Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings

Despite the transience of human life, we still ponder the infinite. But what is this infinity? Is it simply an endless regression from the world to the atom and the quark? Or is it the constant expansion of the universe into territories scientists may never see? Just as the chemical makeup of the human body is stitched by the atoms of bursting stars, our questions take on a similarly cosmic scope. Uniquely qualified physicist and writer Alan Lightman probes the cosmos of human questioning to reveal the issues that continue to attract us—from infinity and time to consciousness and meaning—considering why we care about such paradoxical questions and proposing what we might learn from things we may never understand.