The Science of Discworld
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Template:Infobox Discworld The Science of Discworld is a 1999 book written by novelist Terry Pratchett and popular science writers Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Two sequels, The Science of Discworld II: The Globe and The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch have been written to it by the same authors.
The book alternates between a typical absurdistic Discworld story and serious scientific exposition. The scientific subjects center on the origins of the universe, earth and the beginnings of life. The fictional story concerns the creation of a world (the Earth) in a jar. One of the themes is that most scientific explanations commonly given are in reality a good deal more complicated.
The Discworld story begins when the main powersource for the university is about to explode, because it producing too much magic (magic for the purposes of the story is akin to nuclear energy). The university's thinking engine, Hex, decides to divert all the magic into creating a space containing nothing - no matter, no energy, no reality. The Dean sticks his fingers in the space, inadvertantly creating the universe. The wizards soon discover that they can move things around in the universe, using Hex. They call it the Roundworld, because in it, matter seems to accrete into balls in space (instead of discs on the backs of turtles).
The wizards create a series of balls of matter in space, and give one of them a Moon (accidentally). This stabilizes the ball enough that, over a score of millenia (the wizards can skip over vast periods of Roundworld time, allowing them to view the history of the universe in less than a month), life in the form of blobs emerge...Template:Sf-book-stub Template:Sci-stub