We Have No Idea

Book Review : We Have No Idea
Authors: Jorge Cham, Daniel Whiteson My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The complete title of the book is “We Have No Idea : A Guide To The Unknown Universe”.

I love reading books on Science and Math, and within Science especially Physics. I have written many reviews of popular science books, and have highly recommended quite a few of them. I can unequivocally say that “We Have No Idea” is the most readable book of all of them. If you have read many popular science books, you should still read this. If you have avoided reading any science related books so far, please do yourself a favor and read this one.

In the early part of the 20th century, new advances and discoveries in physics revolutionized our understanding of the universe, both at the atomic scale as well as the galactic scale. These discoveries, quantum mechanics and theory of relativity, are counter-intuitive to say the least. It takes time to understand them even at the superficial level. Still it’s worth spending the time, because the universe is mind bogglingly weird. Even a glimpse of this knowledge is enough to make you philosophical about everything. Since the topic is really hard, a large number of books have been written to explain these concepts to laypersons. Many are good. Of all the ones I have read, none is as easy to read and as fun to read as this book “We Have No Idea”, by the duo Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson.

As the title says, the book emphasizes what we don’t know, even after so many advances in the last nearly 100 years or so. That’s what makes the book so accessible and non-intimidating. Let me explain what I mean by examples.

I have read books that try to explain the Theory Of Multiverse or the latest advances in String Theory and so on. The thing is, many such topics are speculative, as in, these have not been proven. There is a good chance that these theories might turn out to be true, but we really don’t know that. That’s precisely the point of this book. Instead of advertising how cool a theory is, the book honestly admits that we have no idea.

For example, we know that the universe contains many times more “dark matter” than regular matter that we can see as stars and galaxies. What is dark matter? We have no idea. The universe contains something else in even more quantity - what we call “dark energy”. What the heck is that, we have no idea. And to even more basic questions - what is really “space” and what is “time” at a fundamental level? We have no idea.

Of course, just the admission of lack of complete knowledge is not a reason to read this book. The book is organized into many chapters which can be read independently of each other. Each chapter tackles a topic, explaining what we know and then explaining what questions remain unanswered and why. So you can pick up the book, just read one chapter and then later come back to read some other chapter. 

That organization, the diagrams and the lucidity of the language makes it an easy read. What makes it fun is the quirky humor. Many puns and jokes (admittedly geeky) are sprinkled throughout the book. I decided to not give any examples, because I don’t like to include even a tiny spoiler in my reviews.

The topics are very advanced but you will come out with an understanding of the questions the scientists are trying to answer. This is really a book about the questions and not the answers. Sometimes I wonder, are we even equipped with brains smart enough to comprehend the universe? Well, even if we are not, the quest is still a lot of fun for laypersons like us, because of books like these.

I cannot recommend this book enough, and including it in my "Must Read" recommendations. Especially for those who have not tried reading any popular science non-fiction. Read it, you will thank me.