Just six numbers
As already noted in Esperanto, last Monday was the first anniversary of me and my extraordinarily annoying boyfriend being a couple, and in honour of the momentous occasion he bought me a book. It was very sweet of him to buy me a book, seeing as I hadn’t expected him to get me anything at all, and it was a great relief to me when I actually took it out of the envelope, because he had built it up by explaining it was something I wasn’t going to like. Quite what the rationale behind buying me something I wasn’t going to like was I’m not sure, but that’s men for you :ninja:
Anyway, it turned out to be a book called “Just Six Numbers” by Martin Rees and the reason by boyfriend had thought I might not like it was because he had made the erroneous, but understandable, assumption from the title that it was a book about mathematics, when in reality it was a book about physics. To be precise, astronomy, or perhaps cosmology; as to what the difference between the two is I am a little vague and in fact there was a nasty moment when I looked at the inside cover of the book and thought it was going to be about horoscopes 
Well, astronomy/astrology; it’s an easy mistake to make 
If truth be told I did feel a little nervous about reading it, on the grounds that physics has never been my strong point. Well, my physics teacher was a cross-eyed woman who shall go by the name of Miss D, and with whom I did not enjoy a very positive relationship. She was the sort of woman who hates children, so why she had embarked on a career in teaching had always remained something of a mystery to me, and without meaning to be rude about an affliction which clearly wasn’t her fault, it was exceptionally difficult to tell whether she was looking at you.
Miss D had been my form tutor in year eight, and I somehow managed to get into more trouble with her than I ever had before in my life, bearing in mind that I was a very well behaved child who wouldn’t have said boo to a goose. Within the first week of term she shouted at me for taking a geography book out of the library to do my homework, on the grounds that this meant no one else had been able to do the aforementioned homework. A few weeks later she wrote to my parents to inform them that I had allowed one of my friends (who didn’t speak English) to copy my science homework. Then one of my friends threw up in the classroom and I got into trouble for stealing a bucket of sand without the permission of a dinner lady… I was absolutely terrified of the woman, and when she was allocated to teach my GCSE physics class, my heart sank.
I think it is fair to say that in GCSE physics I did not understand a word which was said. Miss D had a curious method of teaching which involved stating things as opposed to explaining them, and shouting when asked questions. She also shouted when I accidentally caused black smoke to come out of a variable resistor, and when the pipe attached to the sink I was sitting next to randomly burst and flooded the lab. It was really nothing to do with me, it was a freak spontaneous event, but somehow it went against me. After a term or so I resigned myself to the fact that physics was always going to be a mystery to me, and got used to getting 4 out of 10 in my homework. In fact I once got 0 out of 10 in a piece of work which revolved around cooking a baked Alaska, because I had no idea what baked Alaska was 
I did indeed pass physics with a decent grade in the end, and this was due to three things. Firstly, that I learned all the equations my heart and thus gained all the marks which were purely mathematical with little problem. Secondly because I invented a really cool pneumonic to remember the order of the electromagnetic spectrum. And thirdly and most relevantly, because there were always some soft marks on the life cycle of stars and other astronomical matters.
I do have a vague fondness then for stars and planets and the like, and so it was that I approached the book with a certain amount of interest mixed with trepidation.
If you have never heard of the book, which I assume you haven’t, it deals with the six most important numbers which determine the nature of our world, discusses why they are so important and how small changes in them could drastically alter the very essence of our universe. I’m incapable of explaining the finer points of physics in my own words so if you allow me to paraphrase slightly from the opening of the book, these six crucial numbers are….
1. N = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 which is the strength which holds atoms together divided by the force of gravity between them. Curiously, if N was much smaller nothing would be able to grow bigger than an insect.
2. E = 0.007 defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together. If it were 0.006 or 0.008 we would not exist.
3. Omega, which measures the amount of matter in the universe. If it were too high the universe would have collapsed, if it were too low it would not have formed.
4. Lambda, an antigravity which controls the expansion of the universe.
5. Q, which represents the ratio between certain energies in the universe. Were it too high, the universe would be a violent and dangerous place.
6. D, the number of dimensions in our world.
The book basically takes each of these numbers in turn and, devoting a chapter or so to each, explains them in detail. In the course of this some very interesting themes are discussed, including Einstein’s relativity, black holes, and the possibility of life on other galaxies. There is an interesting explanation of the Big Bang, which I had never properly understood the evidence for before this point, and certain religious fundamentalists would do well to read that chapter. There are also fascinating comments about the future of the universe and what will eventually happen to our galaxy.
All in all, I really learned a lot reading this. I could probably benefit from reading it again at some point, because I read the bulk of the chapters late at night when I wasn’t in the best state to take in such complex themes. You don’t need a degree in physics to make some sense of it, as no complex terminology is used and there isn’t any mathematics to get your head round, but nevertheless I felt a lot of it went over my head. It isn’t the easiest book in the world to read, as the style isn’t chatty and there are few anecdotes, but if your interest in learning about the subject matter gives you the perseverance to get to the end then I thoroughly recommend it 
Tags: astronomy, just six numbers, physics