We all have questions about the universe. Where did we come from? Why are we like this? What even is the universe? Physicists Jorge Cham and Daniel Whitson have made a book to help answer a dozen of the most common questions they get on their podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. Those questions include “Why can’t we time travel?” (it’s not prevented by any laws of physics, so it is possible), “Why haven’t aliens visited us, or have they already?” (there are multiple variables affecting this, including proximity), “Is an asteroid going to hit the Earth and destroy it?” (chances aren’t that high), “Is an afterlife possible?” (the short answer is sort of), and many more. It has hefty bits of text about heavy topics in physics, but they break down the concepts, and Jorge’s cartoons on nearly every page add to the text’s explanation and serve to break up the big blocks of text. They talk about alternate universes, the afterlife, dinosaurs, the concept of continuity, how time is not necessarily a linear march, how sound and radio works, and even more. I really enjoyed it, because of how they explained concepts in a way that you could learn something and was easy to understand, but didn’t make you feel stupid for not knowing a concept. It was also genuinely funny. For example, they explained how possible ment different things to a physicist than an engineer. To a physicist, something is possible if it doesn’t break any laws of physics. A physicist would say that making a mountain out of rice, delivering cakes to people by cannon, turning the moon into a low-gravity theme park, and eating lava are all possible through the lens of physics. However, most engineers would balk at all except for maybe the first. It was a great book, and very informative. 5/5
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