The Void

I can understand how some see the title of this book as misleading, but after reading it, I found it wonderful and swirling with currents of energy and supercharged particle of knowledge. A thoroughly amazing little book with content - and an approach - that mirrors the subject matter: nothingness is but energy misunderstood. Read it and prepare for a trip across unimaginably small distances that will change you forever.

Frank Close writes in the Oxford style, a little eccentric and quite profound. This is the clearest explanation of the Void, the so-called vacuum of empty space, that I have read. He shows very clearly how physicists came to understand the vacuum of space, which is really a quantum plenum. Well-written and clear (for the most part), this small volume is worth the price and the reading.

This little book covers a LOT of science in a pretty short amount of time. Another reviewer said that it deals rather less with the void than one might think from the title. While this is true, there isn't much that can be said about nothing without understanding that in the real universe, nothing is truly something after all. That said, there is a lot of explaining of "stuff" to get to explaining nothing, which leads the book to have a lot less nothing than you might expect. That said, the science is very solid and quite clearly explained. However, having extensively studied physics and chemistry years ago, this read more like a refresher course to me. I didn't have too much trouble making sense of most of the science because I have been exposed to it in great depth (even though I may've forgotten some things). I worry that to the lay reader, the book would be extremely hard going, even as there are many analogies drawn, so I would put it closer to three stars for a reader with little or no science background. Still, written well overall and with great clarity. An interesting concept.