It would be quite pleasant to spend an evening in the company of Segre. Although I enjoyed Faust in Copenhagen more, this conveyed much of the same passion and interest. Exploring the role of temperature in everything from biology to oosmology was an interesting concept. It makes me want to read a book on archaea. ( )

Temperature is a measure of the average energy of an ensemble of particles at equilibrium. For some things, like distant stars and galaxies, it is one of the few direct measurements we can make. Gino Segre walks the reader through the natural history of the universe using temperature as a guide. Why do most warm blooded animals have similar body temperature? How does one measure the internal temperature of the sun, and what does it mean to describe the temperature of the center of a neutron star or even a black hole at billions of degrees Kelvin? What happens to matter as we approach absolute zero and what does that tell us about quantum mechanics? These and other questions about our universe are asked and answered in a very accessible way.

This is Segre's first book, and there are a few instances where he seems to go off on a tangent and lose the discussion of temperature before snapping back, which I found a little distracting. A more attentive editor (or perhaps one that knew a little physics) could have helped in this regard. Despite this, I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in popular physics. ( )

A good layman's summary of science, primarily physics but a good bit of biology and a little chemistry using temperature as the organizing thread. It includes the history of ideas and concepts up into present research. The excitement of discovery was evident and much was understandable. It did not manage to budge my learning blocks (such as thermodynamics) but that's more my own resistance than poor explaining on the author's part ( )

It would be quite pleasant to spend an evening in the company of Segre. Although I enjoyed Faust in Copenhagen more, this conveyed much of the same passion and interest. Exploring the role of temperature in everything from biology to oosmology was an interesting concept. It makes me want to read a book on archaea. ( )

Segré approaches the subject in some interesting ways, from deep underground and deep underwater to the earth’s atmosphere, the center of stars and the near void of space.
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