From the acclaimed author ofEinstein's Dreams,a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities, and impossibilities, of nothingness and infinity—and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between.Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units,ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on toinfinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom theWashington Posthas called "the poet laureate of science writers," explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang.Probable Impossibilitiesis a deeply engaging consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things...