The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything

Amazon.com's Best of 2001
Most of science journalist K.C. Cole's journey into nothing is about physical nothing. "In the quantum realm, even nothing never sleeps. Nothing is always up to something. Even when there is absolutely nothing going on, and nothing there to do it."

The nothingness of the vacuum is the background to space and time. Cole shows how physicists' ideas about time, space, and reality flow out of their ideas about nothing, whether vacuum or ether. She writes with a half-smile and a glint of humor in her eye, colliding metaphors like particles at Fermilab:

.... Both space and time, individually, are as elastic as bungee cords. It was a further step, still, to see that the fabric of spacetime itself could warp under the influence of matter like hot asphalt under the tires of a heavy truck.... And then, the last straw: Not only could spacetime bend under the influence of matter, it could take matter into its own hands.

Cole's book makes a wry, witty complement to Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. It's an exploration of string theory (among other things) that will leave your brain only lightly tied up in knots. Or in nots. After all, as Cole writes:

Nothing may be the single most prolific idea ever to plop into the human brain.... Understanding nothing matters, because nothing is the all-important background upon which everything else happens.

--Mary Ellen Curtin


From Publishers Weekly
Nothing is as big a mystery as nothing. From the hatred the digit "zero" inspired in the ancient church and the horror vacui suffered by thinkers such as Aristotle to the tantalizing singularity of black holes, nothing packs quite a wallop. People, not nature, abhor a vacuum but are often fascinated by what repels them. Cole (The Universe and the Teacup), a science columnist for the L.A. Times, prods at the infinite properties and manifestations of nothing, trying to get a handle on it without boxing it in. Definitions make something out of nothing, but then, she indicates, everything did come out of nothing. Comprising an expansive set of topics from the history of numbers to string theory, the big bang, even Zen, the book's chapters are broken into bite-sized portions that allow the author to revel in the puns and awkwardness that comes with trying to describe a concept that no one has fully grasped. It is an amorphous, flowing, mind-bending discussion, written in rich, graceful prose.. As clear and accessible as Hawking's A Brief History of Time, this work deserves wide circulation, not just among science buffs. (Feb.) Forecast: Cole's reputation means the book will be widely reviewedDand if the reviews are accurate, sales will rise. This title is a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperback Book Club, as well as of the Astronomy and Library of Science book clubs. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Scientific American
Cole, a science columnist for the Los Angeles Times, provides an illuminating slant on physics and mathematics by exploring the concept of nothing. "In the past few hundred years," she writes, "the struggle to get a handle on nothing has changed the course of mathematics, physics, and even the study of the human mind." Indeed, the doors to many scientific breakthroughs are "holes in the understanding, gaps in the data." Scientists search for such nothings as missing matter, missing neutrinos and missing magnetic monopoles because "finding the missing pieces helps to prove--or disprove--the theories that suggest these entities should exist in the first place." Something, therefore, is "any deviation from nothing," and each deviation adds to the store of human knowledge.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Acclaimed science writer K. C. Cole, author of The Universe and the Teacup and First You Build a Cloud, takes on the void. An L.A. Times bestseller, The Hole in the Universe examines "nothing," from vacuums and zero to black holes and phantom limbs.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The more we know about Nothing, the more enticing and bizarre the universe becomes, especially in the hands of bestselling author K. C. Cole.

Welcome to the world of cutting-edge math, physics, and neuroscience, where the search for the ultimate vacuum, the point of nothingness, ground zero of theory, has rendered the universe deep, rich, and juicy. "Modern physics has animated the void," says K. C. Cole in her entrancing journey into the heart of Nothing.

Every time scientists and mathematicians think they have reached the ultimate void, new stuff appears: a black hole, an undulating string, an additional dimension of space or time, repulsive anti-gravity, universes that breed like bunnies. Cole's exploration at the edge of everything is as animated and exciting as the void itself.

Take Cole's hand on this adventure into the unknown, and you'll come back informed, amused, and excited.

About the Author:

K. C. Cole is a science writer for the Los Angeles Times and a professor of writing at UCLA. Author of The Universe and the Teacup and First You Build a Cloud, she writes a regular, popular column in the Los Angeles Times, "Mind over Matter." She lives in Santa Monica, California.

FROM THE CRITICS

David Perlman - San Francisco Chronicle

...a quirky, contemplative and immensely stimulating rumination on Nothing.

Gilbert Taylor - Booklist

The vacuum is attracting physicists' attention lately...now Los Angeles Times science writer Cole ventures upon the void, fortunately with a sensitivity well pitched to the level of complexity average readers can absorb. She explains that absence of stuff doesn't define a vacuum, since 'Empty' space is filled with fields--evanescent particle pairs that flash in and out of existence--and, further, that space-time itself is 'something.'...Cole regularly reassures us that the theory-bred conjectural properties of nothingness she describes seem weird to her, too, and at the same time she clearly conveys why they thrill physicists: they could account for why the big bang began or why physical constants have the values they have...An enthusiastic, companionable guide to the inner limits of the universe.

Michael Scott Moore - Salon

...the book is a strong and sometimes mind-blowing introduction to the edges of modern physics.

Publishers Weekly

Nothing is as big a mystery as nothing. From the hatred the digit "zero" inspired in the ancient church and the horror vacui suffered by thinkers such as Aristotle to the tantalizing singularity of black holes, nothing packs quite a wallop. People, not nature, abhor a vacuum but are often fascinated by what repels them. Cole (The Universe and the Teacup), a science columnist for the L.A. Times, prods at the infinite properties and manifestations of nothing, trying to get a handle on it without boxing it in. Definitions make something out of nothing, but then, she indicates, everything did come out of nothing. Comprising an expansive set of topics from the history of numbers to string theory, the big bang, even Zen, the book's chapters are broken into bite-sized portions that allow the author to revel in the puns and awkwardness that comes with trying to describe a concept that no one has fully grasped. It is an amorphous, flowing, mind-bending discussion, written in rich, graceful prose.. As clear and accessible as Hawking's A Brief History of Time, this work deserves wide circulation, not just among science buffs. (Feb.) Forecast: Cole's reputation means the book will be widely reviewed--and if the reviews are accurate, sales will rise. This title is a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperback Book Club, as well as of the Astronomy and Library of Science book clubs. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This book is about nothing. Science writer Cole (First You Build a Cloud, LJ 5/1/99) attempts to explain the current theories of what is there when there isn't anything. She has a lot of fun with wordplay, but she does manage to convey the concept that there is a real difficulty in defining what empty space is. Physicists tell us that, even if outer space were a complete vacuum, space itself would have a structure. If that sounds nonsensical, it is only because concepts in modern physics seem to defy common sense. Unfortunately, these theories involve a knowledge of mathematics at a level beyond that of the target audience. Thus, the author can only tell us the names--field theory, string theory, M-theory, etc.--but is unable to describe them in any depth or even offer a good heuristic feel for what phenomena they would predict or how they could be tested. Cole is a very good science writer, but this reviewer believes that the topic she has chosen here is not yet ready for prime time. Recommended for large public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/00.]--Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUNY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. Read all 6 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Going from black holes and false vacua to blind spots and phantoms, K.C. Cole, with her wide-ranging mind, has provided a deep (but also light-hearted and accessible) meditation on "nothingness"--and how cosmologists, physicists, neurologists, psychologists, artists (and mystics) all find the notion of it productive and indispensable.  — (Oliver Sacks, M.D., author of The Island of the Colorblind)

An extraordinary book. K.C. Cole is our ambassador to the realms of the exceedingly strange, inside the atom and outside the known universe. She is a practical philosopher with the singular ability to graze eleven dimensions of esoteric material, find the connections among them, and see the humor in it all. — (Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter)