If you head off in a spaceship traveling at nearly the speed of light, what horrors await you when you return? Can you change reality just by looking at it? Is it possible to build a Star Trek–type transporter or a working time machine? Why would we build a billion-dollar particle accelerator that Nostradamus and the Mayan calendar have clearly predicted will destroy Earth? Can you be in two places at once? Or three? Or three thousand? If you, or someone you know, live in the universe, you can't afford to remain in ignorance any longer. You need to know the answers to these questions—and most of them will surprise you.
In A User's Guide to the Universe, physicists Dave Goldberg and Jeff Blomquist make good on two promises: you'll get answers and you won't have to decipher any equations to understand them. (Well, maybe just one very short and very familiar equation.)
This quirky and fun book takes you on a fascinating tour of the universe as we know it by asking (and answering) weird and provocative questions on subjects as diverse as special relativity, quantum mechanics, randomness, time travel, the expanding universe, and much more.
You'll discover:
* How fast a light beam travels if you're running beside it
* Whether God does, in point of fact, play dice with the universe
* What happens if you fall into a black hole
* What lies outside the universe
* What happened before the Big Bang
* What dark matter might be
* And much, much more
Complete with the funniest footnotes you've ever seen in a physics book and dozens of charmingly absurd yet helpful illustrations, A User's Guide to the Universe turns mind-blowing science into enjoyable, comprehensible, and fascinating reading.