Universal Timekeepers: Reconstructing History Atom by Atom

"They are 99.999999999999% empty space. Almost perfectly nothing. And yet they make up everything you see, touch, smell, taste, and feel. They feed and clothe you. Their motion makes you warm (and cold). They exist in splendid isolation and in highly complex assemblages. They tell time. And they can reveal secrets of the past that are otherwise unknowable. They are atoms. You've likely never seen an atom, even though they permeate your world. This is unsurprising when you realize that they are not just mostly emptiness, they are very, very tiny pieces of mostly emptiness -- it takes 10 million trillion of them to create a poppy seed. David Helfand's new book tells a quantitative history of the Universe over the past 13.8 billion years through a series oftales, always with atoms in the starring roles. We can use atoms to assign precise dates to works of human creativity, to trace the history of agriculture and human diet, to piece together the vicissitudes of past climate as an aid in understanding what the future might hold, and to reconstruct the history of our Solar System and the Universe itself. We can uncover art forgeries, identity the provenance of stolen statues, and determine the causes of death for ancient fellow humans (and what they ate for lunch the day they died). We can measure the Earth's temperature 100,000 years ago and relate it to the composition of the atmosphere at that time. We can date the formation of our planet and its moon and mark the origin of life on our calendar. With our exquisite understanding of atomic structure and its many variations we can, quite literally, reconstruct history atom by atom"--
Atoms are unfathomably tiny. It takes fifteen million trillion of them to make up a single poppy seed—give or take a few billion. And there’s hardly anything to them: atoms are more than 99.9999999999 percent empty space. Yet scientists have learned to count these slivers of near nothingness with precision and to peer into their internal states. In looking so closely, we have learned that atoms, because of their inimitable signatures and imperturbable internal clocks, are little archives holding the secrets of the past.David J. Helfand reconstructs the history of the universe—back to its first microsecond 13.8 billion years ago—with the help of atoms. He shows how, by using detectors and reactors, microscopes and telescopes, we can decode the tales these infinitesimal particles tell, answering questions such as: Is a medieval illustrated prayer book real or forged? How did maize cultivation spread from the highlands of central Mexico to New England? What was Earth’s climate like before humans emerged? Where can we find clues to identify the culprit in the demise of the dinosaurs? When did our planet and solar system form? Can we trace the births of atoms in the cores of massive stars or even glimpse the origins of the universe itself?A lively and inviting introduction to the building blocks of everything we know, The Universal Timekeepers demonstrates the power of science to unveil the mysteries of unreachably remote times and places.
David J. Helfand reconstructs the history of the universe—back to its first microsecond 13.8 billion years ago—with the help of atoms.