness if you like!Take quantum entanglement: Particlesborn together bahaves as though they know about each other,no matter how far apart. Communicating with each other,somehow, at infinite speed. Witheverything born 13.7 billion years agoin the fireball of the Big Bang - One can speculate thateverything in the universe is now bound together,i.e. everything knows about everything else in the universe,through some inifinite speed communication process.When we stand on the Earth, solid ground (ha ha),our weight compresses atoms below, squeezing electronsin atoms closer to the nuclei. According to Heisenberg,electrons aren't too crazy about having their positionexposed. So they resist by gaining a higher momentum.Fighting the compression so to speak. The 'solidity'of the ground is Heisenbergs uncertainty principle kicking in:The more sure we are of the location of a particle,the less we can know about its momentum.The 'solidity' of the ground is teaching us that there are limitsto what we can know about the world so to speak.Most things we know from our everyday world are notidentical. They may look indistinguishable, but when welook closer, at a detailed molecular level, they are not.Not so with electrons - everyone out there in theuniverse is absolutely identical. There is no way to tellthem apart. And likewise for quarks.It follows that they have no inner structure, which wouldallow us to tell them apart.So they are just weird to begin with, not weird due to otherwiserational inner parts.The (weird) parts, we are made of, have been processedin stars before they became parts of humans. Take iron.A massive star develops an onion like interior,with heavier and heavier elements closer to its core.Finally it undergoes silicon buring which creates iron.which is bad news for the star, as burning iron doesntgive more energy, it takes energy. Without energybeing produced there is nothing to oppose gravity fromcollapsing the star. Which eventually leadsto a cataclysmic explosion of the star, that for a short time,outshine an entire galaxy of a 100 billion stars.Sending out the iron that will eventually end up in the bodiesof humans.Looking out in the night sky, we can of course see many stars.Actually, in a infinite universe, the night sky should becompletely bright with starlight, coming from starsin all directions in an endless universe. But itis not (Olbers paradox).Ok, the universe is to young for stars to have had time tofill it up with light, and actually, the starsdont have the energy to fill up the entire universe,no matter how powerful they appear.The universe is a pretty big place!It wasnt always. Way back at the Big Bangit was small. And small tends to be synonymous with Quantum.Yet, our everyday world doesnt seem to bequantum weird. So, how did the world loose itsquantumness?For matter there might be an answer. Here the clusteringof matter into big things like galaxies and peoplemight have caused the decoherence.The quantum waves representing the particles (and allows them tobe in many places at the same time), interactand 'decides' to be real, instead of ghostly quantum,when particles come together in large amounts.But space time itself - why did that decide tobe relatively smooth, instead of totally chaotic quantum? No one knows.Marcus Chown doesn't go into (in this book) what aquantum world actually means for our consciousness.Are our minds being flipped around accordingto 'ghostly influence' by the rest of the universe? -or better still, are our minds flipping the rest of universearound according to our thinking?At the very least, surely our minds live in a quantumworld, should mean something?However small the quantum thing is everywhere!The universe is infinite, so it doesnt mattter that muchif the quantums effects are small. It is stillenough to make everything mind boogling.E.g. It is very unlikely, but eventually, everything can be producedin spacetime out of 'thin air' and random quantum process.Lego bricks, cars, spaceships and brains.And with an infinite amount of space-time itis a certainty that these things will eventuallybe produced. Including 'Boltzmann brains'!Actually, 'Boltzmann brains' will outnumber other 'real' brains, likehuman brains, that have been build by evolution overbillions of years.So, Boltzmann brains will sit out there in the utter emptynessof space - and stare out in nothingness... They arethe typical observers in our universe?!The Boltzmann brains might not be communicatingwith us. And apparently noone else is!It might be that the galaxy is a galaxy of dolphins,that are happy swimming around in alien seas.Or that communication is extremely dangerous,with killer species out there in deep space.Or that it is just very hard to reacha technological civilisation(The five steps that made us - a) advent of bacteria b)complex cells with nuclei c) multicellular lifed) intelligence e) human civilisation - each tooksome 800 million years)Or perhaps is it much better to makeyour own simulation of the whole thingat your own home planet. Complete with humansand dinosaurs in it (as Stephen Wolframhas suggested). Perhaps everything, everythingcan be generated by a computer program!Reality it might not be. But who knows aboutreality anyway?-Simon

This is a fun book for those of us who remember scientific principles, but have forgotten a lot of what we were taught in school. Chown does a good job of relating how science -- and bigger questions on the universe -- relate to the everyday. I would recommend this for generalists.

Chown shows little skepticism and is rather sloppy with the facts. Just to mention one, there is the statement on page 186 that 2^1000 is approximately 1 billion. In fact it is approximately 10^301 (1 billion with another 292 zeros added)! Makes the rest of the chapter rather hard to understand. Maybe I'm missing something.One star for his enthusiasm though.

This book is a real curate's egg. There are loads of interesting facts, theories and views, which relate real-world effects to scientific concepts and in general, these are presented in an easy-to-understand way. But, they're presented again and again... and again... and see Chapter Three... and again. This is very irritating; tell me once and maybe again in a summary, but that's all that I need.However, the really 'annoying' thing about 'this' book is the incredibly 'frequent' use of 'inverted commas'. Every time that a new 'term' is used, e.g. heat, it's put in inverted commas. This gets really wearing after a while, where a 'while' is about five pages.In summary, this is a book that needs some decent editing. Ironically - spoiler alert - the Kindle version stops at 80%, followed by footnotes. To be honest, I was overjoyed to know that I'd see no more inverted-comma-laden sentences.4* for content, -1* for the 'inverted commas'.

We Need to Talk About Kelvin is an excellent book, extremely interesting, informative, well written and demonstrating an enviable grasp of the research and publications of the scientists on whose work Chown draws. He simplifiies complicated topics, using readily understood examples and analogies without sacrificing accuracy. He stays close to the reality which he describes and, where simplifications have been made in the main text, adds addenda to the chapters pointing out such simplifications and explaining to what extent they depart from a strict interpretation of the facts.Having read the book straight through, understanding but perhaps not fully absorbing its contents, it was a delight to find a comprehensive index following the main text and an extensive glossary enabling the book to be used as a reference work.The book can be thoroughly recommended to anyone with an interest in our present understanding of how the Universe works.

I bought the book Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt by Marcus Chown you which I found very interesting and easy to understand.The need to Talk About Kelvin an E-book by Marcus Chown is again very interesting and easy to understand it idoes explain morre about the contents of the book and is up to date with the latest thinking.If this subject interest you then I don't think you will find anything as good as these to. They are excellent..

It's a while since I read this, but I actually bought it for my teenage son to try and inspire him with some science reading. It worked for me, but I'm already a convert. Not sure whether it will work for him. Overall though, the book is a very good and accessible read, but I wouldn't say it is anything special.

Bought this as my latest "bathroom" book. Just love this type of book where you can dip in and out for as little or as long as you like. I'm a sucker for trivia and this one does not disappoint. If you want to impress friends with your knowledge of trivial but fascinating facts this is for you.

I really like Marcus Chown and have read a couple of his books, which over all I could understand relatively easily. I don't know if this is just a more abstruse subject and harder to put in Noddy and Big Ears format but it was a struggle to get through and I don't feel much the wiser. Will read it through again and see if it makes a bit more sense.

A really superb book. You must read it. It raised so many questions for me and tested the boundaries of my knowledge. I've spent weeks brushing up on things I thought I knew well only to find that things have moved on and I'm no longer current.Enormously stimulating book. Fantastic stuff. Absolutely loved it.

Great book that really makes you think and appreciate the unlikelihood of the universe even existing and the fact that somehow it does.It starts off very deep and 'sciencey' with some great observations on the properties and baffling behaviour of photons etc which might put some people off but I absolutely recommend reading through.

Quite enjoyed the book but a couple of discussions I found less than convincing. I was a little surprised that about thirty percent of the book was notes and glossary.

This is the first Marcus Chown book I have read and would now actively seek out other titles by him. I have tried other books with similar catchy titles and found them to be rather insubstantial - not so this one. This is nuclear physics in very edible chunks.

Bought it from my friend, she loves it! Arrived quickly and in great condition, really great book!

I really wanted to like this book. The title is appealing and simplistic, giving the impression the subject matter will be easily understood. However, the science baffled me and I am still no wiser.

This was a book recommended to me by my physics course tutor. It is easy to access and not to heavy. Its a good read if you have any interest in science or physics.

Gets v complex ideas over well and in the end goes for some big thoughts that we can all have. Enjoyed it and can now explain quantum mechanics to my son.

Bought to fill in some background reading about temperature, heat and the history of the development of the current theories.