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TEN PATTERNS THAT EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE

Name: TEN PATTERNS THAT EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE
Author: Brian Clegg
ISBN: 978-0-262-54286-9

by Brian Clegg ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 28, 2021

Ingenious, often complex insights from an expert.

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The prolific science writer offers another illuminating education on many scientific phenomena. “It would be impossible to cope with the world,” writes the author, “if we didn’t have patterns…that inform us of how to deal with, say, an apple or a light switch, so that we don’t have to start from scratch each and every time.” After proposing this theme, Clegg delivers 10 isolated essays on topics ranging from the recognizable (DNA, periodic table) to the arcane (number lines, Feynman diagrams). Teachers traditionally portray evolution as a tree; a primitive life form, the trunk, evolves into numerous, more complex organisms, the thinner branches. In reality, this is not what happens. The “branches” often thicken, double back, and become simpler. Fifty years ago, biologists offered a more accurate description in the form of a cladogram, which merely shows in what order a species split from a common ancestor. This works even when scientists haven’t found that ancestor. Regarding more cosmic matters, Clegg shows that while everyone can picture length, width, and depth, three of Einstein’s four dimensions, adding time seems nonsensical. Enter Einstein’s math professor, Hermann Minkowski, who developed an ingenious diagram that shows how time and space are related and inseparable. After the Big Bang, the universe was so hot that only charged particles such as protons and electrons existed. Charged particles absorb photons (i.e. light), so the early universe was dark. After 380,000 years of expansion and cooling, most charged particles combined to form electrically neutral atoms. Suddenly photons could travel, and the cosmos filled with light. These light photons expanded and cooled along with the universe, and today, 13.8 billion years later, they shine from everywhere as the cosmic microwave background. First detected in 1964, they reveal the earliest structures of the universe. This is not TV science; Clegg presents difficult concepts—e.g., infinity is not a number; genes form only a trivial part of a chromosome—but there are satisfying rewards to science-inclined readers. Ingenious, often complex insights from an expert.

Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-262-54286-9

Page Count: 224

Publisher: MIT Press

Review Posted Online: July 17, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021

Categories:

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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New York Times Bestseller

ELON MUSK

by Walter Isaacson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

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Best Books Of 2023

New York Times Bestseller

A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

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THE RIGHT STUFF

by Tom Wolfe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 1979

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Yes: it's high time for a de-romanticized, de-mythified, close-up retelling of the U.S. Space Program's launching—the inside story of those first seven astronauts.

But no: jazzy, jivey, exclamation-pointed, italicized Tom Wolfe "Mr. Overkill" hasn't really got the fight stuff for the job. Admittedly, he covers all the ground. He begins with the competitive, macho world of test pilots from which the astronauts came (thus being grossly overqualified to just sit in a controlled capsule); he follows the choosing of the Seven, the preparations for space flight, the flights themselves, the feelings of the wives; and he presents the breathless press coverage, the sudden celebrity, the glorification. He even throws in some of the technology. But instead of replacing the heroic standard version with the ring of truth, Wolfe merely offers an alternative myth: a surreal, satiric, often cartoony Wolfe-arama that, especially since there isn't a bit of documentation along the way, has one constantly wondering if anything really happened the way Wolfe tells it. His astronauts (referred to as "the brethren" or "The True Brothers") are obsessed with having the "right stuff" that certain blend of guts and smarts that spells pilot success. The Press is a ravenous fool, always referred to as "the eternal Victorian Gent": when Walter Cronkite's voice breaks while reporting a possible astronaut death, "There was the Press the Genteel Gent, coming up with the appropriate emotion. . . live. . . with no prompting whatsoever!" And, most off-puttingly, Wolfe presumes to enter the minds of one and all: he's with near-drowing Gus Grissom ("Cox. . . That face up there!—it's Cox. . . Cox knew how to get people out of here! . . . Cox! . . ."); he's with Betty Grissom angry about not staying at Holiday Inn ("Now. . . they truly owed her"); and, in a crude hatchet-job, he's with John Glenn furious at Al Shepard's being chosen for the first flight, pontificating to the others about their licentious behavior, or holding onto his self-image during his flight ("Oh, yes! I've been here before! And I am immune! I don't get into corners I can't get out of! . . . The Presbyterian Pilot was not about to foul up. His pipeline to dear Lord could not be clearer"). Certainly there's much here that Wolfe is quite right about, much that people will be interested in hearing: the P-R whitewash of Grissom's foul-up, the Life magazine excesses, the inter-astronaut tensions. And, for those who want to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt throughout, there are emotional reconstructions that are juicily shrill.

But most readers outside the slick urban Wolfe orbit will find credibility fatally undermined by the self-indulgent digressions, the stylistic excesses, and the broadly satiric, anti-All-American stance; and, though The Right Stuff has enough energy, sass, and dirt to attract an audience, it mostly suggests that until Wolfe can put his subject first and his preening writing-persona second, he probably won't be a convincing chronicler of anything much weightier than radical chic.