So I was lucky enough to have this little gem bought for me last month by my partner.
Clearly a glutton for punishment as she knows just how much I enjoy talking about all things Cosmological. (for anyone confused already, Cosmology is the study of the Universe, not of coffee, shoes and Prada)

Much to my surprise, I hadn’t used up all of my good luck for the week as Marcus himself announced he was doing a book signing at a store in Soho which was a happily short crawl from where I was working. It was a real privilege to see as Marcus is able to talk science in the way that we all wished our teachers could; sucking you in with the big, bold and bewildering before laying out science so digestible and addictive you feel like you’ve been stuffing your mouth with canapes. Not at all guilty.

That much is as true in Marcus’ writing and he is excellent at making his work approachable for all levels of interest. His previous book, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You was my first taste and like a few other noteworthy books (Death by Black Hole by Neil DeGrasse Tyson being one of them) it goes everywhere with me as I can’t help but flick through it.

Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You has been read by colleagues, bought as a gift for friends and even flicked through by each of my immediate family.

High praise from them includes:
“No way!” from my little brother and the odd “Hang on!!” from Dad

The Times said of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You that “You will experience happy Eureka moments” and that is certainly true. To read something staggering such as it would take 10 Million atoms, laid end to end to fill the space of a single full-stop is equally as satisfying as realising you’ve actually understood everything you’ve just read!

In fact Marcus’ books are all full of wonderful, affirming moments like this which are a testament to his ability to talk science in a way that makes sense!

We Need to Talk About Kelvin captures the same essence of what makes Marcus’ books such a pleasure to read, for myself and for those close to me who have also read it and had little eureka moments themselves. Kelvin doesn’t completely cover the same territory as Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You which is fantastic as Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You left me hungry for more and seeking out more and more books to sate that appetite (I should think that is the goal Marcus is working toward). What Kelvin offers is an even more accessible insight into the fundamental weirdness of reality with fantastic analogies keeping the science grounded in a way anyone can understand.

Unlike some of their contemporaries (such as A Brief History of Time) Marcus’s books don’t have you re-reading a particular chapter in order to understand it, but be warned, you will end up re-reading chapters in order to believe it.

For those of you who aren’t following @marcuschown on Twitter, I strongly suggest you do so, as not only is he a writer who makes himself available to fans in a way that is incredibly generous he is also a source of some fantastic information, be it through books, discussions or his articles for New Scientist.

For more dates on Marcus’s Blog tour, check out his website and for information on his upcomming book on the historical discovery of the evidence behind the big bang The Afterglow of Creation.

Interview with Marcus Chown

• @Rossmagichoward

  Afternoon Marcus, thanks a lot for offering to answer a few short questions.

  I’m completely baffled as to where you find the energy to make yourself so available to your readers, not that I’m complaining!

• @MarcusChown

  It makes perfect sense to me. Readers like my books – Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, for instance, has sold more than 50,000 Copies – whereas review editors, for whatever reason, tend to pass them over.

  I could get bitter and twisted about this! Or I could do what I do, which is interact with the people who like my books – the readers – and not worry about the rest.

  In the end it’s the readers that matter. If they get something out of my books then that gives me a lot of satisfaction. And, of course, they are the ones who ultimately pay my gas bill!

• @Rossmagichoward

  How did We Need to Talk About Kelvin measure up to your previous titles? Was it tricky to write about or think of interesting material? Was it hard choosing the topics you did out of the plethora of subjects available?

• @MarcusChown

  The theme – what everyday things tell us about the Universe – proved to be a powerful unifying thread on which to hang lots of things I am interested in. So it wasn’t too hard choosing material.

  For instance, I immediately thought of a face reflected in a window, and how it tells us that ultimately the Universe is based on Random Chance, the Quantum roll of a dice –arguably the most shocking discovery in the history of science.

  Then I thought of things like the existence of Iron in your blood, which tells you that somewhere in the Universe there must be a furnace at a temperature of at least 5 Billion Degrees – the temperature needed for nuclear reactions to forge iron.
  After this, it sort of snowballed and I came up with lots more everyday things that tell us profound things about the Universe.

  At one point, however, I did canvass some physicists I know to see if they had any ideas. One pointed out a fun everyday observation that I had overlooked – that there are no Aliens on earth (when a simple piece of reasoning implies there should be). I leapt on it because it made a fun chapter for my book – in fact, the last chapter.

  It’s the one everyday observation in my book for which we do not know the profound thing it is telling us (if indeed it is telling us something profound at all!). It could be –as many suggest – that we are the first intelligence to arise in our Galaxy and that we are condemned to cosmic loneliness, never to find anyone else to share our experiences with.

  Or it could be that it’s so incredibly dangerous out there that any Intelligence that builds starships and ventures away from its home Star System is quickly wiped out. Or it could be any of a number of such things. It seemed a fitting to finish the book on such an observation, where your guess is as good as mine!

• @Rossmagichoward

  Is there anything that didn’t make the cut that you wish did?

• @MarcusChown

  I was fascinated by the fact that Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity – which changed our whole view of space and time, telling us among other things that time slows down when you are travelling fast – is a consequence of just two things:

  1) The fact that things appear the same, no matter what speed you are travelling (as long as it’s a constant speed). For example, you can play cricket on a playing field or along the aisle of a speeding train. And…

  2) The fact that things appear the same no matter how you rotate them. For instance, it doesn’t matter if you’re throwing a ball to someone to the north of you or to the east, the ball follows a similar trajectory.

  What’s interesting about this is that, In place of 2) Einstein had the fact that the speed of light is the same no matter what your motion, something which required late-19th Century Physics. But he didn’t even need it! In fact, 1) and 2) above are all you need to deduce Special Relativity. And they are everyday observations!

  In other words, Galileo could have come up with Relativity – 300 years before Einstein!.

  The reason I didn’t included this in my book was that the physicist I needed to talk to me about this was not available and my deadline for handing the book in was fast approaching.

• @Rossmagichoward

  Any little factoids you might have squirreled away for a future book?

• @MarcusChown

  Here’s one about Gravity: Everyone thinks it sucks but in most of the Universe it BLOWS!

• @Rossmagichoward

  You mention in the book that during the Industrial Revolution people’s impression of the sun as a giant lump of coal was prevalent. In a sense that if you’re a hammer, all of your problems look like nails, how guilty are we of interpreting reality through our current technologies? To name one, flirting with the idea of us living in a computer simulation.

• @MarcusChown

  Yes, you’ve put your finger on something I find amusing. As you say, in the 19th Century, In a steam-powered world, Physicists wondered whether the sun was a lump of coal (mind you at a million kilometres across, It would have been the mother of all lumps of coal!).

  Today, in a world overrun with computers, physicists speculate that the Universe is processing information – computing! I leave it to the readers to consider how likely it is that today’s physicists will be proved right!

• @Rossmagichoward

  With the LHCs current success at testing, what are you hoping/dreading they’ll find? I’ve heard some people in the scientific community saying that if the Higgs does reveal itself, that’ll wrap things up pretty quickly!

• @MarcusChown

  In order to get the funding to build the LHC, the Physicists involved said it might find two main things:

  1) Is the Higgs Particle. This is a hypothetical subatomic particle that endows matter with “Mass”. The idea is that unseen Higgses crowd all of space and, just like a crowd at a football match, impede motion through them. So when you try and push your fridge and it’s hard to budge, it’s because of all the Higgses you’re pushing it through – they act a bit like treacle!

  2) Concerns the mysterious “Dark Matter” that appears to outweigh the visible stars and galaxies by about a factor of 6. It gives out no light but we know it’s out there because it’s tugging on the visible stars and galaxies. One idea is that it is made of hitherto undiscovered subatomic particles. The lightest of these dubbed the “Neutralino”.

  So the LHC is hoping to find the Neutralino and the Higgs. But, if it finds either of these, that won’t “wrap things up”, to use your words. The most exciting thing is that it will discover something nobody expects, which is that experiments like this have always done historically.

  And one of those unexpected things might be that the LHC does not find the Higgs or Neutralino at all! In which case, Physicists will have to go back to the drawing board, and a whole new – and exciting – chapter in Physics will begin.

• @Rossmagichoward

  You go into great detail about the likelihood and ramifications of there being other intelligent life out there and surely if our existence supports the Anthropic Principle, there must be. What position do you think we are in? Should we be happily volunteering to evolve and travel and spread ourselves throughout the galaxy or should we be content to sit back and wait for ET to pick up the phone? (The speed of light and technological limitations aside!)

• @MarcusChown

  The Anthropic Principle is a curiously topsy-turvy logic. It says that the fact of our existence is a crucial observation. Or, more specifically, the laws of physics are the way there are because, if they were not, there would be no Galaxies and Stars and Planets and we would not be here to wonder why the laws of physics are the way they are! If you see what I mean…!
  

  Strictly speaking, however, the Anthropic Principle says only that it is our existence that explains why the laws of physics are as we observe them. There may be other intelligences out there in the Universe. But it could also be that we are the only one.

  That would be sad, so I hope its not true.

• @Rossmagichoward

  I really enjoyed mention of Fritz Houterman’s “Only I know why the stars shine” one-liner, Its one of many funny moments the book has.

  But what I’d like to know – if you’ll pardon my cheek – have you ever had the gall try that out yourself or do you know of any others for anyone out there slightly less scrupulous?

• @MarcusChown

  Glad you liked the Houtermans Mention. He is certainly one of the most colourful Physicist of the 20th Century. While working on the German Atomic Bomb Project, he managed to get a message out to the allies, warning “Hurry up, We are close!” At one point, he convinced the Nazi hierarchy that Macedonian Tobacco was essential for the production of Heavy Water. By the time they discovered the lie, he had smoked his way through two bags!

  He was tortured, he was always being tortured. He was tortured by the Nazis for being a Communist spy. He was tortured by the Russians for being a Nazi spy.
  And it was because he was separated from his wife (Charlotte Riefenstahl) while in a Soviet Labour Camp and not re-united with her until long after the war, that he married her twice!

  I think you’re referring to the episode, after he had figured out that nuclear reactions power the stars, when he first impressed her…

  Two nights later, goes a story related by Houtermans. He was out with his girlfriend when she looked up at the stars and said: “Don’t they shine beautifully?” To which Houtermans replied proudly: “I’ve known since yesterday why it is that they shine.”

  I haven’t had the gall to try out such a line. But i do remember, on a skiing holiday years ago, walking with a girl I’d just met under a crystal clear sky, pointing out the odd star! It sounds cringe-worthy now, but at the time…!

  Mind you, telling my wife about how the stars shine would be a sure way to make her eyes glaze over!

  Glad you like the humour in my books. I try hard to be as light as I can with my books – with the titles, the titles of chapters, the quotes I use etc. Hope you liked the Homer Simpson saying: “There’s so much I don’t know about Astrophysics. I wish I’d read that book by that Wheelchair Guy!” Or Woody Allen’s: “Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.”

  Comedy has been a new and fun experience for me this year, and I really enjoyed doing BBC4’s It’s Only a Theory with Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter (thought it was nerve-racking). Not to mention my very silly children’s book; Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil. I had more fun writing that than any other book I have written. And it was amazing to see the reaction of children at all the schools I visited.

• @Rossmagichoward

  Thanks a lot for taking the time to interview for my blog Marcus, it’s been great fun and a great pleasure.

• @MarcusChown

  Thanks, Ross, for your great questions and for hosting this leg of my Blog Tour!

Given the Success of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and the fact that We Need to Talk About Kelvin is equally satisfying and engrossing, The Afterglow of Creation definately won’t be one to miss!

For the next leg of Marcus’ blog tour, please visit: http://gaskella.blogspot.com