K.C. Cole has the rare ability to make the physical world both comprehensible and entertaining. I never thought I'd curl up with a good physics book but I found her brief commentaries obliterate the usual arbitrary separation between science and the humanities. In fact, it is by making physics so humanistic that she makes it clear to those of us who have difficulties understanding numerical concepts or apparently obscure ideas like space-time, quarks, and black holes. "Physics is simple," she writes, ". . . .consider the harmonics of a bottle of beer. Blow over the top, and you can make a series of different sounds, depending on how hard you blow and how much beer is left in the bottle. And lo and behold, it is by analyzing a very similar set of harmonics set up by the sloshing of gas and light in the early universe that astronomers have been able to put their ears to the cosmos, listening in on its babblings from the first moment of time. And here's what Cole, the mistress of metaphor, has to say about how Einstein's theory of relativity explains gravity as a curvature of space-time: "It's like an elephant sitting on a waterbed. Heavy objects bend space-time into "gravity wells" that pull other object in." If Einstein had put it that way in the first place, I wouldn't have had to wait this long to get it. Thanks, K. C. Cole.

Back during the brief period when the Los Angeles Times pretended to care about science it ran a weekly column by K. C. Cole. The Times, unfortunately, has reverted to viewing science as something to egregiously misrepresent in its daily reporting. But Cole's columns live on, and are now available to a larger audience. A physicist by training, I am often disappointed by science books because they achieve understandability by subtly misrepresenting the essence of difficult concepts. Cole, on the other hand, has a knack for explaining difficult concepts in simple terms without sacrificing veracity. This book is both a pleasurable and accurate read on topics of current interest in science. I highly recommend it to people wanting to better understand modern science.

This is a book about "nothing" inspired by recent discoveries in physics, similar to the one written by Brit physicist John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe (2000). While Barrow devoted several chapters to the history of the concept of zero and the idea of nothing, Cole, while covering much of the same territory, emphasizes recent discoveries about the vacuum and ideas from string and loop theory while her extensive use of quotations gives her book a more journalist feel. Otherwise the books are strikingly similar, even to the typographic use of subheads in capital letters followed by epigram-like quotes from various authors that break up the text. It's almost as if the same person did the layout for both books! Both authors sometimes even use the same examples, e.g., John Cage's "musical composition" entitled, 4' 33" (four minutes and 33 seconds of pure silence). Noteworthy in Cole's book is the interesting material on silence beginning on page 211 and then some examples from the psychology of perception on pages 214-231 with an excursion into the concept of nothing from Zen Buddhism.

Cole is a science journalist who writes for the Los Angeles Times and is the author of The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty (1998) and First You Build a Cloud: And Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life (1999). I enjoyed both books and reviewed the latter favorably for Amazon.com readers, and so it was with pleasant anticipation the I began reading The Hole in the Universe, hoping that I would learn more about the bizarre properties of the vacuum than I was to glean from Barrow's excellent book. What I learned was just how difficult the subject really is, and how far removed it is from our common sense notions about the world.

I would rate this book higher but sometimes Cole's ready metaphors and analogies run into each other, further obscuring an already dusky subject matter, and there are some slips. She writes on page 251, "It's easy to imagine ten dimensions of space because you can just add one on top of the other." (Not for me, at any rate, it isn't.) And there's a bad take on the anthropic principle on page 242. Cole writes. "...in a sense, our very perception determines the kind of universe we populate." It's really the other way around: we are created from the stuff of the universe and that stuff determines our perception. It's not even clear that "We perceive the only universe we can perceive" (also from page 242), because the universe could be a little different and we could still perceive it. Finally, Cole, in discussing the Higgs field, uses the simile, "the Higgs field to our universe is like water to a fish--the same everywhere and therefore utterly imperceptible." We can imagine that the fish "perceives" the water when it touches the sand at the bottom and when it leaps above the surface.

These quibbles aside, this is an exciting and stimulating book. Let me share some impressions:

First, it is apparent that there is no such thing as nothing, or I should say, nothing is something!

Second, the idea that time and space began with the big bang and that there was nothing as a matter of definition beyond the big bang can be discarded. It now seems more likely that our universe is just one of a possible infinity of universes, popping probabilistically out of the vacuum that used to be nothing but is now a bubbling caldron of potential energy.

Third, my favorite question, Why is there something rather than nothing? has an easy answer: There is something rather than nothing because there is no such thing as nothing.

Fourth, the world of string theory with its eleven dimensions and it ultra tiny strings at the scale of 10 to the minus 33 centimeters, is entirely of the stuff we will never perceive or have any ability to comprehend beyond the report of the equations.

Fifth, the old bugaboo about the universe having no beginning or being created from nothing is no longer such a quandary because, One, nothing is something; and Two, nothing has always been here. In other words, the question is answered: the universe (or mega-universe or super-universe, or whatever) had no beginning and is eternal. (God, the creator, is not going to like this, but I'm sure something can be worked out.)

Sixth, perhaps, as Cole suggests in the final chapter, a good definition of "nothing" is perfect symmetry.

Finally, I came away from reading this book with the clear sense that the universe exists indefinitely in every direction from the macro to the micro, from the distant past to the distance future. In other words, we exist not as on a darkling plain as the poet Matthew Arnold had it, but in a bubble of space and time smack in the middle of a possible infinity of bubbles, our ability to see in any one "direction" limited by our senses and our instruments, but enhanced by our ability to reason and extrapolate from evidence, but ultimately stopped cold by our imaginations and the realization of how really tiny is our arena of discernment compared to the incredible vastness gaping away from us in any and all directions. If this realization doesn't make us humble and awestruck, I don't know what will.

Incidentally, both Cole and Barrow, while carousing merrily about all sorts of whimsical notions of nothing, failed to acknowledge the "god of nothing," that is, the ineffable god of the Vedas about whom nothing can be said: "Neti, neti, neti"--not this, not this, and not this!

K.C. Cole's previous books gave the non-scientific reader a delicious taste of what physics is all about. This time she has provided a multicourse meal, cleverly cooked up out of nothing at all.

Building on a foundation of nothing, she constructs the multifaceted story of what scientists know about the universe today. She even takes you to the universe inside the brain to show how nothing matters in there just as much as nothing matters out in space. Understanding nothing is also the essence of understanding matter and mathematics.

Nobody expresses herself in print more clearly about these things. Cole gracefully skates over the surface of nothing, poking holes in it here and there to reveal all the something that nothing conceals. In some places she gets pretty deep; in some places she skates right to the edge of scientific knowledge. It is a very up to date book.

She does like to make a lot of nothing puns, but that is after all what the book is about. As for critics who suggest that only scientists should write about science, that's like saying only football players should be allowed to announce the Super Bowl. Doing science and explaining science are too different things, and for the general reader, nobody does the latter better than K.C. Cole.

Physics -- in particular quantum physics and Einstein's theories -- has always fascinated me. And, though I've admittedly not read many physics books (I was a biology major), most of them lose me in the math early on, and I am quickly frustrated with them. That is, it's often hard for me to see the big picture and conceptually understand what the author is talking about. Perhaps I am dense (aka stupid) but my desire to understand physics has always been there. This book was written for people like me...

KC Cole amazingly pulls together the current theories in cosmology, string theory, etc., into one coherent statement that is an amazing, stirring read. She doesn't write like a physicist but rather speaks in layman's terms. As a non-physicist, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and plan further readings of "real" physics books now that I have a bigger picture to start from.

If you already understand much in physics, this book admittedly isn't for you. But, if you love science, but have never quite been able to get a foothold in the world of quantum states and quarks, this is a great place to start. The ideas, eloquently expressed, will leave you in awe.

K.C. Cole in her profession as a journalist has set herself to write science for the general public. With an animated and direct prose, use of analogies, and extensively quoting from a wide array of distinguished scientists, Cole brings physics into everyday life. This a book that my seem superficial to the eyes of readers who are seeking in-depth scientific data, formulas and theories, and they might be right in thinking so. For Cole the idea that science is inseparable from philosophy is a theme that pervades her book. Her purpose therefore, is to share and explain the most basic concepts of modern physics with those who are still having trouble in grasping the concepts of gravity, elementary particles, matter, space, time, quantum mechanics, and bring forth how present day physics stands with respect to elementary philosophical issues.

Consequently, we are faced with the fact that relativity and quantum theory have completely changed the way we think about everything from time and space to energy and matter. Very little in science is actually wrong and nothing in science is ever completely right. Scientific truths are better regarded as relationships holding in some limited domain. Things must be learned only to be unlearned again, or more likely, to be corrected. The philosophical perspective shows that there are many windows to reality and human science no longer experiences the world through our rather "narrow" senses. Present day physics forces us (whether we like it or not) to accept complementarity: because one view is right, the opposite view isn't necessarily wrong! The very reality of the order in random events has totally altered the meaning of our notion of causes. We are left with the further and perhaps more fundamental paradox that chance follows laws!

When science looks into the future the vision is of how much needs to be further learned and explored in an open realm where dogmas have no place. This is what makes this unpretentious science book worth reading.

...There is no way an author can convey the enthusiasm of science to people with no scientific background whatsoever... However, for the average (and above) person interested in how science informs everyday life, this is one of the best books to own. It is particularly effective if you have a college background in the physical sciences or math. Below I review some of the stronger, as well as a few weaker, points of the book.

First, K.C. Cole effectively conveys the spirit of science in a nonmathematical (i.e. more visual and instinctive) way. It is a shame that almost all physics books are written so informally that the reader has to labor hard to enjoy the process (as well as results) of physics. Miss Cole, on the other hand, brings home in plain language the beauty of science. She is not afraid to use everyday examples to make physics tangeable to the average person.

For example, she uses the analogy of the gears in a car (reverse, first, second... fifth) to explain that quantum mechanics is not that foreign afterall. I think her very human approach to science is desirable and effective. When people see how science affects every aspect of their daily lives, they WILL care about it. The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates started out as a natural scientist, but eventually became a philosopher because he saw that the nature of the human life matters as much as physical science. And (at leat two and a half millenia ago) it was not clear that science could lead to ethics. The scientists that Cole has chosen to convey the language of science to the general public (the Ancient Greeks, the Oppenheimer brothers, her "friend the physicist" Weisskopf, Feynman, Einstein, Gould, Sir James Jeans, and others) were multifaceted personalities who cared deeply about conveying science to the average person, as well as the way in which science affects human lives.

Compared to heavyweight physicists such as Brian Greene or Michio Kaku, K.C. Cole is even more passionate about the role of science, yet does not avoid using rigorous science when appropriate. The book (rightly so) focuses mostly on modern physics. Quantum physics is covered in detail spread out in several chapters. This is useful because there is no other branch of physics that leads more naturally to philosophy.

While this is not a "how things work" book, it uses selective examples to point out how much more we now know than our predecessors. She points out that quantum physics actually explains the stability and composition of the world, or ts "grainness" (i.e. classical physics allows for an infinite number of atomic configurations -- elements -- but life can only propagate if there is a limited set of elements which can be reused). And the sections that deal with light ... are especially lucid, relevant, and engaging.

Now, some of the weaker points in the book include minor errors in scientific reasoning... (However, in) spite of these minor defects, the book has the three important Es: it is enlightening, entertaining, engaiging. The book is definitely worth reading or recommending to scientifically bent people. K.C. Cole conveys the universal portrait of the scientist who deeply cares not only about his/her research but also about making it available for intellectual enjoyment to the masses...

K.C. Cole's book is not for people who already know, or think they know, everything about physics. It's for people who like to marvel at the wonders of the natural world but find them all too often obscured by the jargon and equations of professional scientists. There is none of that here. The author stands firm for accessibility, and her presentation is lucid and clear. She brings readers the substance of physical science without the pedantry that weighs down many other such expositions. In short, it's an excellent guide to a wide range of fundamental concepts in physics, exploiting every opportunity to show how they illuminate everyday life.

Despite the title, not once in this book is an actual mathematical problem presented coherently. Instead, Cole drones on about the virtues of cooperation, the importance of minorities, and other left-wing philosophical themes. I'm a liberal and would tend to agree with her politically, but that ignores the central problem with this book: Cole's failure to make the distinction between mathematics itself and beliefs that just happen to be justified by statistics or quasi-mathematical reasoning.

Perhaps The Universe and the Teacup is best described as a meta-popularization, since virtually all of Cole's sources are themselves popularizations. She hypes such familiar staples of popular science writing as fuzzy logic, chaos and complexity theory ("all the rage these days" -- I thought that's what they said back in the 80's), and Godel's theorem (both "a shattering blow" AND "a staggering blow to our sense of certainty"), without showing that she understands any of these things on more than a superficial level. (I don't claim to be an expert on these topics, either, but then again I didn't write a book about them.)

For general readers interested in how mathematics relates to everyday life, I'd recommend John Allen Paulos "Innumeracy"; for a survey of modern mathematics, both "From Here To Infinity" by Ian Stewart and "Archimedes' Revenge" by Paul Hoffman succeed where "The Universe and the Teacup" fails.

Chapter two, second paragraph: "The Milky Way galaxy contains 200 billion stars..."
Chapter two, a few pages later: "Fifteen billion is also more or less the number of stars in the galaxy." Obviously, the number of stars in the galaxy is not precisely known, but we do know that 15 billion and 200 billion are two different things. One of the author's "truths" is self-evidently not true. Purveyors of "truth and beauty", whether scientists, gurus, philosophers, spiritual leaders, or journalists, often regard their subject and their audience far too casually. Here we have a case in point. Perhaps most books contain 'typos' and the miscues inherent to humanity, but here it seems that both the author and the editor were asleep at the wheel, something that needs to be addressed if the book achieves a second printing (and I don't see why that would happen).
The subject is truly fascinating; or at least it should be -- the relationship of aesthetics, mathematics, and logic. At the deepest levels of the human intellect's inquiries, the answers are all about a mysterious mathematical beauty. The reality of this escapes most people, which is why the "National Bestseller" heading on the cover of Cole's book intrigued me. Apparently the book has enjoyed a larger readership than most such popularizations. Unfortunately the superficial, disjoined 'newspaper style' of science serves the material poorly. The writing rambles almost aimlessly. The books of many mathematicians and physicists have examined the relationship of reality, reason, mathematics, and aesthetics. Devlin's 'The Language of Mathematics' is very good. Fairly recent works by Penrose, Davies, Rucker, Berlinski, Greene, and others come to mind. Some of these books are far better than others. This volume is one of the others.

Being disenchanted with religion, I picked up this and other books in search of some other kind of truth. I do feel as though after reading this book I have a much better understanding of what 'truth' is and what it's not. I think those who nit-pick about their claims of little discrepancies in the book are really missing out on the bigger picture. The book is full of interesting little facts and factoids but the interesting thing to me was to see how she's pulled together these common insights that are gained from so many fields of study. I think this was just about my favorite book ever.