Chown makes the most complex science accessible!
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This was the first Marcus Chown book i'd read and I was new to the subject matter, so the last thing i needed was an extremely complex heavy going science book, I am glad I got just the opposite! This book includes a plethora of minding blowing ideas currently held in high regard by todays most brilliant minds, and Chown disects each in his own open minded style which leads you to truly entertain each idea on it's own merits and remarkably each idea does have it's merits and any could very well be the true nature of reality. This book made me hungry for more and more knowledge in this field so be warned reading this book could be expensive as the amount of books you will want to purchase after will be remarkable!
Overall an excellent high powered physics/cosmology book with a wide open style full of ideas to blow your mind, enjoy!
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unputdownable
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chown has to be one of the best science writers yet thrown up. i've read them all, and he seems to be the most readable, most digestable and least boring of them all. this book doesn't disappoint. there are chapters on the evolution of the universe, of the multiverses, of life, of the distribution of life etc. it's all highly speculative, of course, but it still makes fascinating reading.
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Beautiful science, beautifully told
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A review on the back of Marcus Chown's earlier book, 'Afterglow of Creation', says - "Beautiful science, beautifully told". It could equally well apply to 'The Universe Next Door'. Unputdownable stuff.
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Delightful!
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I found "The Universe Next Door" delightful. Furthermore, as a non-physicist, I found no difficult statements. I look forward to Marcus Chown's next book.
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A disappointment.
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I have been a fan of Marcus Chown's other work, but I have to say that I really found 'The Universe Next Door' a big disappointment. He deals with twelve different ideas at the (relative) forefront of modern science, and yes, they are fascinating in themselves. But - and it is a big but - they are all dealt with in more detail, and with more skill, elsewhere - by other people, or even sometimes by Chown himself! This is a lazy book which, for all of the interesting ideas it contains, doesn't ever seem to cohere - it reads more like a group of articles stitched together than a real book. If you really want to understand the cutting edge of science, there are a lot of far better books out there than this one.
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