Author:Marcus Chown
Every atom in our bodies has an extraordinary history. Our blood, our food, our books, our clothes - everything contains atoms forged in blistering furnaces deep inside stars, which were blown into space by those stars' cataclysmic explosions and deaths. From red giants - stars so enormous they could engulf a million suns - to supernova explosions - the most violent events in the universe - the birth of every atom was marked by cosmic events on an enormous scale, against a backdrop of unimaginable heat and cold, brightness and darkness, space and time. But how did we discover the astonishing truth about our cosmic origins? THE MAGIC FURNACE is Marcus Chown's extraordinary account of how scientists unravelled the mystery of atoms, and helped to explain the dawn of life. It is one of the greatest detective stories in the history of science. In fact, it is two puzzles intertwined, for the stars contain the key to unlocking the secret of atoms, and the atoms the solution to the secret of stars.
A clear introduction to a fascinating area of physics and astronomy. Chown is to be congratulated on a beautifully crafted book.
—— New ScientistKeeps readers anxious for the next puzzle piece to fall into place. It reads like a Sherlock Holmes novel
—— AstronomyThe work of a literary alchemist who tranmutes the iron of complexity into the gold of lucidity
—— The TennesseanThe strength of The Magic Furnace is in the story. It never gets bogged down in scientific jargon
—— Sky & Telescope[A] tour-de-force of science writing...peels away layers of detail and reveals the stunning essence of cutting-edge physics
—— Shing-Tung Yau, Harvard University; Fields Medalist, winner of the National Medal of ScienceGreene has brought an absorbing field of enquiry to vivid life
—— NatureGreene probably delivers as deep an understanding of this esoteric material as is possible for a lay reader to take on board
—— HeraldGreene has done a brilliant job of explaining the ideas of Superstring Theory and M-theory in everyday terms
—— New ScientistGreene's achievement in The Elegant Universe is to make us feel at home in the chillingly abstract world of strings
—— Sunday TelegraphA theory of physics which defies empirical confirmation, predicts there are ten dimensions and proposes that the fundamental particles of matter are infinitely tiny strings is not the obvious basis for a bestseller, but Greene makes it zip along
—— Nigel Hawkes , The Times
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