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Rating: 
Summary: A Lucid Exposition of Physics for the Non-Specialist
Review: By convention there is sweetness, by convention there is bitterness, by convention hot and cold, by convention color. But in reality there are [only] atoms and the void.--Democritus (c. 460 - c. 370 B.C.)The Greek philosopher Democritus was not a scientist, but he was on the right track. His prescient idea of atomism--which postulated a cosmos made up of hard, indivisible (hence atomic, from the Greek a-toma, "uncuttable") particles of matter moving through empty space--anticipated the road modern physics would travel. We now know (witness Hiroshima and Nagasaki) that atoms are not indivisible; they can be split, and in the process can release enormous bursts of stored-up energy. Also, our present models of atoms reveal them to be miniature "solar systems" (electrons orbiting a central nucleus made of protons and neutrons). But what exactly are atoms and where did they come from? Were they created in the inferno of the Big Bang some 15 billion years ago? Were they produced (and are they still being produced) in the interior of stars? Could super-dense and super-hot supernovae, which first implode and then explode with mind-boggling force, be "the magic furnace" in which atoms are created? "Every breath you take," writes Marcus Chown, "contains atoms forged in the blistering furnaces deep inside stars. Every flower you pick contains atoms blasted into space by stellar explosions that blazed brighter than a billion suns. Every book you read contains atoms blown across unimaginable gulfs of space and time by the wind between the stars." The Magic Furnace is the work of a literary alchemist who tranmutes the iron of complexity into the gold of lucidity. Chown's wizardry translates baffling mysteries of physics into concepts comprehensible to non-specialists. Fascinating as a detective story, the author's crystal-clear narrative allows us to follow, step by step, the unfolding story of how scientists came to understand atoms and the cosmos. One of the strongest features of this book is Chown's mastery of transitions. Moving smoothly from one part of the story to the next, he weaves a seamless garment that avoids unseemly gaps and unsightly tears. Throughout this work, Chown scatters fascinating anecdotes about science and scientists, taking us into the mental workshops of some of the great minds of our time. And the best news is that one need not be an Einstein to applaud when an innovative thinker has an "Aha!" moment.
Rating: 
Summary: A Glowing Account
Review: I have owned a copy of this book for some time before I got around to reading. And when I did I could not put it down. Marcus Chown spins an enthralling historical account of how we learned about the cosmic synthesis of elements. My favorite account is about Fred Hoyle's pursuit to solve the riddle of how carbon - the stuff of life - was manufactured in the bowls of stars. The problem was that the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen to heavier elements could not bridge the gap from beryllium-8 to carbon-12. But Hoyle knew it had to happen because humans existed! We are carbon-based beings and Hoyle argued that after two helium-4 atoms fused to beryllium-8, a third helium-4 quickly fused to give carbon-12. He calculated that in the bowls of a red giant star the energies of beryllium-8 and helium-4 matched a resonance energy that produced carbon-12. Tests by Willy Fowler confirmed Hoyle's prediction: carbon-12 has indeed the predicted energy resonance! Never, according to Chown, has an anthropic argument been used to make a scientific prediction. When you start reading this book, make sure you have no other pressing engagements. You won't want to stop reading. Chown has a wonderful, lucid style.
Rating:
Summary: Should be Required Reading
Review: I suppose everyone has heard that we are star dust, that we were born in the stars, but did you ever stop to wonder---is this really true? How did scientists ever find this out? How did they prove it? Magic Furnace will tell you how--in a most delightful way. In this book I learned that a great scientist can make a real wild guess at a solution to a problem, later find out it was largely wrong, yet even so, a part of his guess could lead to fruitful advances in the search for truth. Chown has that magic touch, the ability to tell a complex scientific story in conversational language. Should be required reading for every science student!
Rating:
Summary: All science should be taught like this!
Review: Marcus Chown is an incredibly gifted author. He somehow manages to impart (what could otherwise have been hard boring facts) into a compelling and passionate account of man's unquenchable thirst for knowledge - and in particular the search for the atom. From the very first page, the reader is gripped and taken on an incredible journey, back through time as we follow early scientists in their sometimes heartbreaking endeavours to discover the atom. Marcus Chown has the ability to make science appealing and enormously exciting. Readers will not be intimidated (nor patronised) by the subject matter, instead they will be left wanting more. This book lends itself brilliantly to either a television documentary or indeed a drama serialisation where it can reach an even wider audience. More please, Mr. Chown!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Probably the clearest exposition of the history of modern nuclear physics. In addition, he ponders some of the great philisophical questions in a realistic way. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in what we're all actually made of.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating, informative, demanding, but highly readable
Review: The title is an allusion to the dream of the alchemists of old who sought a magic kiln in which to transform base metals into gold. That dream remained intact until the discovery in the twentieth century of how the elements are actually built up from hydrogen and exactly what kind of "magic furnace" would be required to turn base metals into gold. In a most engaging narrative, science writer Marcus Chown tells that fascinating story through the lives and ideas of the scientists who made the discoveries. Chown begins, as one must, with the Greeks and Democritus who opined, "...in reality there are only atoms and the void." Chown shows how it was impossible for the Greeks without the scientific method to go any further than Democritus's intuition. But Chown does not dwell on the alchemy but ratchets us directly to modern science and the growing realization that "Atoms Are Not the Smallest Things" (Chapter Two), and that therefore "it must be possible to transform an atom of one element into an atom of another." (p. 21) And with that, the race was on to account for how hydrogen became helium which became, through crucibles unimaginable to man, carbon, iron and eventually the heaviest elements. The story culminates in the work of Fred Hoyle, Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, and Willy Fowler who explained the nuclear processes operating inside stars and supernovae. Chown finishes with a chapter on the discovery of the cosmic background radiation, the "afterglow of creation" which confirmed how helium was manufactured in the Big Bang, and a chapter on how the elements are strewn into space and end up in Population I stars and eventually in our bodies. There is a Glossary and a Selected Bibliography. The value of this book lies not only in the fascinating story told but in the magical way that Chown is able to painlessly teach us a little chemistry and physics along the way. I learned more about the nature of atoms and the various forces in nature in these pages, almost incidentally, than I have in any other single book. So intrigued was I in learning more that I turned to the Periodic Table of the Elements as I read the text. But Chown's style is not didactic. Instead he illuminates the personalities and the flow of ideas. We see Marie Currie with her radiation swollen fingers and Fred Hoyle truant at the back of the local cinema teaching himself to read. We see how the vision of meteorites falling into the sun became the vision of the sun falling in upon itself, shrinking and, as the elements got closer and closer together, heating up, and how that idea coursed after some meandering into the discovery of atomic energy. But perhaps the most beautiful "turn" (as in a poetic change of perception, as in a sonnet) in the book is on page 107 where Chown's writes about the sameness of all the atoms of an element, and then suddenly asks, thinking about the mysterious behavior evidenced by the phenomenon of the half-life: "How could radium atoms all be the same yet behave differently?" This question leads to the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics. There is an implicit sense of warning in the book about the limitations of humans doing science. Thus the American geologist Thomas Chamberlain is quoted on page 54 as saying, "There is perhaps no beguilement more insidious and dangerous than an elaborate and elegant mathematical process built upon unfortified premises." He was critiquing Lord Kelvin, but might his words not apply to more recent theories, such as that of one-dimensional strings? And on page 65 it is recounted that Auguste Comte "deemed it self-evident that we would never be able to study" the chemical composition of the stars. Two years after his death in 1857 thanks to the unlikely technique of spectroscopy we were doing just that. Indeed, as Chown reports on page 67, helium was discovered on the sun through a reading of its spectrum before it was discovered on the earth! By the way, Chown's material on spectroscopy is fascinating and helped me to a better understanding of how the process works and how the black lines in spectrums of light reveal the composition of the stars. Chown has the ability to engage the reader in scientific ideas, perhaps in part because of the unique way he sometimes puts things. For example on page 79 he writes about the resistance encountered by an object as it approached the speed of light. He states, "The only conceivable source of such resistance was a body's mass." However, what I thought was, mass cannot find resistance by itself. There must be something in the very fabric of spacetime that is providing the resistance. It is not enough to posit "inertia" since that really explains nothing. I believe there is still something fundamental that we do not understand about the relationship between the speed of light and the nature of matter and energy. Chown sometimes uses the language and assumptions of the times he is writing about. For example on page 96 he speaks of "the electrons which flitted about an atomic nucleus like planets round the sun," an analogy now considered somewhat misleading (a "cloud" is preferred, I believe), but in recalling it, we are again forced to imagine what an atom might look like if we could somehow "see" it. Most amusing story: Austrian physicist Fritz Houtermans making up dreams to tell Sigmund Freud! (p. 110) Best stream of consciousness leading to insight: Fred Hoyle musing on the atomic bomb project about which he had only second-hand and circumstantial evidence. (pp. 159-160) Best speculation: In answer to "Where are they?", Fermi's famous question about extra-terrestrials, Chown proposes that they came and went long before the sun even shone. (p. 215)
Rating:
Summary: Captivating, informative, demanding, but highly readable
Review: The title is an allusion to the dream of the alchemists of old who sought a magic kiln in which to transform base metals into gold. That dream remained intact until the discovery in the twentieth century of how the elements are actually built up from hydrogen and exactly what kind of "magic furnace" would be required to turn base metals into gold. In a most engaging narrative, science writer Marcus Chown tells that fascinating story through the lives and ideas of the scientists who made the discoveries. Chown begins, as one must, with the Greeks and Democritus who opined, "...in reality there are only atoms and the void." Chown shows how it was impossible for the Greeks without the scientific method to go any further than Democritus's intuition. But Chown does not dwell on the alchemy but ratchets us directly to modern science and the growing realization that "Atoms Are Not the Smallest Things" (Chapter Two), and that therefore "it must be possible to transform an atom of one element into an atom of another." (p. 21) And with that, the race was on to account for how hydrogen became helium which became, through crucibles unimaginable to man, carbon, iron and eventually the heaviest elements. The story culminates in the work of Fred Hoyle, Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, and Willy Fowler who explained the nuclear processes operating inside stars and supernovae. Chown finishes with a chapter on the discovery of the cosmic background radiation, the "afterglow of creation" which confirmed how helium was manufactured in the Big Bang, and a chapter on how the elements are strewn into space and end up in Population I stars and eventually in our bodies. There is a Glossary and a Selected Bibliography. The value of this book lies not only in the fascinating story told but in the magical way that Chown is able to painlessly teach us a little chemistry and physics along the way. I learned more about the nature of atoms and the various forces in nature in these pages, almost incidentally, than I have in any other single book. So intrigued was I in learning more that I turned to the Periodic Table of the Elements as I read the text. But Chown's style is not didactic. Instead he illuminates the personalities and the flow of ideas. We see Marie Currie with her radiation swollen fingers and Fred Hoyle truant at the back of the local cinema teaching himself to read. We see how the vision of meteorites falling into the sun became the vision of the sun falling in upon itself, shrinking and, as the elements got closer and closer together, heating up, and how that idea coursed after some meandering into the discovery of atomic energy. But perhaps the most beautiful "turn" (as in a poetic change of perception, as in a sonnet) in the book is on page 107 where Chown's writes about the sameness of all the atoms of an element, and then suddenly asks, thinking about the mysterious behavior evidenced by the phenomenon of the half-life: "How could radium atoms all be the same yet behave differently?" This question leads to the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics. There is an implicit sense of warning in the book about the limitations of humans doing science. Thus the American geologist Thomas Chamberlain is quoted on page 54 as saying, "There is perhaps no beguilement more insidious and dangerous than an elaborate and elegant mathematical process built upon unfortified premises." He was critiquing Lord Kelvin, but might his words not apply to more recent theories, such as that of one-dimensional strings? And on page 65 it is recounted that Auguste Comte "deemed it self-evident that we would never be able to study" the chemical composition of the stars. Two years after his death in 1857 thanks to the unlikely technique of spectroscopy we were doing just that. Indeed, as Chown reports on page 67, helium was discovered on the sun through a reading of its spectrum before it was discovered on the earth! By the way, Chown's material on spectroscopy is fascinating and helped me to a better understanding of how the process works and how the black lines in spectrums of light reveal the composition of the stars. Chown has the ability to engage the reader in scientific ideas, perhaps in part because of the unique way he sometimes puts things. For example on page 79 he writes about the resistance encountered by an object as it approached the speed of light. He states, "The only conceivable source of such resistance was a body's mass." However, what I thought was, mass cannot find resistance by itself. There must be something in the very fabric of spacetime that is providing the resistance. It is not enough to posit "inertia" since that really explains nothing. I believe there is still something fundamental that we do not understand about the relationship between the speed of light and the nature of matter and energy. Chown sometimes uses the language and assumptions of the times he is writing about. For example on page 96 he speaks of "the electrons which flitted about an atomic nucleus like planets round the sun," an analogy now considered somewhat misleading (a "cloud" is preferred, I believe), but in recalling it, we are again forced to imagine what an atom might look like if we could somehow "see" it. Most amusing story: Austrian physicist Fritz Houtermans making up dreams to tell Sigmund Freud! (p. 110) Best stream of consciousness leading to insight: Fred Hoyle musing on the atomic bomb project about which he had only second-hand and circumstantial evidence. (pp. 159-160) Best speculation: In answer to "Where are they?", Fermi's famous question about extra-terrestrials, Chown proposes that they came and went long before the sun even shone. (p. 215)
Rating:
Summary: this book rocks
Review: This book is just completely the most incredible science book I have ever read. I could not put it down, and believe me, I can put down a LOT of books that other people say they can't put down. Totally inspiring, exciting. It's not like reading a book, it's like travelling in a time machine. You're not reading about the discovery of the electron, you're there in that dark laboratory with J.J. Thomson and his glowing cathode ray tubes.
Rating:
Summary: this book rocks
Review: This book is just completely the most incredible science book I have ever read. I could not put it down, and believe me, I can put down a LOT of books that other people say they can't put down. Totally inspiring, exciting. It's not like reading a book, it's like travelling in a time machine. You're not reading about the discovery of the electron, you're there in that dark laboratory with J.J. Thomson and his glowing cathode ray tubes.
Rating:
Summary: What wonderful atoms!
Review: This book reminded me of "Cosmos," the famous serial TV program which was broadcast in Japan and many other countries some twenty years ago when I was a junior high school student. As a boy interested in science, I would hurry back home from school and be nailed to the TV. The subjects covered by the program included the history of the universe and evolution of creatures. I was excited to know how nature had created us over a very long time. This book is more specific, and focuses on where the atoms which make up our bodies originally came from and how they were created. Don't you want to know that? I'm sure this book will wake up a curious child in your mind, just as it woke up mine.
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