Human Universe
Human Universe book cover

Human Universe

Hardcover – Illustrated, March 17, 2015

Price
$19.33
Format
Hardcover
Pages
288
Publisher
William Collins
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0007488803
Dimensions
8.9 x 1.02 x 11.26 inches
Weight
3.24 pounds

Description

Review Praise for Professor Brian Cox: ‘Cox’s romantic, lyrical approach to astrophysics all adds up to an experience that feels less like homework and more like having a story told to you. A really good story, too.’ Guardian ‘He bridges the gap between our childish sense of wonder and a rather more professional grasp of the scale of things.’ Independent ‘If you didn’t utter a wow watching the TV, you will while reading the book.’ The Times ‘In this book of the acclaimed BBC2 TV series, Professor Cox shows us the cosmos as we have never seen it before – a place full of the most bizarre and powerful natural phenomena.’ Sunday Express ‘Will entertain and delight … what a priceless gift that would be.’ Independent on Sunday About the Author Professor Brian Cox, OBE is a particle physicist, a Royal Society research fellow, and a professor at the University of Manchester as well as researcher on one of the most ambitious experiments on Earth, the ATLAS experiment on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. He is best known to the public as a science broadcaster and presenter of the highly popular BBC2 series Wonders of the Solar System. He was also the keyboard player in the UK pop band D:Ream in the 1990s.

Features & Highlights

  • Top ten
  • Sunday Times
  • Bestseller
  • ‘Engaging, ambitious and creative’
  • Guardian
  • Where are we? Are we alone? Who are we? Why are we here? What is our future?
  • Human Universe
  • tackles some of the greatest questions that humans have asked to try and understand the very nature of ourselves and the Universe in which we live.
  • Through the endless leaps of human minds, it explores the extraordinary depth of our knowledge today and where our curiosity may lead us in the future. With groundbreaking insight it reveals how time, physics and chemistry came together to create a creature that can wonder at its own existence, blessed with an unquenchable thirst to discover not just where it came from, but how it can think, where it is going and if it is alone.
  • Accompanies the acclaimed BBC TV series.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(1.3K)
★★★★
25%
(543)
★★★
15%
(326)
★★
7%
(152)
-7%
(-152)

Most Helpful Reviews

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I was struck by Brian Cox's sense of wonder

The "agency model of pricing" should in no way reflect on Brian Cox's work. Therefore I would like to provide some balance in the universe of reviews by giving his effort 5 stars before reading the entire text. I would do so even without having read any of the text, because sitting on my desk is a diagram (shared with you here) that I drew just yesterday relating our universe with human behavior based on the interaction of evolving systems. This morning Amazon (whose perception of my needs now verges on ESP - some AI software that!) sent me a notification of Brian Cox's book, which I immediately purchased. Because I bought the hardcopy edition (ebooks are great as quick reference sources, but no more than that - in part because they do not make an impressive stack on the coffee table), I also received the partial electronic version from which I draw the following conclusions.

I was struck by Cox's sense of wonder and his relishing in the fact that there is so much to wonder about in our observable (and unobservable) universe. But at the same time he is not shy in introducing the reader to the kind of reasoning that took us from wonder and superstition to a sense of understanding capable of prediction. That's a big leap and worthy of a discussion in itself, which is provided so admirably in this book. As a spokesperson for cosmological ideas, he is the equivalent both in a literary and stage presence to our own Brian Greene ("The Elegant Universe" et al). I leave Brian Cox with one additional thought - which I believe can be attributed to Albert Einstein - that mankind is ultimately the universe's way of knowing about the universe.
17 people found this helpful
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Amazing Evidence

Amazing evidence we are the Universe and its consciousness.
1 people found this helpful
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Readable account of the science of the universe.

A readable account of the birth and death of stars , the formation of planets and much else.
I was particularly fascinated by the inflationary era before the Big Bang. This was new to me.
I noticed a few things-the book is a companion to a TV series. There are a LOT of pictures of the author. One is reminded of Carl Sagan.
On page 96 the author refers to a temperature of -1500 degrees Celsius- this must be a typo.
1 people found this helpful
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I am unable to play this Blu-Ray DVD on my ...

I am unable to play this Blu-Ray DVD on my laptop, PS3 or Panasonic Blu-Ray DVD player. Is anyone else having this issue?
My drivers and firmware are current on all devices.

The sound plays, but I am not getting any video.....

Any advice is appreciated!
1 people found this helpful
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Worth reading.

Awesome book!
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Five Stars

Superb
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Five Stars

just wonderful for a non scientific based person
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Five Stars

This book like its predecessors is terrific. I love Brian Cox's enthusiasm for scientific literacy and critical thinking.