Nerd rating:
/5The End of Everything (Cosmologically Speaking)
It really is about the end of everything, our universe. It travels down several current theoretical paths about where we may be heading, and deep-dives into each of them. In the course of the book it also explores our current knowledge of the universe. The cool part is, she doesn't sugar coat how off-base we might be with any one of these theories because of how the science behind the theories is still evolving. It's still a subject that I think is fascinating and fun to think about in terms of "so what's all this about?"
It's also the first book I've read out of many, MANY science focused books over the last few years that really explains the term "known universe" in a way that even a pea-brain like myself can understand. And even explains how, even though the "known universe" keeps expanding, in reality we're losing parts of it outside our "viewing cone" as she calls it as the universe itself expands faster than the speed of light, and everything that transmits information to us is limited to the speed of light. So a galaxy on the edge of our visible range could slip past that edge and disappear from our sight forever.
Her top theories include:
1. The Big Crunch - the universe eventually reversing expansion and collapsing back into a singularity.
2. Heat Death - the universe continues to expand until matter itself simply becomes too dilute to maintain itself.
3. The Big Rip - the dark energy that continues to accelerate universal expansion suffers a "glitch" and renders reality non-corporeal at the speed of light.
4. Vacuum Decay - the state of our current vaccuum isn't stable and could, in theory, slip "down" fundamentally shifting the entire state of known physics.
5. The Big Bounce - the universe exists on a giant "brane" (think membrane) that runs parallel to other branes containing other universes. These branes clap off of each other, destroying the universes in both branes and popping off a new universe on each brane as they go their separate ways.
Somehow she manages to keep the entire thing very light-hearted, even thoug she's describing the various ways in which our entire existence will cease to be at some point in the super-distant future, or in the case of the big rip, vacuum decay or the big bounce could happen at any moment and we'd never know before we blinked away. If you enjoyed Douglass Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide), she has a similar tone of writing, even though the subject is a bit more serious. In fact, she really leans into those similarities from time to time. "So long and thanks for all the fish" one of several references to Adams' books.
If you don't mind facing the futility of it all, and want a distraction from how stupid our petty little world is right now, it's a quick and fascinating read. Especially if you enjoy diving into our knowledge of space, the universe, our origins and our eventual demise.
I for one found it strangely reassuring to take some time to think about the way our everything will someday cease to be anything.
