The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities
Caleb Scharf [Scharf, Caleb]Longlisted for the 2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award*
Short-listedforPhysics World*'s *Book of the Year**
The Sunday Times (UK) Best Science Book of 2014
*A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2014
An NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of 2014
A Politics & Prose 2014 Staff Pick**
In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth rotates around the Sun. Having demoted Earth from its unique position in the cosmos to one of mediocrity, Copernicus set in motion a revolution in scientific thought. This perspective has influenced our thinking for centuries. However, recent evidence challenges the Copernican Principle, hinting that we do in fact live in a special place, at a special time, as the product of a chain of unlikely events. But can we be significant if the Sun is still just one of a billion trillion stars in the observable universe? And what if our universe is just one of a multitude of others-a single slice of an infinity of parallel realities?