The magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins
Ebook
Rating 3/5
The audio book has a listening Length of around 6 hours; I finished reading this in less than 3!
Starts with how atom is the smallest part of the matter and then proton and neutron
Then taking about the myths of things like night and day with a couple of Greek and aboriginal stories thrown around (I actually liked those Stories to be Frank!)
Then how earth revolves around the sun!
The an entire chapter on Sun! Starting with the tales about sun and moon of course!
He talks about the epic of Gilgamesh! And then how rainbows are formed the he describes what is light?
The spectrum of light the visible rays to the invisible rays!
The evening primrose flower apparently looks yellow to us with a pattern but with a photograph in ultraviolet light you can certainly see a starburst of stripes!
What is the surprising is that the light we see as the spectrum of rainbow between the slightly higher pitched violet in the slightly lower pitched red is a very tiny band in the middle of a huge spectrum ranging from gamma rays in a high-pitched end to radio waves at the low pitch and almost the whole of the spectrum is invisible to our eyes! We cannot see the ultraviolet and infrared though we do feel the Infared as heat!
He talks about how everything began with some myths from Africa, China and India (the Indian one is told so wrong that I can assume that the others are also told With the mind of an atheist!)
He then talks about spectroscopy and how each element has a bar code; this has been repeated in his other books and also bats and also rainbow and many things!
Too much over lap between this one and his previous book. Also in parallel I was listening to Carl Sagan’s books and the overlap increased! So much so that I had to stop listening to Carl to avoid getting confused!
Are we alone is an often Repeated topic in his books and in Carl’s. Dawkins describes how in California in March 1997 a religious cult called Heaven’s Gate came to a sudden end when all 39 of its members took poison that killed everyone because they believe that a UFO from outer space would take the soul to another world. Of course that bright Dot In The sky which they thought to be an UFO was a comet called the Hale Bopp!
He gives Information about sleep paralysis, false memories, suucubus or incubus!
Then there is a chapter on what we don’t know in science like whether there is a life out there in a Goldilocks planet!
Then a chapter on what is earthquake which reminded me of Bill Brysons book!
One section was my favourite since he was discussing Dhoni and cricket! And the law of averages and coin toss!
He tells about Pollyanna and Sod’s law and Murphy’s law and also pink panther! He tells you to watch the original! (Taking that cue I would tell you to read the original of this book that is Carl Sagan’s Cosmos!)
He talks about auto immunity, about allergy and about cancers! How miracles and coincidences can be explained very well though he had touched upon this point in his previous books as well!
Read it for completion though you will have déjà vu all around!
That’s the tragic reality!
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