We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

  • Jorge Cham &
  • Daniel Whiteson
JOHN MURRAY: 2017. 368 pp. £12.99

There's no shortage of cartoon-illustrated popular science books. You might have read What If? by Randall Munroe, better known as xkcd (John Murray, 2014). My personal favourite is Element Girls — an introduction to the periodic table of elements using manga illustrations (PHP Labs, 2008; in Japanese). But then if Jorge Cham, the creator of PHD comics, takes on such a book project, of course it has to stand out.

Gone are the days when Lord Kelvin would say that there was nothing new to be discovered in physics. But still, the arrogant notion that science has solved it all persisted well into the twentieth century. Only over the past few decades has the scientific community truly come to appreciate how little we actually know about the Universe. As William Phillips put it in an interview a few years ago, “We live in an incredibly exciting time for physics. We don't know what 96% of the Universe is made of — what can be more exciting than that?” (Nature 490, S11–S12; 2012).

Following Cham's previous efforts to bring physics to the masses though PHD-like comics and videos, he has now teamed up with CERN physicist Daniel Whiteson to create a book that tries to convey this exact feeling of overwhelming awe and excitement. The book is both accessible and entertaining — and succeeds in popularizing science by trying to explain the enormous challenges modern physics is facing today. In doing so, it also attempts to demystify research to some extent. Scientists no longer hold the answers to everything. Instead they are more like cool, but clueless, explorers trying to map the vastness of the Universe.

Credit: © JORGE CHAM

In the first few chapters, Cham and Whiteson dive directly into the topics we clearly know the least about: dark matter and dark energy. Then they tackle mass, gravity, time and space. They ask where antimatter might be found, ponder the size of the Universe, and discuss what happened during the Big Bang. Entire tomes could be dedicated to each of these topics, but Cham and Whiteson distil the essence of the little we know — and the lots we have no idea about. Unfortunately, as the book progresses, it loses momentum, and the final chapter on whether there is (intelligent) life in the Universe strikes me as a bit out of place. Yes, it is an exciting topic for the general public, but given the previous chapters I would have expected to learn about the mysteries of black holes, neutrinos or quantum mechanics.

We Have No Idea certainly does stand out, if only for the title. The book is full of humour (and weird pets; no spoiler intended), so it is a very enjoyable read. Some of the cartoons are truly excellent and the physics explanations are just at the right level. After a while I did experience a case of pun overload and the authors themselves seemed aware of overdoing it. I wonder whether general readers might get to the stage where they cannot tell the real fact from the pun any longer. But overall the book manages to convey a very good message to the general public: physics is really cool, precisely because we are still lacking most of the answers.