"The leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Tony Padilla uses nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics to build a picture of our current best understanding of how the universe works"--

Look around you. The reflection of your face in a window tells you about the most shocking discovery in the history of science: that at its deepest level the world is orchestrated by chance; that ultimately, things happen for no reason at all. The iron in a spot of blood on your finger shows you that somewhere out in space there is a furnace at a temperature of 4.5 billion degrees. Static on your TV screen proclaims that the universe had a beginning....

In this deeply original book, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy sets out in search of the telescopes and detectors that promise to answer the biggest questions in modern cosmology. Why is the universe expanding at an ever faster rate? What is the nature of the "dark matter" that makes up almost a quarter of the universe? Why does the universe appear fine-tuned for life? Are there others besides our own? Ananthaswamy soon finds himself at the ends of...

"The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions entertaining, presents in his uniquely lucid voice the fundamental ideas informing the modern physics of reality. Physics offers deep insights into the workings of the universe but those insights come in the form of equations...

"This book frames the nature and importance of modern physics in an accessible, compelling, succinct way, showing lay readers that physics is crucial to our modern understanding of the world-and indeed the world as we currently know and experience it. Through the narrative, the book naturally describes essential facets of what physics is and why it has become such a (some might say, the) fundamental science. In addition, the reader will gain a sense...