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| The Magic Furnace | 
 enlarge | Author: Marcus Chown
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy Used: £2.74
You Save: £6.25 (70%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 118772
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0099578018
EAN: 9780099578017
ASIN: 0099578018
Publication Date: August 3, 2000
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: We ship daily from the United Kingdom
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Amazon.co.uk Review
If only because of its grand scale, cosmology can bring out the worst in science writers. But The Magic Furnace is as unputdownable as any thriller as it unifies the very big and the very small in a single coherent vision of creation.In a cosmos dominated by hydrogen and helium all the other elements make up a mere two per cent of the universe's mass. It was not always so. There was a time when those other elements did not even exist. The stuff which we're made from was not fully formed by the Big Bang. So where did it--where did we--come from? Chown dovetails two histories: the story of how we came to know how stars are born, grow old and die, and the story of how we investigated the atom and came to appreciate how different elements are related. This is no contrived juxtaposition. The elements from which we are made were assembled by stars and distributed by supernovae. We are--literally--stardust. All scientific histories are simplifications after the event but Chown, in something of the spirit of Local Heroes's Adam Hart-Davis, brings a biographer's eye to those--from Greek philosopher Democritus onwards--who brought us to our present understanding. By Chown's account, the universe seems uncannily friendly to the formation of organics and ultimately, life. Chown's take on this "anthropomorphic" (and quasi-religious) version of the world is a model of balanced and responsible speculation and provides the fitting conclusion to this fascinating account. --Simon Ings
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
Mind-blowing Narrative April 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The first section of THE MAGIC FURNACE describes the history of the discovery of the atomic world. It is satisfying sweeping narrative, taking in events such as the first breath-taking time atoms were 'seen' using Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM).
'It was as if lightning flickered from the finger of a god to the ground. If he lifted his finger too high, the lightning died away until he had no sense of the surface; if he moved too close, the lightning grew to a painful intensity. By keeping the lightning crackling at a tolerable level, he was able to follow the ups and downs of the terrain with his finger.'
This up and down movement is converted into a visual image by computer to give 'the most remarkable images in the history of science'.
After that the atom is split to reveal protons and neutrons and, most importantly, 'the extraordinary energy inside'.
This leads on to the second section, which deals with what makes the sun the sun and the stars shine. Here all sorts of subjects I thought I knew are connected. It is rather like deciding to walk between stations on the underground instead of riding in the dark in between: this is how Trafalgar square leads to the theatres of Soho, and this is how forcing the sun's light through a prism led to the science of spectroscopy. Everything is described simply and clearly. Because he obviously has an excellent understanding of the topic Chown can eliminate the complicated scientific vocabulary and replace it with the vernacular - suns 'vomit' out gases, for instance. This means that even hugely complicated phenomena such a 'tunnelling' by an alpha particle from a nucleus becomes easily understandable.
The section that ends the book gathers together all the evidence of how the elements are made: it has a complicated history involving the sun, the stars, red giants, supernovae, and the big bang. It makes thrilling reading. Each process is responsible for part of the periodic table and at the end of it I marvelled that we are here at all. I suppose it is possible to either take the view that everything was designed so that life was able to evolve or it is just because of a series of improbable coincidences and low probabilities that things turned out the way they did - and that there is now a carbon-based life-form staring out from a world composed mainly of iron orbiting around a hydrogen sun. There is an intriguing hint that we could be at the end of things, and the reason that we appear to be alone in the universe is that other intelligent life has come and gone.
It makes a fascinating read for anyone who has ever looked out into a clear starry night, however uneasily, and wondered.
The stardust connection. February 20, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Read this book for any number of reasons. Read it if you want to know more about atoms. Read it to find out how stars work. Read about the creation of elements: a story that that has spanned billions of years. Whatever the reason, once you start you will finish because it is such a good read.
There are three linked narratives. The first, Atoms, starts with the earliest recorded notions (ca 470BC) and touches on all the strokes of genius and lucky chance by which these initially vague entities were found to exist in a profusion of varieties and became the foundations of modern science. The second, Stars, begins at about the same time - with the sun as a ball of hot iron - then makes much slower progress than the atom story, becoming patently a fiction and stalling around the mid-nineteenth century. Fifty years later the two themes merge and the action picks up in an exciting way.
Whether you have a scientific background, or your take on atoms is as sketchy as those of Democritus, you are almost bound to be continually fascinated. All the basic physics is introduced here in an effortless way. I found myself reading about discoveries and famous names remembered from school science days, but seeing them now in a fresh light: as a fast-moving history of achievements by some amazing people.
A third story develops in the background: it starts with the Big Bang and takes in the origin of atoms, then of quasars and galaxies, then stars and more atoms, then supernovae and yet more atoms . . . and ends with us. In a conventional textbook it would be recounted in plodding systematic detail, but this is by no means a conventional textbook. You end up knowing all about this other story. It's just that you get there by a much more compelling route.
If I have a criticism it is that the author's insertion of analogy and simile is not always helpful and can be wearing when overdone. No matter, this is one of the best books I have read for some time.
well worth it September 9, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
particle physics is a difficult subject. somehow, chown manages to explain the development of its theories, from ancient times to the present, answering anticipated questions along the way, in a manner that is both entertaining, informative and easily understandable.
i think you will enjoy this book as much as i did.
Reads like a detective novel June 24, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I completed a physics degree at Leeds University 22yrs ago. They taught us astrophysics. I could do the equations, but couldn't see a big picture. This book gives the picture of how our atoms were made, why we know how they were made, inspite of the billions of years and light years we are from the atomic furnaces. It starts with Democritus, and ends with supernovae. In between, Marcus Chown takes the reader through all the significant scientific discoveries. He gets down into the personal details of the researchers, what they were up against, what they had at their disposal. He makes clear the bizarre connection between particle-physics and astrophysics. Each sub-chapter is headed by a snappy title, a bit like the scene-descriptions in silent movies. For me, two of the crucial facts he got across are: the significance of Iron-56; and Fred Hoyle's bold but crucial claim of the existence of a yet undiscovered excited state of ionised Carbon-12. Read this and you will know why scientist really do know much of what is going on inside of stars.
A must for those of us find physics impossible!! January 7, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am a science teacher. My specialist subjects are Chemistry and Biology and I find physics very difficult to grasp. This obviously poses a problem when I have to answer challenging questions from students.
However, this book has given me an insight into all those theories that seemed so weird, especially those relating to atoms. I thoroughly recommend this book for non-physics specialists. It is an easy and fun read. I actually enjoy physics now and frequently quote sections to my class!
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