The Ascent of Gravity, Marcus Chown
The Ascent of Gravity, Marcus Chown
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The Ascent of Gravity
The Quest to Understand the Force that Explains Everything

Author: Marcus Chown

Narrator: Adjoa Andoh

Unabridged: 9 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/07/2017

Synopsis

Why the force that keeps our feet on the ground holds the key to understanding the nature of time and the origin of the universe.

Gravity is the weakest force in the everyday world yet it is the strongest force in the universe. It was the first force to be recognized and described yet it is the least understood. It is a "force" that keeps your feet on the ground yet no such force actually exists.

Gravity, to steal the words of Winston Churchill, is "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." And penetrating that enigma promises to answer the biggest questions in science: what is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?

Award-winning writer Marcus Chown takes us on an unforgettable journey from the recognition of the "force" of gravity in 1666 to the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015. And, as we stand on the brink of a seismic revolution in our worldview, he brings us up to speed on the greatest challenge ever to confront physics.

About Marcus Chown

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brunel University. His books include Breakthrough, The Ascent of Gravity, which was the Sunday Times 2017 Science Book of the Year; Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand; What A Wonderful World; Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You; and We Need to Talk to Kelvin and Afterglow of Creation, both of which were runners-up for the Royal Society Book Prize. Marcus has also won The Bookseller's Digital Innovation of the Year for Solar System for iPad.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bradley on July 12, 2018

This is a highly entertaining history of gravity, full of quite interesting anecdotes and the gradual unfolding of our understanding from Newton through Einstein through our quest to reconcile quantum mechanics with the one aspect we're most familiar with but which we understand the least. From the f......more

Goodreads review by Brian on March 30, 2017

Marcus Chown is one of the UK's best writers on physics and astronomy - it's excellent to see him back on what he does best. Here we discover our gradual approach to understanding the nature of gravity - the 'ascent' of the title - which, though perhaps slightly overblown in the words 'the force tha......more

Goodreads review by Bon Tom on August 17, 2021

Magnificent, phenomenal, mind blowing book. Who would have thought there's so much to be told about phenomenon that's basic postulate of existence and that we all take for granted? The whole day, I've been going through bookmarks to live through those serial brain orgasms again and I'm still not fin......more

Goodreads review by Paperclippe on December 31, 2019

Am I gonna spend the last few minutes of 2019 bitching about a popular science book? You bet your gravitational ass I am. Everything was all fine and well with this book up until page 200, when the author declared, "[...] there is only one candidate for a deeper theory [of gravity] that satisfies the......more

Goodreads review by John on May 13, 2018

I did a double review of two books for the Wall Street Journal, so posting it under both titles! The Ascent of Gravity Marcus Chown Pegasus On Gravity A. Zee Princeton Gravity has become a hot topic in science, with the discovery of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space coming from colliding......more

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