Book: My Favorite Universe by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

A good book to introduce physics to common people.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is great at explaining complicated topics in a simple way. The explanation of dense objects using hot chocolate and cream was really nice for me (no spoilers, read it! :D).

Did you watch Cosmos? Do you like to (or at least used to) follow Discovery Channel space documentaries? In case your answer is yes to any of these questions, you probably already know most part of this book. It’s worth reading in case you want a second chance with a different kind of explanation.

Here are some of my notes:

  • Big and dense objects are round because of gravity, but small ones are not so affected
  • Neutron stars are the most round objects we have because of their incredible gravity. Even the height of a piece of paper would require a lot of energy to “climb”
  • Take a 2 hundred thousand kilometers cube and take a number of atoms it will have in the vacuum. It will have about the number of atoms it has in the air of your refrigerator
  • The famous dark energy is a kind of anti-gravity
  • The density of water, human beings, and the sun are almost the same
  • Matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move
  • Io (Jupiter moon) has the most active volcano of the milky way
  • Europa (Jupiter moon) has liquid water
  • The universe is expanding and farther galaxies are expanding even faster, 3 times faster
  • It doesn’t matter if you like the big bang but this is the most consistent explanation we have considering the current data available
  • We are carbon based life
  • You can make more molecules with carbon than with all other elements combined