Product Description

Our universe seems strangely 'biophilic,' or hospitable to life. Is this providence or coincidence? According to Martin Rees, the answer depends on the answer to another question, the one posed by Einstein's famous remark: 'What interests me most is whether God could have made the world differently.' This highly engaging book centres on the fascinating consequences of the answer being 'yes'. Rees explores the notion that our universe is just part of a vast 'multiverse,' or ensemble of universes, in which most of the other universes are lifeless. What we call the laws of nature would then be local bylaws, imposed in the aftermath of our own Big Bang. In this scenario, our cosmic habitat would be a special, possibly unique universe where the prevailing laws of physics allowed life to emerge.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1277584 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-06
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 7.80" h x .75" w x 5.08" l, .40 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
It's some two years between Our Cosmic Habitat and Sir Martin Rees' explanation why the universe is the way it is, thanks to Just Six Numbers. Six physical constants express our universe--a universe big enough and long-lived enough to engender consciousness. If the numbers were other than they are, we wouldn't be around to know about it. Our Cosmic Habitat is a smoother read, as Rees works his explanations inwards, from the physical world towards the numbers at its heart. But Rees offers more than a revamped description. The clue to the book's real value lies in the title. Our universe is a habitat. If you want to understand how a habitat works, you have to sweep away the trivia and the accidents, the merely local conditions, and uncover the underlying rules. And it isn't easy.

Could it be that those six numbers could be very slightly different, and still give rise to a conscious universe? If, as Rees speculates, there may be many universes, spawning other universes, all the time, then maybe those six numbers of his merely reflect the rough conditions necessary for the existence of a world such as ours. If he is right, this has massive implications for the kinds of answers physics can at present offer. Sweating over the precise relations between these difficult numbers in the hope of uncovering a "unified theory" will turn out to be as futile as trying to predict the precise arrangement of a snowflake, a column of tap water, the whirl of a thumbprint.

But this, it seems, is the perennial peril of science. One moment you're attaining an objective vision of underlying processes. The next, you're asking the equivalent of why, of all the bars in all the world, she had to walk into yours... --Simon Ings

From Publishers Weekly
The cosmos depicted in this fascinating exploration of astrophysics, now in paperback, is mind-boggling-vast and old and full of supernovae, black holes and mysterious dark matter. But its greatest conundrum is how delicately attuned and "biophilic" a habitat it is. If the laws of nature had been configured just a bit differently-if gravity were slightly stronger, the electron a smidgen heavier, the texture of ripples in the universe a bit rougher or smoother, or the infinitesimal imbalance between matter and anti-matter off by one part in a billion-then galaxies, planets, atoms and life as we know it would have been impossible. Rees, Great Britain's Astronomer Royal and the author of Just Six Numbers: The Forces That Shape the Universe, is a sure guide to the science that illuminates these mysteries, from quantum mechanics to cosmology. He takes us from the Big Bang to the heat death of the universe, exploring along the way how the galaxies gelled, how elements were forged in the furnace of the stars and how planet Earth, ensconced in a warm orbit, stabilized by the Moon and shielded from asteroids by Jupiter's gravitational field, provided a sheltered breeding ground for intelligent life. He also ponders the philosophical significance of a cosmos so finely engineered to support life, asking whether our universe is a big fluke, a miracle of providential design, or just one particularly favored example of an infinite "multiverse." Rees's engaging style, lucid exposition and grand conception make this a wonderful introduction to the biggest of scientific questions.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Is it possible that the ancient, indifferent universe surrounding us is instead a "biophilic" cosmos, to use Rees' coinage? Certainly the cosmologists' calculations indicate that startlingly fine balances were imprinted on the universe in the first infinitesimal moments following the big bang. It is a wonder that any matter exists at all: there was, Rees relates, a one-part-per-billion preponderance of matter over antimatter, and without that equation in place, no vista of stars and galaxies could have formed. Alter other cosmic parameters, like the expansion rate, and the likelihood of life disappears altogether. In the crowded field of popular writing about the universe, Rees is genuinely in the forefront--an accomplished scientist with the superior writing skills that enable him to connect with nonspecialists and are also evident in his previous book, Before the Beginning (1997). He exudes the instinctual curiosity we all possess when looking upward, and he focuses that wonderment on the narrow range of cosmological numbers that allow us to ruminate about it all. A wonderfully appealing presentation. Gilbert Taylor
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