New Scientist: The Origin of (Almost) Everything

Does Anything Eat Wasps? meets Information Is Beautiful: a journey through life, the universe and everything. From what actually happened in the big bang to the accidental discovery of Post-it notes, science is packed with surprising discoveries.

Did you know, for instance, that if you were to get too close to a black hole it would suck you up like a noodle (it’s called spaghettification), why your keyboard is laid out in QWERTY (it’s not to make it easier to type) or whether the invention of the wheel was less important to civilisation than the bag (think about it)? New Scientist does.

And now they want to take you on a whistle-stop journey from the start of our universe (through the history of stars, galaxies, meteorites, the moon and dark energy) to our planet (through oceans and weather to oil) and life (through dinosaurs to emotions and sex) to civilisation (from cities to alcohol and cooking) and knowledge (from alphabets to alchemy), ending up with technology (computers to rocket science). Witty essays explore concepts that zoom from how many people have ever lived to showing you how a left-wing brain differs from a right-wing one.