The bestselling unreadable books of our time have tended to be
about astronomy and cosmology. It seems that, however clear his
prose, the expert cosmologist is dealing with concepts which are
almost impossible to convey in language the ordinary reader can
comprehend. This book is something of an exception. Sir Martin
Bell, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, looked in his Scribner
Lectures at the underlying laws that govern the microworld of atoms
and the grand scale of the cosmos, and in the book which has sprung
from those lectures attempts to understand how these set the stage
for life by allowing the emergence of planets, stars and galaxies.
He asks what culture might inform the world of aliens, should they
exist, and speculates on the nature of the special recipe which,
rather than leading to still-born galaxies with no life, only
sterile uniformity, led instead to the world we know. Of course his
argument gets difficult, but he probably comes nearer than any
other living writer to making it possible for the common reader to
understand (for instance) the fascinating new concept of
super-string theory or M-theory, in which 'each point in our
ordinary space is actually a tightly folded origami in six extra
dimensions, wrapped up on scales perhaps a billion billion times
smaller than an atomic nucleus'. This is not a book to be afraid
of, but one to stimulate the mind, to inform, and - almost - to
explain the extraordinary space we inhabit. (Kirkus UK)
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 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.
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