FIRST YOU BUILD A CLOUD

Los Angeles Times science writer Cole has found a niche writing in lyrical prose about basic concepts in physics and math for the layperson (The Universe and the Teacup, 1998). Here she revisits the world of physics first explored in Sympathetic Vibrations (1984). Insightful quotes illustrate how physicists think about the world. Those quoted comprise a virtual Who’s Who of leaders in the field, from Newton and Einstein to Richard Feynman, Victor Weisskopf, and Steven Weinberg, but perhaps the most frequently mentioned is “my friend the physicist,” who turns out to be the late Frank Oppenheimer (younger brother of J. Robert), a primary force in the creation of San Francisco’s exemplary science museum, the Exploratorium. These strong personalities animate their subject. As for physics’s content, Cole is fond of saying that it deals with “old stuff” like gravity, which is what black holes are all about; or temperature, which at the extremes underlies phenomena like superconductivity (supercold) or the plasma composition of stars (superhot). Much of physics, she reminds us, depends on metaphors, models, and mathematical equations, since it often deals with the invisible (quarks) and the imponderable (the moment of the Big Bang). Physics also deals with complementarity and opposites, and Cole may be at her best exploring and explaining these concepts; one of the book’s enduring messages is that physics has advanced as it has embraced and exploited apparent paradoxes. Equally notable are Cole’s canny observations on slight perturbations and small differences. She wraps up her rhapsody in praise of physics with the reminder that we owe our very existence to a slight excess of matter over antimatter at the dawn of the universe and to the chance aggregation of matter at a particularly apposite locale in the solar system. Once again, this talented author compellingly links a scientific discipline to the philosophical questions it raises about truth, reality, aesthetics, and metaphysics.