ASTROPHYSICS FOR POEOPLE IN A HURRY BY NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

ASTROPHYSICS FOR POEOPLE IN A HURRY BY NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON
Astrophysics for people in a hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Audiobook

Running length around 3-4 hours

Narrated by the author whose bold baritone voice make you stand up and notice the strength much like his name sake!

Long post which is a summary to save you from reading this book if you are the one who saw Barbie instead of Oppenheimer! Also it’s a refresher if you do plan to watch Oppenheimer again or read this book in the future!

Neil deGrasse is to astrophysics as Yuval Noah Harari is to History! After his stint with the series Big Bang theory and and his very famous pod casts called the star talk; Neil is a super star and a rock start as far as astrophysics is concerned! A star who talks about stars!

Rating 4/5 for the introduction and it is just that! A summary of the wide and vast universe!
5/5 for the zeal and enthusiasm in his voice! He will literally box you away!

After a brief introduction where he talks about how wave and thermodynamics and how the earth is a just a ‘pale blue dot!’ (that’s of course an ode and indication to the seminal work by Carl Sagan!)
In fact an interesting trivia is that The audiobook by Carl Sagan called the Cosmos was narrated by Neil deGrasse!
Small world indeed and in the words of Neil, ‘small universe indeed!’

He talks about how in spite of two different stream of physics, the one equation which joins then is the Einstein’s! Remarkably this was the same dialogue from the series big bang where Sheldon tries to explain dark matter!

In the beginning he starts with the origin of universe. How the big bang occurs and how matter is formed. All in a time line sequence of events.

He talks about the creation of Hedron and then quarks and then the creation of protons.

CERN descriptions largest machine in the world is described and how it is used recreate a similar situation! It is rightly called the Hedron Collider!

He then talks about the wave theory and the structure of nucleus.

He tells us the characters of quarks and their ‘quirks!’

In one chapter he tells how until Einstein mentioned the rules of gravity, no one really thought that the rules which govern the earth are the same rules which govern the universe!

First we thought Earth is special, then realised that it is the sun which is the centre! Then again we thought sun is special only to realise it is just an average star! Then we thought our milky way is pretty amazing only to realise there are more bigger and vast galaxies! Then the final is how we thought our universe is pretty awesome and a big deal only to get to know about the latest theory of multiverse!

Although this would generally deflate the ego of anyone who realises this amazing fact that he or she is not even a dust in the vast universe! (One researcher also wanted to study the effect of such a show on confidence levels!). Neil though tells how humbling it is and makes us special!

He tells about how the waves are found and discovered and talks about infra red and ultraviolet radiation and how they opened up a box of information which our previous scopes did not see since they were concentrating on the visible spectrum!

He tells about only earth and moon and Sun are in perfect sync in that because of the distance of the sun and the size of the sun cancel each other out! Which is the only reason why a tiny but close moon can actually eclipse the huge but far away sun!

Neil mentions how the amount of radio waves emitted from Earth surface may be picked up by an alien system or maybe not! Or they may not think of us as ‘intelligent’ enough! It’s like, even human kid in the third grade is much intelligent than the brightest and most intelligent chimpanzee!
How like our kids learn the numbers in primary school, the alien kid may start with complex algebra! All Neil speculation of course! No need to hit the panic button yet!

He also gives a brief summary of the elements and molecules like how they are arranged in the periodic table. Like how both oxygen and hydrogen are volatile elements but when they combine to form water, it is a fairly laid down and harmless molecule!

In between he also mentions the relative emptiness of the space but still how earth actually pushes through lots of space debris during it’s revolution!

How in spite of huge mountains and structures, from the sky, earth is a flat round sphere!

How the mighty jupiter and it’s gravity saves the earth and other planets from invasion by the space objects!

He tells us about the many asteroids and other space bodies (one of them is named after Neil! Though he tells in al humility that it’s not a great deal!).

How we don’t have to go all the way to the moon to sample the rock and surface there since the meteors and the space dusts get us delivery!

How the light and information from stars are actually timeline of what’s happened or happening!

How mars could have actually developed life first! (He even almost mentions like Ellis Silver that we may not be even from Earth!)

He concludes how his stream Astronomy is the most sublime! The final chapter steps out of the boundary of physics and gets philosophical on how people are starving or believe is creators and fight for their belief!

Of course in the end he states the futility of it all! How the air you are breathing today may have been passed out from Napoleon or Beethoven! How there are bacteria in a small space more than the number of humans in the planet!

The best line is, ‘we do not simply live in this universe, the universe lives within us!’