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1. "Why don't your clothes spontaneously explode into a zillion subatomic fragments?" (Another question we've all asked ourselves from time to time.)
2. Did Davros' multiversal doomsday device work by suppressing the Higgs field?
3. Vacuum decay: "Our universe would be replaced by a new and more stable version, but one in which the conditions were such that life would never gain a foothold again." Why?
This is far from the best book on the stuff of the cosmos which I've read, but amongst several valuable insights it did provide was the humbling idea that, far from being just around the corner from a Theory of Everything, as I've long assumed, we don't know jack. Dark energy, which makes up three-quarters of the universe, was first hypothesised in 1992. Hell, that's only 70 years after we worked out that the Milky Way isn't the whole universe. As Sample points out, science has repeatedly had to knock down our belief that we're the centre of everything; maybe we've made the same mistake in assuming that our kind of matter is the whole story.
Looked at another way, of course, we're gaining knowledge at an unprecedented rate - our fragile species is now in a unique window of opportunity. How long will it last?
Also, I am blogging this from bed, which I've never done before.
2. Did Davros' multiversal doomsday device work by suppressing the Higgs field?
3. Vacuum decay: "Our universe would be replaced by a new and more stable version, but one in which the conditions were such that life would never gain a foothold again." Why?
This is far from the best book on the stuff of the cosmos which I've read, but amongst several valuable insights it did provide was the humbling idea that, far from being just around the corner from a Theory of Everything, as I've long assumed, we don't know jack. Dark energy, which makes up three-quarters of the universe, was first hypothesised in 1992. Hell, that's only 70 years after we worked out that the Milky Way isn't the whole universe. As Sample points out, science has repeatedly had to knock down our belief that we're the centre of everything; maybe we've made the same mistake in assuming that our kind of matter is the whole story.
Looked at another way, of course, we're gaining knowledge at an unprecedented rate - our fragile species is now in a unique window of opportunity. How long will it last?
Also, I am blogging this from bed, which I've never done before.
