Marcus Chown

Once upon a time black holes were considered so ridiculous as to not even be the preserve of science fiction. Now we know they play a crucial role in the Universe and may even explain why you are alive and reading these words. A Crack in Everything is …

What is the one thing you need to know in order to understand global warming or quantum computers or the big bang or human evolution…? What is the one thing from which everything else follows as a logical consequence? The One Thing You Need to Know i …

[Please note this book was originally published with the title The Magicians] What does it feel like to know something no one has known before? Or to predict something no one suspected ~ then find it? Breakthrough tells spectacular stories of scientifi …

In a nutshell, the book is 50 Bonkers Things About the Universe….   You could fit the human race in the volume of a sugar cube If the Sun were made of bananas, it wouldn’t make any difference You age more quickly on the top floor of a building t …

The greatest discovery in the history of science is that there was a day without a yesterday. The Universe has not existed forever. It was born. Everything – all matter, space and even time – erupted into being 13.82 billion years ago in a titanic fire …

Gravity is the weakest force in the everyday world yet it is the strongest force in the Universe. It was the first force to be recognised and described yet it is the least understood. It is a ‘force’ that keeps your feet on the ground yet no such force …

Two master science writers answer 140 of the biggest questions in physics, distilling the essence of each subject into tweets of 140 characters. Marcus Chown and Govert Schilling take us on a unique tour of the universe, covering everything, from the m …

Why do we breathe? What is money? How does the brain work? Why did life invent sex? How does capitalism work – or not? Does time really exist? How can something invisible that comes down a wire power our civilisation? How did an advanced breed of monke …

The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world we live in. But, almost a century after their advent, most people haven’t the sl …

Did you know that…? Today’s sunlight is 30,000 years old There is mountain range twice as high as Everest that was built… in an afternoon The body that generates heat at the fastest rate in the Solar System is not the Sun When Galileo pointed his tel …

What do you say when you wake up to find your bedroom in most terrible mess? ‘It wasn’t me, Mum, it was a Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil?’ Try saying that – and see how far you get! All Felicity Frobisher wants is a quiet life. But she’s being bulli …

Look around you… The reflection of your face in a window tells you that the universe at its deepest level is orchestrated by chance. The iron in a spot of blood on your finger tells you that out in space there must be a furnace at a temperature of 4. …

Where did we come from, and what the hell are we doing here? Is Elvis alive and kicking in another space domain? What’s beyond the edge of the Universe? Did aliens build the stars? Can we live forever? Acclaimed popular science writer Marcus Chown take …

Can time run backwards? Can we live forever? Could our universe have been created as a DIY experiment by superior beings in another universe? These questions may sound crazy but they explore the limits of our current knowledge and highlight the key iss …

Every atom in our bodies has an extraordinary history. Our blood, our food, our books, our clothes – everything contains atoms forged in blistering furnaces deep inside stars, which were blown into space by those stars’ cataclysmic explosions and death …

It’s the oldest fossil in creation… It accounts for 99.9% of all the light in the Universe … Its discoverers mistook it for the ‘glow’ of pigeon droppings (yet still carried off the Nobel prize). The discovery in 1992 of ‘cosmic ripples’ – slight v …

Did you know that…? Today’s sunlight is 30,000 years old There is mountain range twice as high as Everest that was built… in an afternoon The body that generates heat at the fastest rate in the Solar System is not the Sun When Galileo pointed his tel …

158 Cards Featuring Stories, Scientific Date, and Big Beautiful Photographs of All the Planets, Moons, and Other Heavenly Bodies That Orbit Our Sun