Probable Impossibilities

October 1, 2020
Complex science made accessible. Novelist, physicist, and popular science writer Lightman gathers together essays--some previously published in the New Yorker, Guernica, the New York Times, and other publications--that discuss scientists, their imaginations, and their discoveries. "Spectacular things are going on out there," he writes, "whether we notice or not." As in his previous books of both nonfiction and fiction, Lightman is once again our helpful, genial guide to the mysteries of the universe. He begins with Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), who was "practically unique in being a humanist and a scientist at once." What the author finds most interesting about Pascal is his "imagination of the...infinitely small and the infinitely large." In "What Came Before the Big Bang?" Lightman notes that physicists believe the "entire universe we see today was far smaller than a single atom," and somehow time emerged--or did time already exist? He talks with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll about the future, with its "condition of increasing mess," and the past, with its "increasing tidiness," in terms of the "improbable smoothness of the observable universe." Lightman wonders if space goes on "forever, to infinity?" Or is it "finite but without boundary or edge, like the surface of a sphere"? In the essay "On Nothingness," the author addresses the concept of "empty space" while "Atoms" speculates about the existence of quarks and "extremely tiny one-dimensional 'strings' of energy." Edwin Hubble's 1929 discovery that the universe is expanding is "probably the most important cosmic discovery of all time," and "we expect that the universe will keep expanding forever." Elsewhere, Lightman writes that it's "almost certain that life exists elsewhere in the universe." Discussing visionary physicist Andrei Linde's concept of a "map of the universes," Lightman offers up this head-spinner: It's "possible" that there are "multiple universes, each infinite in extent." Some "might even have different dimensions than our own universe." A roaming, eye-opening, insightful, and literate collection of science writing.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from November 30, 2020
Lightman (Einstein’s Dreams), a physicist and humanities professor at MIT, returns with a wide-ranging collection of 17 essays that explore the place of humans in the cosmos. The entries cover the nature of infinity, the origin of the universe, the “project to create life from nonlife,” and the meaning of consciousness. In “What Came Before the Big Bang?” Lightman addresses the provocative question of whether there must be a relationship between cause and effect, given that “causality can dissolve in the quantum haze of the origin of the universe.” In “Cosmic Biocentrism,” he wonders whether humans’ very existence has any meaning given “life in our universe is a flash in the pan, a few moments in the vast unfolding of time and space in the cosmos.” In the face of such questions, Lightman is resolutely upbeat; the scarcity of life in the universe, for example, makes him “feel some ineffable connection to other living things,” and he argues that other intelligent beings will share a passion for “making science and art and attempting to take stock and record this cosmic panorama of existence.” Lightman’s ability to craft moving prose while accessibly explaining complex scientific concepts is a rare gift. This collection is tough to put down.

December 1, 2020
Physicist and writer Lightman follows his most recent novel, Three Flames (2019), with a collection of radiant essays that opens with a succinct explanation of how it is that most of the atoms in our bodies were forged in stars. He then gracefully links each subsequent scientific elucidation to the human experience by recounting his own personal moments of revelation and concisely and vividly profiling and summarizing the discoveries of key thinkers, from Blaise Pascal to Edwin Hubble, unsung astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Rudolf Clausius (coiner of the term entropy), and quantum cosmologist Sean Carroll. Throughout, Lightman presents provocative pairs of opposites that illuminate "the infinity of the small and the infinity of the large," from nonlife and life to order and disorder, the supernatural and the scientific. Fascinated by the mysteries of consciousness and attuned to the key role imagination plays in science and the arts, Lightman, matching fact with awe, pilots readers on enlivening and enlightening thought voyages into such realms as quantum physics, genetics, miracles, and the expanding universe, each foray offering new coordinates, evocative vistas, and deepened understanding.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.