Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

I was a bit apprehensive about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. After all, Tyson always reminded me of Bill Nye, but a more self-absorbed and condescending version. Nevertheless, I gave this little book a chance and am glad I did.

There wasn’t too much new information for me on the large scale, but the booklet is full of fun informational tidbits, like the Sun emitting 1e6 tons of mass every second as solar wind, or the fact that one of the best ways to make ball bearings on Earth is to drop molten metal which, after some undulations, turn into a sphere. The real gem of the booklet, though, is its ability to illustrate the scale of the universe. From the opening to the book listing time-stamped post-Big Bang events, to discussions about the scale of mountains and valleys relative to the Earth. And these are just two small bits in a brief overview of the cosmos.

Personally, none of the aforementioned facts were the biggest eye-opener for me. Of course, I was familiar with the expansion of the universe. Of course, I knew that theoretically faster-than-light travel can occur in special cases where mass is propelled by changes to the fabric of spacetime. But I’d never put them together. As Tyson mentions, the increasing rate of the universe’s expansion will, eventually, surpass the speed of light. When that happens, light from other galaxies will not be able to reach us. Good luck to those future astronomers…