The End of Everything:
Ratings3
Average rating4.7
15
Ratings3
Average rating4.7
You're going to die. The Earth will, one day, be toast. So too, our Sun will eventually shine its last. But what's next? The End of Everything is a unique exploration of the destruction of the cosmos. Drawing on cutting edge technology and theory, as well as hot-off-the-presses results from the most powerful telescopes and particle colliders, astrophysicist Katie Mack describes how small tweaks to our incomplete understanding of reality can result in starkly different futures. Our universe could collapse in upon itself, or rip itself apart, or even - in the next five minutes - succumb to an inescapable expanding bubble of doom. This fascinating, witty story of cosmic escapism examines a beautiful but unfamiliar physics landscape while sharing the excitement a leading astrophysicist feels when thinking about the universe and our place in it. Amid stellar explosions and bouncing universes, Mack shows that even though we puny humans have no chance of changing how it all ends, we can at least begin to understand it.
Reviews with the most likes.
OK, this is a really good pop-science book. The title is quite literal. Katie Mack discusses how the universe will end based on our present knowledge.
The book starts with a summary of what we presently know – from physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. Then she devotes a chapter each to four possible ultimate ends – big crunch, heat death, big rip, and vacuum decay. The final one, vacuum decay, is the one that really scares me. The first three would be way, almost incomprehensibly, far in the future. Vacuum decay, however, could happen at any time and would be oh-so-final. It seems unlikely at present but still ...
Katie Mack freely admits that there is much we still don't understand (dark matter, dark energy, and so on). She devotes a final chapter to the future, discussing what we don't understand and where it seems that science might take us next.
I really like Katie Mack's writing style. She uses the language well. Her writing is both light and deep at the same time. A sense of humor pervades the book – sometimes subtle, often wry, and occasionally bordering on slapstick.
Good book, highly informative. 4.5 stars rounded up.
