Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Tyson notes that public interest in science, especially the study of the universe at large, has increased greatly with the rush of new discoveries about the cosmos and the growth of science fiction on TV and in film. With that in mind, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry offers “a foundational fluency in all the major ideas and discoveries that drive our modern understanding of the universe” (12).

The universe began as an extremely small dot that underwent a “big bang” and expanded across 14 billion years into the cosmos of today. During the first moment of that explosion, the laws of physics simply didn’t apply, but a trillionth of a second later, the four forces of physics appeared, “with the weak force controlling radioactive decay, the strong force binding the atomic nucleus, the electromagnetic force binding molecules, and gravity binding bulk matter” (20).

At first, the densely packed matter and energy freely changed back and forth into each other in accordance with Einstein’s famous equation E=MC^2. Energy is made up of submicroscopic particles called bosons, and matter includes equally tiny particles that include quarks. Quarks make up protons, neutrons, and leptons, which include electrons and neutrinos. When all this was a millionth of a second old, it was already as large as our current solar system.