Press Room

From time to time, we at the User’s Guide make our way into the popular press.  If you’re as obsessive about finding out about us as we are, here’s your one-stop place to check us out.

• Articles by us
  • 8/13/09 – slate.com: Time-Traveling for Dummies: A physicist looks at The Time Traveler’s Wife. By Dave Goldberg
    This article got a LOT of press, including io9, The Christian Science Monitor, slate’s movie review section, and many, many others.
  • 3/9/10 – The Big Idea. Dave and Jeff tell you about why our book is awesome.
  • 3/29/10 – “An Open Letter to the Writers and Director of Hot Tub Time Machine” by Dr. Dave Goldberg. A piece in io9, in which I dissect the nuances of Time Travel paradoxes in HTTM. Yes, it is very snarky.
  • 4/28/10 – “Ask a Physicist: If the Universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?”, by Dave Goldberg. The first in a (now ongoing) series on io9.
  • 4/29/10 – “Ask a Physicist: What happens if you’re traveling at the speed of light and turn on your headlights?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 4/30/10 – “Ask a Physicist: How smart do you need to be to collapse a wavefunction?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 5/1/10 – “Ask a Physicist: Why believe in Dark Matter?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 5/7/10 – “Space, Time and the viability of Wormholes”, by Dave Goldberg. LA Times op-ed.
  • 5/18/10 – “Ask a Physicist: Would a Gravitron work in Deep Space?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 5/31/10 – “Ask a Physicist: Could you survive a trip to the nearest star?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 6/14/10 – “Ask a Physicist: Why don’t collapsing atoms destroy all matter in the universe?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 6/29/10 – “Ask a Physicist: Is there an Evil Goateed Version of you somewhere in the Multiverse?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 7/13/10 – “Asl a Physicist: Can I build an ansible to communicate across the cosmos?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 7/28/10 – “Ask a Physicist: How long does it take for you to fall into a black hole?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 8/10/10 – “Ask a Physicist: Are physicists just making up dark energy?”, by Dave Goldberg
  • 8/25/10 – “Ask a Physicist: What ever happened to magnetic monopoles”, by Dave Goldberg
• Appearances/Talks
  • 11/17/09 – Studio 360: Dave is interviewed in front of a live audience about Time Travel
    We’ll post a link when the show is aired.
    Coverage included a writeup on the tor.com website by Ellen Wright
  • 11/20/09 – PhilCon 2009: Dave and Jeff lead a panel on “How to Build a Time Machine” (and Dave serves on several more panels)
    Write-ups include this one on “time and quantum mechanics.”
  • 1/1/10 – Studio 360: Dave gets interviewed by Kurt Anderson (and alongside Connie Willis, Janelle Monae, and other luminaries) about the prospects of time travel. Watch part of the interview here.
  • 2/22/10, 6:30 pm – Stapely of Germantown.  Dave will be talking about time travel.
  • 2/24/10, 3:30 pm – Drexel University. Disque Hall, 109.   Dave will be speaking on the science of Time Travel at the Drexel College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Seminar.
  • 3/9/10, 6:00 pm – Barnes & Noble, 1805 Walnut Street, Philadelphia.  Dave and Jeff will be talking, answering questions, and signing books.  Our first appearance after the release of the book!
  • 3/11/10, 7:00pm – The Franklin Institute. Dave will be talking about time travel.
  • 3/13/10, 1:00 pm – Second Life: Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics. Dave talked about the physics of time travel.
  • 4/2/10, 9:30-11:30 am PST – The Space Show. Dave talked about the book, time travel, cosmology, and science in general.
  • 4/17/10, 3:00 pm  – Free Library Festival, Conference Rm. 108.  Dave and Jeff will talk about science, science fiction, science education, and the importance of keeping it real — in every sense.
  • 4/28/10, 4:30 pm – Widener University Art Gallery. Jeff and Dave will be talking about the “User’s Guide” and signing books.
• Reviews and Articles about Us.

  • What a delightful book! It pulls no punches-or punch lines-in explaining all the fun topics in physics and cosmology. From quarks to quasars, from electrons to extraterrestrials-it’s all here. Whether you are interested in how to build a time machine or a transporter, or would like to know why curiosity killed Schrödinger’s Cat, you will find clear and memorably illustrated explanations. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the recent exciting developments in physics and astronomy.

    –J. Richard Gott, Professor of Astrophysics, Princeton University, and
    author of Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe

  • I wish I’d had Goldberg and Blomquist as my physics teachers. Strangelets that grow until they strangle the world! Instructions for building an awesome teleportation device, and then transforming it into a super-awesome time machine! Speculations on the odds against our own existence! (And even deeper speculations on being in two places at once!) I’m going to recommend this book to my students, who are science journalists–and to any and all readers who want to have more fun in the universe.

    – Jonathan Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Beak of the Finch

  • 11/19/09 – “Dr. Goldberg’s User’s Guide to the Universe” — by Maia Livengood of Drexel University’s College of Arts and Sciences ASK magazine.
  • 11/20/09 – “Studio 360: The Science and Fiction of Time Travel” — by Ellen Wright of tor.com.
  • 3/11/10 – “A User’s Guide to the Universe” — by Susan Quinn at Ink Spells. We quote:
    

    I NEEDED to own this book (and NOT as an e-book, mind you, but that’s the subject of another post).

    Not like I need food, air, my husband’s love or a kiss goodbye from my 6 year old. Need as in the pure knowledge that my life will be less rich without it.

    And I was pretty sure Worm Burner would love it too.

    Did I mention they have comics? And jokes?

    So, what are you waiting for?

  • 3/19/10 – “Goldberg *00 finds fun in physics” — Brett Tomlinson, Princeton Alumni Weekly Blog. Borrowing liberally from our introduction, they say:
    

    There is no math or equations (save one: E=mc2); instead each chapter begins with a cartoon illustration by Blomquist that features an “inexcusably terrible pun” and a “question about how the universe works.” The chapter then provides the answer. “Our aim,” the authors write, “is to find some middle ground between those who appreciate the underlying majesty of the physics foundation and those who would rather gag themselves with a spoon than be caught dead within a hundred yards of a protractor.”

  • 3/22/10 – “Physics for the Rest of Us” — The Christian Science Monitor:
    

    If you’ve ever wondered what happened before the big bang or where the universe is expanding, then the new book “A User’s Guide to the Universe” (Wiley, $24.95) is for you. A hilariously serious journey through all the big questions (Can I build a time machine?) with answers from real-life physicist David Goldberg and sly illustrator Jeff Blomquist, this indispensable window on modern science makes a great nonfiction companion to the beloved, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

  • 3/29/2010 – “Book Review: A User’s Guide to the Universe” — by reader alfredw at slashdot. Among many other nice things, he says:
    

    A User’s Guide to the Universe (hereinafter “A User’s Guide”) is the physicist’s answer to Phil Plait’s Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End…. What Goldberg and Blomquist have created is a fun, light read about interesting areas of modern physics that will entertain while it educates. The book assumes very little scientific background on the part of the reader. Those with some knowledge (this is Slashdot, after all) will find the explanations of well-known concepts (the double slit experiment, for example) lucid, direct, brief and entertaining.

    But in the cause of full disclosure, we have to tell you that we know him, personally.

  • 3/29/10 – “Publisher’s Weekly Online Review”:
    

    With a large measure of humor and a minimum of math (one equation), physics professor Goldberg and engineer Blomquist delve into the fascinating physics topics that rarely make it into introductory classes, including time travel, extraterrestrials, and “quantum weirdness” to prove that physics’ “reputation for being hard, impractical, and boring” is wrong by at least two-thirds: “Hard? Perhaps. Impractical? Definitely not… But boring? That’s where we really take issue.” Breaking up each topic into common sense questions (“How many habitable planets are there?” “What is Dark Matter?” “If the universe is expanding, what’s it expanding into?”), the duo provides explanations in everyday language with helpful examples, analogies, and Blomquist’s charmingly unpolished cartoons. Among other lessons, readers will learn about randomness through gambling; how a Star Trek-style transporter might function in the real world; and what may have existed before the Big Bang. Despite the absence of math, this nearly-painless guide is still involved and scientific, aimed at science hobbyists rather than science-phobes; it should also prove an ideal reference companion for more technical classroom texts. 100 b&w photos. (Mar.)

  • 3/30/10 – “Young Widener Alumnus Co-Authors and Illustrates Book Addressing Universal Questions” — A story all about Jeff (including a movie) in the Widener Magazine blog.
  • 8/6/10 – “Rarely There: Books, Crafts, Arts and Life” — a book blog which (despite feeling like we overdid it with the footnotes) says:

  With a direct and seemingly effortless manner, peppered with humorous analogies and footnotes that call upon pop-culture freely, the book addresses some of the profoundly confounding information many great minds have spent their lifetimes pondering on… The cartoons by Jeff Blomquist are mostly witty, but sometimes cheesy. They certainly make it easier to catch the complicated ideas being discussed, even if in a superficial sort of way – which is more than most physics books do to help understand such mind-boggling concepts.