What does science tell us about the birth of our universe, about stars and galaxies and black holes, about elementary particles, the formation of atoms and molecules and their growing diversification, about the beginning of life and its evolution on earth?
In this book an omniscient quark named Yog tells his answers to all these questions for everyday persons of all ages. Indeed, as a witness to all events from the Big Bang to the present state of affairs on planet earth, Yog gives a precise and scientifically sound account to the author Eckleben, who has made a wonderfully intelligent, intelligible and moreover entertaining and often quite amusing tale out of this vast amount of knowledge, all done with a clever use of everyday language without complicated terminology and mathematical formulas.
Having taught advanced courses on cosmology on graduate student level for many years, I can confirm that the facts about cosmic evolution and organic evolution presented by Yog's ghost-writer Eckleben give a pretty good and accurate picture of present day scientific knowledge. It will attract and satisfy many curious readers, in particular young ones, even if they have (yet) had very little scientific education.
Further quite amusing chapters are devoted to a sketch of human societies and behaviour as seen from Yog's cosmic-comic point of view. It appears that the quark and his interpreter agree on the certainly likeable engineers' conviction that most personal, social and global problems arise from a lack of rationality and shall be solved in the future with a more scientific approach. In spite of some doubts I do sympathize with their point of view and hope with them for a further development of mankind leading to 'homo prudens', the rational and responsible being that may use its dominating role for the benefit of all life on earth. This, of course, is the hope of all educators and I wish that the book finds wide distribution in schools, public libraries, among teachers and students.
Dr. Gustav Obermair
Professor of Theoretical Physics
April 2007
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