Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brunel University. His books include Breakthrough, The Ascent of Gravity, which was the Sunday Times 2017 Science Book of the Year; Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand; What A Wonderful World; Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You; We Need to Talk About Kelvin and Afterglow of Creation, both of which were runners-up for the Royal Society Book Prize. Marcus has also won the Bookseller's Digital Innovation of the Year for Solar System for iPad.

Bestselling author Marcus Chown explores some of the most profound and important science about us, our world and the universe with fifty fascinating and mind-bending facts.


Our adventures in space, our deepening understanding of the quantum world and huge leaps in technology over the last century have revealed a universe far stranger than we could ever have imagined. With brilliant clarity and wit, bestselling author Marcus Chown examines the profound science behind fifty remarkable scientific facts that help explain the vast complexities of our existence. Did you know that you could fit the whole human race in the volume of a sugar cube? Or that the electrical energy in a single mosquito is enough to cause a global mass extinction? Or that, out there in the universe, there are an infinite number of copies of you reading an infinite number of copies of this?



Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand is a mind-bending journey through some of the most weird and wonderful facts about our universe, vividly illuminating the hidden truths that govern our everyday lives.

Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand is a mind-bending journey through some of the most weird and wonderful facts about our universe, vividly illuminating the hidden truths that govern our everyday lives.

Bestselling author Marcus Chown explores some of the most profound and important science about us, our world and the universe with fifty fascinating and mind-bending facts.