A Matter of Degrees: What temperature reveals about the past and future of our species, planet, and Universe by Gino Segr`, Viking, $24.95, ISBN 0670031011
OUR relationship with heat and cold is elemental. Life itself couldn’t have happened without a relatively warm planet. And fast-forwarding a few billion years, our ancestors finally began to master heat, making fires for warmth and wrapping up against the cold. Yet the scientific measure we call temperature is only a couple of hundred years old.
It’s now a central concept in physics, and indeed in science generally. And in A Matter of Degrees physicist Gino Segr` zips back and forth…
