The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet.

"Yes, he’s a great writer, and that’s one of the reasons I love it. It is so beautifully written. It’s the way I imagine a poet talks about gravity. The interesting thing is that, while it purports to investigate gravity, a lot of Panek’s book uses gravity as a lens to look at society. He talks about personal interactions where people are interpreting gravity for theological and philosophical reasons. So when Panek asks the question, ‘What is gravity?’ it’s almost like asking ‘What does our view of gravity say about us?’ It’s a little unsatisfying in that at the beginning, he says, ‘We’re going to find out what gravity is.’ Then he also says warns you, ‘We really don’t know, and when we get to the end, I’m going to tell you that I still don’t know what gravity is.’ If you ask what gravity is, the answer, he says, is that nobody knows. I don’t think most physicists really agree with him. Panel mentions interviewing Kip Thorne and asking him what gravity is. Kip Thorne replies that the question is meaningless. I don’t feel that the question is meaningless. But, certainly, thinking about it in the terms that Panek does is not something that Kip Thorne bothers with. Most scientists don’t spend a lot of time wondering, ‘What does it mean that the ancients thought of gravity as being what holds up the sphere of the sky?’—because the question doesn’t apply these days. Aristotle said that some things belong in the sky and some things belong on the ground. What does that say about Aristotle? What does that say about gravity? It doesn’t really say anything about gravity as physicists think of it today. Panek uses it as a lens to understand our relationship with each other and the universe rather than with gravity itself. It’s probably the most eloquent, readable book on this list. It’s worth reading, even if you don’t care about gravity. He could have chosen just about anything else and asked, ‘What does it say about the meaning of life?’ and written a book very similar to this. He happened to choose to write about gravity, which is why I first picked it up, but it’s also just such a joy to read. It’s partly that reading all these books, in each one you’re learning about one side of gravity. Sean is very much about the nuts and bolts of how the equations work, with Panek it’s ‘What does our understanding of gravity say about us?’ What I didn’t see was a book that satisfied me by giving the whole perspective on what gravity is. One that sticks with the science, but asks how does gravity affect you and me personally? Each one of the five books on my list is focused on one aspect or another of gravity. I wanted something more holistic. They are. Also, as a snowboarder and a skateboarder—I’ve done a lot of what some people call ‘gravity sports’— the risks that come with heights are very much forefront in your mind. This is something that, if all goes right, I’m going to have a lot of fun. And if it goes wrong, call an ambulance. The things I include in the book have touchstones in my own life. Somebody else could write the same book and end up conveying the same concepts with very different stories. I hope the stories are entertaining. They’re reflections of the way I see gravity. Yes, absolutely. When you have a parent working with NASA, it’s hard to imagine that the whole world doesn’t spend all their time thinking about going to space. We lived in Clear Lake City, Texas, but we called it Space City when I was a kid, because, from the moment you woke up to the moment you went to bed…there were astronauts around, there were space-themed decorations everywhere, we’d have space-themed parades. I had no idea that everybody wasn’t obsessing about space and gravity until we left Clear Lake City. It was a golden age. It’s a shame to see it pass. I’m back at NASA now. I’m a member of the Earth Science News team. I write about satellites looking back down at the Earth rather than looking out at space. But gravity is important whenever we put something in orbit in order to observe the Earth. And measuring gravity can tell us a lot about the planet’s oceans, ice, and even what’s going on under the ground. Those are the sorts of things that I cover for NASA. Astronauts come and visit all the time. It really is like going back to my childhood. We obsess about space as part of our jobs, and think about it all day long."