Astrophysics for People in a Hurry: Essays on the Universe and Our Place Within It

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One of the most public figures when it comes to science is Neil deGrasse Tyson. A prolific author and speaker, as well as host of the revamped version of the series Cosmos that aired on Fox in 2014, he’s also active on social media, tweeting out scientific nuggets and other insights (including, over the weekend, a series of insights, loosely linked to science, about the latest season of HBO’s Game of Thrones.) The author has a special talent for distilling complex concepts into understandable language, making the book attractive to casual readers as well as those already familiar with astrophysics."

p. 157 onward, he talks about the Cosmic Perspective and various implications. It's just given as a series of facts/ideas. But I think it's pretty deep, esp since his audience is for young people. Things like, The cosmic perspective is spiritual but not religious. The Cosmic perspective requries you see the possibility of a multiverse and whatever that implies for your reality. I think if you're a fiction writer, this whole section is bawler for opening up the mind.NDT is the bestestestest of everyone I've read in science b/c he knows it so well, he can just say it with joy and love. Too many people in these fields take themselves way to seriously, but all the people I've met that are totally brilliant are more like this tone. Fun, joy, just say it. So great. But, there are always enough nuggets to keep your true inner nerd interested: Like when he explains how Quarks have fractional charges that come in thirds, and that the force that keeps two or more of them together actually grows stronger the more you separate them... Wow, right? And the whole discussion on dark energy and dark matter is the coolest bit, because Tyson is at his best in dealing with still unexplored bits of the subject.

He admits, “we are hamstrung in this analysis by not knowing what the dark matter is in the first place. If all mass has gravity, does all gravity have mass? We don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing the matter with the matter, and it’s the gravity we don’t understand.” (Pg. 84) He continues, “We have no clue as to what [dark matter] if… But we desperately need it in our calculations to arrive at an accurate description of the universe.” (Pg. 87) He goes on, “The worst that can happen is we discover that dark matter does not consist of matter at all, but of something else. Could we be seeing the effects of forces from another dimension?... If so, this could be just one of an infinite assortment of universes that comprise the multiverse.” (Pg. 89) By then, the forces we're familiar with had formed: gravity, the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force. We know that there is a lot of dark matter that is yet to be discovered, as only one-sixth of the mass in the universe is made of galaxies and gas clouds. Scientists still don’t know how to detect the rest of the mass, as we don’t even have the devices to recognize new matter. Prhaps the battle for the scientific hearts and minds is as pitched as ever, with the sales of his book a sign not that the scientific worldview Tyson espouses in winning, but rather of the intensity of the fight.Probably the scene with the whipped cream in the coffee shop. Don't argue with Neil deGrasse Tyson about physics, he will win. p. 31 - He uses this idea and then gets philosophical in a cool way. Like science can figure out the beginning of the universe, but before that, it's tough. Then he goes on and is like: "scientists have to admit what we don't know all the time. People who believe they know everything have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and what is unknown in the universe." Deep. Since as much as we know – or, as in this case, have probably predicted well enough about the universe – there’s much more that we don’t know.