Human Universe

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This was an amazing read. Brian Cox has a way of mingling mind-bending physics with his own brand of down-to-earth humor which results in a really entertaining read. I'm not a scientists by any stretch of the imagination, but the topics discussed in this book, from the moments before the Big Bang to 'Why are we here?' are explained and discussed in such a way, that anyone can follow the theories and enjoy discovering new science. So when my dogs sniff a lamp post, they do so with the intensity and concentration of a master of wine. It’s no stretch to imagine that, to a dog, the scent of another dog on a lamppost has meaning in every sense as representational as a road sign, a letter, or a message. Scents on lampposts are to dogs what social media are to us: I call it SniffBook. The dogs read and appreciate the status updates left by other dogs, and sometimes leave their comments. To us, these scents are as indistinguishable and as unintelligible as a television programme is to a dog. Brian Cox explores mankind's place in the universe. He considers the possibility of alien life – could it exist and will humans ever find it?

In summary, this is an inspirational and fun book to read. Brian Cox is one of my favorite science personalities and his books reflect his warm, engaging personality. However, this is not his best effort. This book though very good does not live to the standards of some of his previous outstanding books like Wonders of the Universe. That aside, this is an excellent complementary piece to the documentary series of the same name and is worth your time. I recommend it. Accelerating then, through our ancestors, with bigger and bigger brains – increases that coincided with periods when the Earth’s orbit was at its most elliptical and the climate most volatile. Ah, you see it’s impossible to separate us from the cosmos, we’re all tied up together and it all comes down to physics in the end. He does manage to find a very big number, too, in his own head, and yours: 80bn neurons in our brains. The beauty of science at work, evidence for the Big Bang Theory. “It is sufficient to say that the discovery that the universe is still glowing at a temperature of 2.7 degrees above absolute zero was the final evidence that convinced even the most sceptical scientists that the Big Bang theory was the most compelling model for the evolution of the universe.”Our existence is a ridiculous affront to common sense...Our civilisation is a combination of seven billion affronts"

I wrote a book about all this recently – The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution – which, if I say so myself, is doing rather well, but it’s a source of frustration that Professor Cox is in a better position to get his message across: first, because he’s on TV; and, second, because he’s a lot better looking than I am. Jealous? Of course I am. But more concerned, really, than jealous, because Brian’s message (might I call him Brian? I can? Lovely!) is wrong. This book asks questions about our origins, our destiny, and our place in the universe. We have no right to expect answers; we have no right to even ask. But ask and wonder we do. Human Universe is first and foremost a love letter to humanity - a celebration of our outrageous fortune in existing at all. As you would expect, the book is full of interesting factoids. “The Sun is one star amongst 400 billion in the Milky Way Galaxy, itself just one galaxy amongst 350 billion in the observable universe.”Thanks to the artisan glass-blowers of Renaissance Venice, Galileo was able to build the first telescope and discover our orbital position around the sun—relegating us to just one among a number of planets and effecting our demotion from the center of the universe. Cox and Cohen look at five basic questions - where are we? are we alone? who are we? why are we here (not meaning why some man in a beard decided to put us here but what are the conditions that enabled our existence) and, the weakest section, what is our future? Cox is a gifted author and educator; his books are fun and educational. His passion for science and love of humanity is exuded throughout the book. If you are not deterred by very occasional moments of trite humanist polemic, special pleading for investment in hard science and a slight tendency to pander to an American readership, this is an absolutely brilliant introduction to current scientific cosmological thought. Here’s another example, and perhaps a better one. We all recognise that domestic dogs are highly intelligent, social creatures. However, we do not regard them as self-aware in the same way that (we think) we are, because they cannot recognise their reflection in a mirror as belonging to them. But this test – the so-called mirror self-recognition test – is biased towards creatures for which vision is the primary sensory modality. Dogs generally have very poor vision, but this is more than compensated for by their sense of smell, which exceeds ours in sensitivity at least a hundredfold. This means that dogs can identify scents much fainter than we can detect, and also distinguish between scents.

There is much to say on existential risk. I share the authors' puzzlement at our political classes' hitherto slow response to the asteroid issue, far more humanly serious than the threat claimed by the less secure science of climate change. Excellent, easy-to-follow format. Each section begins with a big philosophical question followed up by bite-size supporting topics.Dogs can presumably recognise their own scents and tell them apart from the scents of other dogs as readily as we’d recognise our reflection in a mirror. Would we humans pass for self-aware, based on scent alone? I think not. Neither, then, should we judge the abilities of other animals by own own, unique, species-specific standards. This is another sumptuous book from Professor Cox in conjunction with the BBC tv series of the same name. The book is full or amazing photographs and articles showing the amazing challenges and how we have excelled over them through the ages - from evolutionary imperatives to pushing the boundaries of our planet. Professor Cox is a very human face to what could be a very dry and antiseptic subject. My only possibly criticism is that the this time round they have chosen such a wide subject with so many possible avenues of study that you wonder who really chose the subject matter and what other details did they leave out (as compared to their other subject matters from previous projects - such as Wonders of the Solar System to Wonders of life).

This book asks questions about our origins, our destiny, and our place in the universe. We have no right to expect answers; we have no right to even ask. But ask and wonder we do.

The authors present almost everything they offer us in an uncompromisingly scientifically-based way. They lapse rarely, for example by simply asserting in a few sentences the 'threat of climate change' - either they know and can explain or they cannot. This book is based on its namesake BBC documentary, Human Universe. If you did not see it yet, you should – totally worth it; the others in the series too. Brian Cox does an amazing job presenting it – his enthusiasm and joy are written all over his face and you can hear it also in his voice. Part of that excitement is present here, in the book, too. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring,’ wrote Sagan. In the final episode of the series, Professor Brian Cox explores the future of our home planet, its unfolding relationship with the rest of the universe, and its effect on our destiny as a species.