Ka-boom!: The Science of Extremes

David Darling travels through space and time to find the largest, smallest, stickiest, loudest, quietest, fastest, slowest, heaviest and brightest… What’s the brightest light on Earth, the coldest place in the universe, the blackest material ever made, the most poisonous substance in nature? Probing the extremes of size and speed, depth and density, and revealing the stickiest, sweetest, smelliest and most poisonous substances known to science, Ka-boom! endeavours to find out! In an unabashed celebration of the exceptional, David Darling takes a rollicking journey through the universe’s weirdest and most wonderful extremes. From the treetop home of the notoriously sluggish sloth, to the very edges of the known universe, Darling searches through space and time for nature and technology’s greatest oddities. Darling also investigates how pioneering scientists are using these quirks of nature to design faster computers, produce greener energy and revolutionise space travel.