Why Do We Exist? The Nine Realms of the Universe that Make You Possible

Astrophysicist Oluseyi (A Quantum Life) asserts in this disappointing treatise that the universe can be broken down into nine realms. One night, while observing the stars with a telescope, he spotted the Andromeda galaxy. Despite being 2.5 million light-years away, the “hazy blob” appeared larger than the much closer moon. That moment sparked a revelation: “I began to imagine reality as layered—not just in scale, but in rules.” At the level of galaxies, or what he calls the Cosmological Realm, notions of time and distance conceivable in the human world (the Middle Realm) fall away. Similarly, at the subatomic level, or the Quantum Realm, particles far too small for humans to see defy classical physics. Despite their vast differences, all the realms coexist, he posits, “fitting together like interlocking gears” and making existence possible. Some of the realms Oluseyi presents involve speculative thinking. For instance, in the section on the Realm of Imagination—the intellectual space where science enables educated guesses about the future—he hypothesizes how humans will respond to the eventual death of the sun, arguing it’s more reasonable for humans to build their own artificial star than search for another inhabitable planet. Despite his chatty style and colloquial language, Oluseyi struggles to clearly explain complex physics concepts. General readers will be left scratching their heads. (Apr.)