Never-Ending Days of Being Dead

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is now cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist.Marcus's first popular science book, Afterglow of Creation - runner-up for the prestigious Rhône-Poulenc Prize - was published to much acclaim in 1994. The Magic Furnace, Marcus's second book, was published in Britain in 1999. In Japan it was chosen as one of the Books of the Year by Asahi Shimbun, the world's biggest newspaper and, in the UK, the Daily Mail called it 'a dizzy page-turner with all the narrative devices you'd expect to find in Harry Potter.' His third book, The Universe Next Door, was published in 2002. 'An exuberant book - a parallel universe where science is actually fun,' wrote the Independent.Marcus lives in London with his wife, Karen.

Marcus Chown's mastery of the written language, his intimate knowledge of the subject matter and his easy and clear style unravels some of the most fundamental minds bending cosmologival, physical and mathermatical puzzles in easy to digest bite-sized chunks ... I can not find fault with this book, the style is yummy, the mathematics non-existent and the concepts suprising. Astronomy Now Acclaimed science writer Marcus Chown isn't afraid of the big or difficult topics. He can simplify the mind-bendingly complex and bring within the grasp of the ordinary reader some of the beautiful mysteries of modern science. Metro Marcus Chown has the happy knack of making abstruse subjects seem intelligible. -- Sir Patrick Moore A short cut to the latest ideas. Chown writes lucidly and with enthusiasm. Financial Times Reading this book is a little like being at a party (OK, a very nerdy one) with an almost perfect DJ. The tracks Chown plays - a mixture of the familiar and the cutting edge - are not records, however, but the highlights of recent attempts to answer some of the biggest scientific questions there are, from "What is beyond the edge of the universe?" to "Why do we experience a past, present and future? This book does what the best popular science books do: it gives enough of an overview of each subject to make it exciting, and leaves you to pursue the primary texts yourself if you want to. In an age of over-specialisation in both the sciences and the humanities, and nowhere near enough true interdisciplinarity, we must all be grateful to writers like Chown who are able to make accessible work that in its crude form is not only inaccessible to outsiders, but unknown to them. Independent on Sunday Marcus Chown has written a fascinating entertaining and stimulating book exploring some of the more esoteric byways of fundamental science ... As a whole the book is an excellent introduction to many of the fascinating questions being addresses in theoretical physics and cosmology today ... I whole-heartedly recommend this book. Nature The intellectual exuberance on display here is refreshing. His explanations of the weirdest ideas, which range over mathematics and complexity theory as well as cosmology, are admirably clear ... it is easy to be beguiled by the creativity of the thoughts on offer ... chown does an excellent job of conveying the flavour of the ideas without the benefit of mathematics. THES