the end of everything astrophysically speaking by katie mack

Mack acknowledges that many of these concepts are hard to explain without heavy use of mathematics, and then goes on to explain them expertly with no equations whatsoever.

We don’t know for sure which of these dooms will occur because some of the biggest questions in the universe, such as the nature of dark matter and dark energy, remain unanswered. The frame for Mack’s rollicking tour through the nooks and crannies of physics is an exploration of the ways our universe might end, from the relatively mundane (everything just keeps getting further apart forever) to the mildly terrifying (a bubble of death that expands at the speed of light until it devours everything without warning). All of these are true, and Mack entertainingly explains why.

She describes primordial black holes as “awfully cute in a terrifying theoretical kind of way”, antimatter as “matter’s annihilation-happy evil twin”, grand unified theories as “all-in-one particle physics part” and the universe as “frickin’ weird”. What stands out most is Mack’s pure enjoyment of physics, and it is contagious. Its references range from William Shakespeare and Nicolaus Copernicus to Friedrich Nietzsche and modern science fiction. The main text is more like an animated discussion with your favourite quirky and brilliant professor. It is a mantra for her book, which guides readers on a tour of some of the wildest areas of physics and how they will someday contribute to the end of the universe.įor a book on a seemingly grim subject, it made me chuckle on many occasions, particularly the footnotes, which read like a director making snarky asides about her own film. “PHYSICS is wild.” Katie Mack repeats this on at least two occasions in The End of Everything.

The end of everything astrophysically speaking by katie mack