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: #118698 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

Review
Martin appeared in the Sunday Times 16th February as author of the A Little Night Reading column his paperback writers column for The Guardian Saturday Review, was published on March 29th. An article by Martin was article of the week on www.firstscience.com. The book is mentioned as further reading in a number of articles/reviews of his new book published with Heinemann. Martin appeared on the Fi Glover Program, BBC Radio 5 on Thursday 27th February and a special National Science Week program for BBC Radio Cambridge on March 19th hewas interviewed in more depth by BBC Radio Cambridge on Sunday 6th April. Review have appeared in The Sunday Times and Focus with a notice in Nature re the publication of the paperback. He provides an excellent introduction to thesubject, moving deftly from the extremely large to the very small...SUNDAY TI

Guardian, January 12, 2002 - Steven Poole
… a pleasingly concise and always intriguing tour d’horizon

Customer Reviews

Local bylaws and the multiverse
The first nine chapters of this rather small book give us an excellent summary of our actual scientific and speculative cosmological knowledge.
In the last two chapters the author explains why he believes that the history of our universe is just an episode (a particular Big Bang) in an infinite multiverse (see also Lee Smolin's 'The Life of the Cosmos').

This clearly written (a bonus) book tackles also other important items, like the risk for an encounter with a devastating asteroid, the impact of a unified theory on science, or the still more demote cosmic status of humanity - we are even not made of the dominant stuff in our universe.

A very interesting read. Not to be missed.

Elegantly written science, philosophically slanted.
Martin Rees covers all the current cosmology, explaining what has been thoroughly tested and accepted and covering a lot of speculative stuff that has a good chance of becoming accepted. (He glances off a few non-science ideas too.) He explains in a broad way, without getting into any tricky details the processes of scientific discovery, and why it is that so much should be gambled on string theories. A slight philosophical questioning slant, with nods towards ideas raised in sci-fi. Rees gives as clear an argument as any as to why we should keep searching for answers. Inspiring.

Good concepts and ideas, but not for the light hearted
The book covers many difficult to understand concepts and ideas about our universe. Discusses many topics in depth such as dark matter and multiverses. Perfect book to send the reader off to the land of nod dreaming of the possibilities, sometimes with book in hand.