You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe [Paperback]

Christopher Potter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2010

You Are Here is a dazzling exploration of the universe and our relationship to it, as seen through the lens of today's most cutting-edge scientific thinking. Here, for the first time in a single span, is the life of the universe, from quarks to galaxy superclusters and from slime to Homo sapiens. Christopher Potter brilliantly tells the story of how something evolved from nothing and how something became everything; how the universe was once a moment of perfect symmetry and is now 13.7 billion years of history. With wisdom and wonder, Potter traverses the cosmos from its conception to its eventual end—while exploring everything in between.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Any reader who has avoided science for fear of being overwhelmed will find a friendly guide in Potter, former publisher of Fourth Estate who has a masters in the history and philosophy of science. He addresses the issue head-on by turning the problem into one of scale, taking readers outward in a literary Powers of 10 journey. From meters through kilometers to light-years, Potter takes readers beyond Earth's atmosphere, across the solar system and into deep space, where galaxies gather into vast superclusters. After this headlong rush, Potter offers a quick history of physics and a look at the quarks and gluons at the heart of matter. A quantum mechanics chaser segues into an intimate examination of the Big Bang and stellar formation to the coalescence of our own solar system and, finally, the evolution of life on the speck we call Earth. Giving equal weight to each topic, Potter's steady progression illuminates the ways in which they are all connected. This clear and smoothly written look at the mind-boggling history of everything is both informative and provocative. 10 b&w illus. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The New Yorker

Those for whom particle physics and string theory are impenetrable mysteries may not be entirely enlightened by Potter’s genial exegesis of the mysteries of the universe, in which quarks, squarks, and “vibrating lengths of pure energy” are elegantly expounded but remain irreducibly conceptual. Still, he gives a foothold to the floundering with evocative description—“A beard grows a few nanometres in the time taken to raise a razor to the skin”—and with liberal doses of trivia. Among other things, he notes that the moon was formed when a huge planetary collision blew the crust of the earth into the atmosphere, and that the human body contains ten times as many bacterial cells as human ones. Most compellingly, Potter examines the provisional nature of scientific inquiry, in which conjecture can lead to insight and a weakness of a hypothesis can become a strength.
Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (February 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061137871
• ISBN-13: 978-0061137877
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #814,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A REVEALING TRIP VIA TIME & SPACE- FROM EARTH THRU THE UNIVERSE, March 4, 2009

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RBSProds "rbsprods" (Deep in the heart of Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe (Hardcover)

Four and a half ADVENTUROUS Stars!! Author Christopher Potter takes us on a short journey across 14 Billion years of time & space using hard science & speculation, unassailable facts & philosophy, while attempting to generally collate a huge amount of up-to-date data into palatable information for the layman. For the most part, he is very successful. This is an intensive and extensive look at our universe and our place in it: "You Are Here". Oddly enough, this book seems to stand on more solid ground than highly technical books because the author is not a scientist and he's explaining things in understandable language from a standpoint of known scientific findings as a 'summary presentation', often viewed through the prisms of philosophy and reason. This voyage takes us from the edge of the universe, which "is not contained in anything" to manmade and natural physical realities (the awesome chapter called "26 degrees of Separation"), to the birth of life and man on earth ("In and Out of Africa"), and beyond. The solar system, the galaxy, billions of galaxies, galactic clusters, super clusters, the Sloan Great Wall, quasars, black holes and more are taken on in plain, but awe-inspiring language. And there are many fascinating earthly & solar system diversions along the way. The book is laden with meaningful quotes, scientific references, previously unknown facts, and amazement at the reality of life and scientific achievements. Instead of being like a dry college lecture in an auditorium, it's more like a wide-ranging after-dinner discussion with a very well-educated friend. Does he gloss over some things? Yes, sometimes dwelling in trivial detail and repetition, but we also become aware of new things such as the existence of the black hole Sagittarius A and the incredible Sloan Great Wall. So "You Are Here"...on planet Earth...of our 8 (yes, eight) planet solar system...of the bending, spiraling Orion Arm...of the Milky Way galaxy...of The Local Group...of the Virgo Supercluster...etc., etc... Indeed! A very enjoyable read about our life on this earth and in the universe, and the life of the universe about us and it is Highly Recommended! Four and a half VOYAGING Stars!!
(This review is based on a Kindle download.)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, entertaining, and all over the place!, February 20, 2010

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Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe (Paperback)

This is an amazingly ambitious book, presuming as it does to take us from the very smallest thing imaginable (the Planck limit) to the very largest (the extent of the cosmos), from the very earliest time (the Big Bang) to the heat death of the universe.

But this is not just about the physical sciences. Potter goes deeply into philosophy and biology as well. In a sense he is doing what I have done all my life, that is to look at all aspects of our existence and knowledge in an attempt to understand who I am, why I am here, and where I am going. I think Potter, who is something of social critic as well as a scientific generalist and journalist, does an admirable job. I have read other books that attempt something like this. Potter's is one of the most readable.

Potter begins with an "Orientation." We are here--at this point in time, at this place in the universe, at this stage of awareness. He follows this with Chapter 2: "26 Degrees of Separation," which is the number of degrees of mathematical magnitude in meters we are from the size of the universe (10 to the 26th). Potter gives a plethora of numerical information about things of various sizes, from the size of humans (John Keats was 1.54 meters tall, 5' 0.75 ''; the tallest people are found in Herzogovina and Montenegro where the average height of a male is 1.86 meters) through the distance to the Kuiper Belt (about 7.5 billion kilometers distance) to ultimately the radius of the visible universe (about 13 light years distance).

Next comes Chapter 3, which is about measurements and measuring, which is part of the essence of science; and then comes some ancient philosophy in Chapter 4, "It's Not About You," followed by some classical mechanics in Chapter 5, "Going through the Motions," and so on (you get the idea). In later chapters he explores biology and the very small, ending with musings on what our place in the scheme of things it and what it all means. (I love stuff like this.) Potter writes:

"WE are--everything is--woven out of the primordial hydrogen that filled the universe around 14 billion years ago. Nor need we rest there. WE are--everything is--evolved symmetrical radiation. And before that, WE are something that is beyond whatever before can mean. I am here. You are there. We are everything and everywhere. They are us." (p. 273)

His is a sort of idealistic view that I find somewhat irresistible. I like to say that on the ether wind or thereabouts, somewhere beyond the extent of our instruments and our imaginations there exists in a form not clear to us the information that is you and I and everything that has ever been or will be. (I also believe that life is a cosmic joke and death is nothing to fear.)

Some observations: "Leibniz took the view that time and space do not have a fundamental existence but are merely the means to describe the relationship between things." (p. 50). I believe that Einstein took a similar position. My sense is that time and space (spacetime) do not exist without matter/energy.

Potter writes, "Mars has no atmosphere because its magnetic field is too weak." (p. 204) Actually Mars has a rather thin atmosphere, enough though to produce winds storms that could affect NASA gear.

Here's something that I gave a "huh?" or a "wtf?" to: "Artificial selection could...be used as an argument against natural selection. In artificial selection mankind gets to choose what lives and what does not, which is no different from the kind of intervention that some all-powerful god might make." (p. 218)

Actually "mankind" (better is "humankind") does not do the choosing all by his lonesome. The animals being selected are using their wiles to be artificially selected and indeed human preferences are determined by natural selection.

There are other places in the text where Potter expresses views that have raised the eyebrows of readers other than myself. But in a book of this sort in which one of the ideas is to speculate a lot about things far and wide, I think this is okay.

Talking about the permutations (or is it combinations?) of DNA, Potter notes that there are 2 to the two thousandth ways that humans can be differently expressed. (p. 223) (That many possible humans!) He also notes that this number is the biggest in the book easily dwarfing such numbers as the number of atoms in the universe or the number of unique neuronal pathways in the brain.

"...[W]hen we know how life emerges from the inanimate, the organic and inorganic worlds will have become a continuous spectrum. Life will be an artificial distinction we make from the inanimate." (p. 232) Nice.

"Some bacteria have been found in rocks 1,000 metres underground slowly digesting organic material without the aid of oxygen and dividing only once every thousand years or so..." (p. 233) Every thousand years or so--amazing!

Despite some errors and some unlikely ideas, this is a most interesting and entertaining book.

(Note: The following books by Dennis Littrell are now available at Amazon.com:

Yoga: Sacred and Profane (Beyond Hatha Yoga)
Dennis Littrell's True Crime Companion
Novels and other Fictions
Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!
The Holon
Teddy and Teri
High School from Hell
Let's Play Overkill!
Like a Tsunami Headed for Hilo
Understanding Evolution and Ourselves


Coming soon:

The World Is Not as We Think It Is)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Factual errors, but enjoyable, June 10, 2009

By 

dennisr "dennisr" (Orlando, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe (Hardcover)

I am thoroughly enjoying reading this book, and finding it hard to put it down once I pick it up. Potter takes us on a journey starting from 1 meter out to the solar system, the galaxy and the universe.

I did come across one error in the book which I thought should be mentioned. On page 39 (hardcover edition) Potter states that the Andromeda Galaxy is twice the size of the Milky Way, when in fact, even though Andromeda has many more stars, the two are considered to be about the same size and mass. See the Andromeda Galaxy article on Wikipedia.

I'm editing this review to add another factual error I found: on page 109 Potter states that J.J. Thompson measured the charge of an individual electron. Thompson in fact measured the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron (after discovering it). It was Millikan who measured the charge of the electron.

So, now I'm wondering how much I can trust the facts in this book which are new to me.