Just Six Numbers

published

2011-12-24

rating

3

Despite the fact that this book is intended for the general public, it is fairly interesting. It takes the somewhat unique approach of analyzing physics through numbers that represent ratios of fundamental physical constants. The numbers he inspects are: electromagnetism to gravity strength, energy from hydrogen-> helium fusion to energy in hydrogen, the amount of dark matter to amount needed for constant universe, hypothetical cosmological constant(antigravity), amount of energy required to break up galaxies to amount of energy in them, and the number of spatial dimensions. He presents these as variables that seem to be extremely fine tuned to allow for the creation of life. Hence it somewhat gets into the anthropic principle and the multiverse concept. However, there is a fair amount of enlightening information that set it apart from a standard general audience book.