Book Review: The End of Everything

The End of Everything, by Katie Mack

    If you learn just one thing about this book, it is this: Read the footnotes.

    Footnotes generally are boring, giving you a citation, notation, or annotation too dull or obscure for the text. Some readers skip them, viewing them as a way to shorten the page.

    But Mack's footnotes are as good as the main text. They are enlightening and witty. Miss one, and you'll miss a lot.

    Take, for instance, the way they liven up an early story she tells about the discovery that proved the existence of the cosmic microwave background. Briefly -- and I hope I get this right -- scientists were setting up an experiment with a microwave detector when they heard a strange humming noise. They could not figure out what it was, and took to blaming a nearby flock of pigeons. They tested that theory with another experiment.* 

    (*Footnote: Sadly, this line of questioning did not end well for the pigeons, who were innocent of all wrongdoing.)

    Eventually, this group of scientists unknowingly found proof of the cosmic microwave background, and won a Nobel Prize in 1978 for their work. Some 41 years later, she says, the goup that first theorized the existence of the background won a Nobel Prize for coming up with the idea.*

    (*Footnote: So maybe there is some justice in the end. Just not for the pigeons.)

     But of course, it's not just the footnotes that make this book such a good read -- it's her knowledge, presentation, and research skills. She is well versed in her subject of cosmology, and what she doesn't know, she counts on the work of those who came before her -- the legendary giants of the astrophysics world and their historic precepts.

    In this book, she sets out to explain how the universe will end. She gets into several theories of eschatology, and uses them to delve deeper into some of the more esoteric theories of physics and astronomy. It's a fun learning experience about the thought experiments and the larger concepts of where we live, how it came to be, and where it might end up.  

   

    And Mack explains it well. She is an excellent writer, and she has a knack for the perfect analogy or metaphor. Astrophysics has difficult concepts, but after reading this book I think I better understand things such as a singularity, the cosmic inflation, the expanding universe, and the fact that the observable universe is just a small part of the whole -- and why that is true.

    That all being said, I must say the book seems to slow down near the end. At some points, Mack turns philosophical, always a danger for a scientist. And she seems to turn from being the knowledgeable teacher to almost a journalist, talking to others and quoting their thoughts and ideas. It does add perspective, but it comes across as a little extra padding.

    But still, where else can you learn about the "quantum bubble of death," also know as vacuum decay,  which is one of the ways this whole universe could end? It's rght there alongside the possibilities of the Big Rip and the Big Crunch.

    My preferred band name, howver, will always be the Quantum Bubble of Death.