Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them

A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity

By: Antonio Padilla

Narrated by: Antonio Padilla

This program is read by the author.

A fun, dazzling exploration of the strange numbers that illuminate the ultimate nature of reality.

For particularly brilliant theoretical physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, Paul Dirac, or Albert Einstein, the search for mathematical truths led to strange new understandings of the ultimate nature of reality. But what are these truths? What are the mysterious numbers that explain the universe?

In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, the leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Antonio Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics, offering a startling picture of how the universe works. These strange numbers include Graham’s number, which is so large that if you thought about it in the wrong way, your head would collapse into a singularity; TREE(3), whose finite nature can never be definitively proved, because to do so would take so much time that the universe would experience a Poincaré Recurrence—resetting to precisely the state it currently holds, down to the arrangement of individual atoms; and 10^{-120}, measuring the desperately unlikely balance of energy needed to allow the universe to exist for more than just a moment, to extend beyond the size of a single atom—in other words, the mystery of our unexpected universe.

Leading us down the rabbit hole to a deeper understanding of reality, Padilla explains how these unusual numbers are the key to understanding such mind-boggling phenomena as black holes, relativity, and the problem of the cosmological constant—that the two best and most rigorously tested ways of understanding the universe contradict one another. Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them is a combination of popular and cutting-edge science—and a lively, entertaining, and even funny exploration of the most fundamental truths about the universe.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2022 Antonio Padilla (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Wonderful Narration but Difficult to Grasp

I have a background in science, but most of these concepts are far beyond my capability to understand. Antonia's narration is absolutely great (as if Roy Kent is speaking, but not so gruff). I really liked his analogies as he attempts to explain such difficult topics. Maybe when I croak, I will be allowed to understand everything (only briefly though, just before I enter the void).

A+ in Math & Physics; D in 20th Century History

This book's insightful explanation of the symbiotic relationship between math & physics rates A+. The book's survey of the history of zero and its impact on commerce rates an A in Ancient History. The book erroneously states that planes from the "U S Air Force" dropped atom bombs on Japan in WWII. The U S Air Force did not exist during WWII. Thus, this book gets a D in 20th Century History.

Better than I expected

The concepts discussed along with the history about how they were developed was interesting. Some physics some math pretty cool. Many I never heard about even though I have a technical background. That is always a plus for me. The narrator’s accent was pretty cool too.

Awesome

Awesome, great explanation of difficult concepts and a deep dive in to history and development of these.

Excellent

Fantastically written and read by the author. I learned a great deal from this book.

4 number geeks

Number geeks will love it. You don't even need to be a math whiz to understand the hard to understand world of numbers.

Exciting, Strange, Difficult = Meh

I really love numbers. I remember first learning about a googol from an Isaac Azimov book around 1970 (I got to tell all my geek friends). This book mostly annoyed me. The first number was a bit of nonsense about the amount sprinter Usain Bolt was time dilated. A number is given having little to do with reality. He talks about googol and googolplex in term of cosmological doppelgängers – another bit of unrealistic philosophy. Then Graham’s number, which is so big it will make your head explode. I doesn’t. He discusses infinity in terms of quantum and string theory. The author tried to excite the reader about numbers with strangeness and difficult to understand science, but (for me) totally misses the beauty of the simplicity of numbers. Azimov excited me about numbers this book did not.

Amazing book

Real talk thank you for this! W w w w w w w we w w w w w w

lots more physics that I anticipated

was hoping for more number theory content but still interesting and fun. There is a lot of emphasis on the physics side of numbers which makes them more tangible.

Tony Padilla gets a COisG

At Come On It's Still Good we rate movies, books, and showd as COisG (Come On It's Still Good) or COisB (Bad). Fantastic Numbers gets a COisG and should be on every numberphile fan's reading list. The audio book is also great, as it is read by Tony himself! Enlightening, entertaining, funny, and quotable. COisG!