Subtitle: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
(UK 1999; this US edition: Basic Books, 2000, x + 173pp, including 12pp notes and index)
This is a book from a series of short science books (~200p each) published in the 1990s and 2000s by Basic Books. Rees is an astrophysicist whose early books were in his field, and whose later books (beginning after this one, and including ON THE FUTURE, 2018, reviewed here) became big picture in a different way, with musings on humanity’s future and the future of science.
This book is ostensibly focused on six key physical constants (actually ratios) and how they determine that the cosmos we exist in is possible. If they were a bit different, we wouldn’t be here. This is a topic familiar to creationists who thus argue for a creator who set those ratios, though of course that doesn’t follow at all, as Rees explains. In fact, the book is also a clear, efficient overview of all the basic topics of cosmology. Black holes, gravity, the creation of heavier elements in supernova, the idea of a multiverse, etc.
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