The Universe Inside You · the Extreme Science of the Human Body From Quantum Theory to the Mysteries of the Brain by Clegg, Brian -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Title page Copyright Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. In the mirror

On reflection

2. A single hair

The colours of nature Dyeing to be attractive Worrying about hair loss To make allies, lose your hair Lost in space A lousy measurement Getting under your skin What is stuff made of? Battered by molecules Empty atoms and electromagnetic bottoms Exploring an atom’s innards No miniature solar system Taking a quantum leap The charm of quarks The messy standard model Is it solid, liquid or gas? The fourth state of matter Enter the condensate Every kind of stuff You are what you eat Components that pre-date the Earth A sprinkling of stardust

3. Locked up in a cell

Cursing the pain away A living liquid The signs of life Are your cells alive? A voyage through your bloodstream The special molecule A company of tiny boxes The superstar molecule Your own special code The invaders in your cells Wearing your alien genes Your trillions of tiny stowaways A useful appendix Bacteria don’t know the five-second rule Worming their way into your affection The noble leech Aliens in the eyelashes Seeing small The rays that don’t stop giving Cats and nuclear resonance Hunting the elusive neutrino The neutrinos light couldn’t catch

4. Through fresh eyes

In Orion’s belt Seeing into the past Waves or particles? Bursting from the heart of a star The 1,340-year star trek The distorting lens The Baywatch principle Looking through a lentil Through a glass, darkly The messy colours of sight Picking up the photons From light to mind Your artificial view of the world Quantum reality Through Young’s slits Uncertainty reigns Getting entangled A normal whole from quantum parts A galactic feat Glow-in-the-dark urine Remnants of the Big Bang? The expanding universe The probable Big Bang Playing with models The out-of-control universe A quasar too far Black hole myths Building a black hole The non-eternal sunshine The power source of life Is there anybody out there? The intelligence test We are isolated, if not alone

5. Marching on the stomach

Your inner chemistry Reach for a chunk of rock The evil compound of life Adding a little fizz Sitting at Dmitri’s table Meet element 114 Heavy metal or noble gas? Turning food into energy Hot food is good food The cup that cheers Food of the gods The winners’ drug From chemical energy to moving muscle Making work happen The great bumble bee mystery The elastic kangaroo Heat on the move No perpetual motion machines The energy Crookes Infinite clean energy Entropy increases The physics of monsters Staying on two legs Fidgets and knuckle-crackers

6. Feeling dizzy

Counting the senses From compression wave to brain wave Audible illusions The sound of emotion All in good taste Flavours and taste buds The mineral in the kitchen cupboard Sniffing your way around Scenting a mate À la recherche de odeur perdu The sense that’s everywhere Seeing with your skin A sense of pain Finding your own nose Sensing the accelerator Weight and mass Push me pull you The occult force Warping space and time Falling and missing No more action at a distance Slowing your clocks The force of creation The force of electricity and magnetism Going with the current Into the nucleus The close-up force Travelling through time Light gets relative Tunnelling through time Build your own time machine The paradoxes of time Breathing easier at the theme park

7. Two by two

What do you mean, attractive? Birds do it, bees do it … You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs Doing it the prehistoric way The Stone Age technology in the park Dog as prosthetic Genetic engineering the natural way The mighty 23 Beyond the gene Similarities and differences Attack of the clones Hello Dolly Growing old gracefully

8. Crowning glory

What goes on inside your head Brains weren’t made for maths Open the door The two-boy problem A test of your understanding But what does it mean? You must remember this Solid state versus squishy state Remembering how it’s done Remembering stuff I know the face Take down my phone number I remember that tail from somewhere The brain scribble Writing with pictures Did you hear about my mummy? Abjads to alphabets It sounds capital Are you human? Would you kill to save lives? Trusting and ultimatums Weighing up the options Allowing for all the factors It could be you Economics gets it wrong Did you do that consciously? Mood swings and comfort breaks The brain’s own painkillers Homeopathic misdirection The ethics of placebos

9. Mirror, mirror

Building your ancestor tower How many colours in the rainbow? No sudden changes A failure to link up The babel of towers Proud to be ‘just a theory’ Newton gets it wrong Evolving makes a lot of sense What use is half an eye? Science can always be proved wrong The sense of wonder

Appendix: Finding out more

A single hair Locked up in a cell Through fresh eyes Marching on the stomach Feeling dizzy Two by two Crowning glory Mirror, mirror