Disturbing the Universe

Summary

Disturbing the universe is an autobiography written and lived by Freeman Dyson, who worked on the Los Alamos team alongside Richard Feynman. Freeman Dyson was an awesome physicist himself and his memories of the times and his ideas for what science could produce in the future are interesting.

In his own words from the book:

One should expect that, within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star.

He was helping humanity to make idea come true by working in fundamental physics himself.

The book also covers ideas about self-replicating robots, in spirit similar to Von Neumann Probes. He calls them Astrochickens, essentially 1-kg spacecrafts that could seed human life in distant star systems.

All in all his attitude towards the future and the role that science could play in it is what I took away from the book. This is even more interesting given the times that he grew up in, being born in 1923. He lived through a major world war as a young man, yet had such a positive outlook on the future. To me, this is remarkable and something that I want to remember.

It's a book about discovery, about learning and becoming better at harnessing energy to make life better for humans. Yet, it's also filled with warnings about the complexity of morals in human affairs, especially regarding war and the potential misuse of technology.