"[An] entertaining romp ... Scudder has a knack for homing in on bizarre cosmic phenomena ...explained in accessible prose. Armchair astronomers will come away with a renewed sense of wonder at the strangeness of the universe." Publishers Weekly

From a brilliant young female professor at Oberlin College, Ohio, comes a quirky guided tour of the Universe, focusing on weird and wonderful facts.

Astrophysicist Jillian Scudder knows more than most of us what a surreal place the Universe can be. In this light-hearted book she delves into some of the more arcane facts that her work has revealed, and tells us how we have actually managed to discover these amazing truths.

Did you know: the galaxy is flatter than a sheet of paper; supermassive black holes can sing a super-low B flat; it rains iron on a brown dwarf, and diamonds on Neptune; you could grow turnips on Mars if its soil weren't full of rocket fuel; the Universe is beige, on average; Jupiter's magnetic field will short-circuit your spacecraft - and, of course, the Milky Way smells of rum and raspberries.

Author: Jillian Scudder
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Icon Books
Published: 11/03/2022
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.71lbs
Size: 7.80h x 5.00w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781785789267


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 12/19/2022
Foreword 02/27/2023

About the Author
Dr Jillian Scudder is an astrophysicist and associate professor of Physics & Astronomy at Oberlin College, Ohio, and the author of Astroquizzical: A Beginner's Journey Through the Cosmos (Icon, 2019). She has been writing about space for a general audience since 2013, with her work published in Forbes, Quartz, The Independent, and The Conversation, among others.