The Universe in 100 Colors

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By Tyler Thrasher & Terry Mudge &

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Publisher Description

At the intersection of science, art, and design, this must-have coffee table book highlights 100 mind-blowing colors that you’ve likely never seen before.

From Instagram sensation and self-described "mad scientist artist" Tyler Thrasher and creator of the popular Matter subscription box Terry Mudge, this book comes with a foreword by Hank Green.

This gorgeous compendium contains 100 amazing colors that you might otherwise live your whole life unaware of. These colors exist in the strangest of places, and serve extremely specific functions in nature, or were human-made with one goal in mind.

In this oversized, design-forward book you'll find entries for each of the 100 colors, organized in gradient order, with structural and impossible colors set at the end. Each entry has a 2-page spread with a full-page image of the color plus snappy descriptions, and easy-to-understand category symbols. Some entries include diagrams. Even includes structural colors and colors outside the range of human visibility! Also included is a brief introduction to color theory, a myth-busting section, plus index, glossary, and notes.

Here is your universe in living color:
Cosmic Latte: The average color of the universe.
Dragon’s Blood: A tropical tree that bleeds red resin with incredible medicinal potential.
Sonoluminescence: A color created by sound!
Eigengrau: The color we perceive in the absence of light (and no, it's not "pitch black").

Perfect for anyone who loves science or art, and bursting with astonishing facts and stunning photography, The Universe in 100 Colors is a wonder for the senses.

4 Reviews

4.0

FarawayFauna

Created 3 months ago

“Get this book!! The photographs are beyond gorgeous, I could stare at them all day. The descriptions for each color are truly fascinating and while they can get scientific at times, they are easy to understand and digest. This book made me more appreciative of the colors around us and this beautiful, strange world we live in.”

Descriptive Easy to read

Cricket

Created 3 months ago

“Not only are all the pictures in this book STUNNING, the actual information is so easy to consume because it's so incredibly fascinating. So many amazing facts about color and this universe we call home. 5 stars. Will read again.”

Raeannaroo

Created 4 months ago

Rosh

Created 6 months ago

“In a Nutshell: Love STEM-based books? Love admiring the colours of nature? Ever wonder what is ‘colour”? Here’s a fabulous addition to your TBR. Insightful, informative, mind-boggling. Loved the entire spectrum of information and hues in this book. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ours is a world of light, and hence, of colours. It is tough to think of colours as linked to energy, but that’s what they are. In school, we learn of the VIBGYOR spectrum, and we learn of the prism experiment that helps us scatter white light into a visible rainbow. But are sufficient light, an object, and functional eyesight enough to see all colours? The book begins with an introductory note on the meaning of colour. (I love how it used the analogy of a music orchestra to explain how we see colours.) It includes several mind-blowing facts about colours, both visible and invisible to the human eye. (Did you know that red, yellow, and blue are NOT the primary colours of the universe?) The explanation is scientific but not too jargon-dominated. Once the foundation of colours is set, the content moves on to what the title promises: the universe in a hundred colours. We see a hundred shades (Confession: A few of the shades appeared very similar to this human’s eye!) and learn fascinating details about them. The left-hand side contains a coloured photograph of the colour itself or some object in that precise shade. The right-hand side contains the physical composition of the colour (using a helpful symbol-based key to denote the nature of each colour) and textual insights into the shade. Now you might wonder, as I did: how much text could be written about individual colours? Turns out, quite a lot! The explanations accompanying the colours cover an astonishing array of subjects such as history, zoology, botany, astronomy, chemistry, and even modern-day technology. Once the visible colour spectrum is exhausted, the content even covers iridescent colours (wow!) and imagined colours (went entirely above my head!) Most of the explanation is straightforward, making it manageable for even a layperson with limited scientific knowledge to understand the more complex scientific bits. I appreciate how the content even addressed trickier issues such as Anish Kapoor's unethical behaviour in hoarding Vantablack or racism against certain cultures leading to colours named after them. However, some of the pages did go too technical. I especially zoned out at the bits about chemical composition of various minerals. In a couple of cases, the origin of the colour’s name is from another language such as feuille morte from French (dead leaves). It would have been great if they had mentioned this language reference as well. Reading ‘dead leaves’ as the meaning makes us understand why the colour is called ‘feuille morte’. (That said, I greatly appreciate being told the correct pronunciation of mineralogist Fuchs’ last name.”

About Tyler Thrasher

TYLER THRASHER is a self-taught chemist and botanist with a BFA in computer animation and art history. He spent much of his childhood living in greenhouses, which would go on to inspire his love for nature. During college Tyler spent his free time crawling through caves, which inspired a body of art that involved synthesizing crystals onto preserved insects and organic matter such as skulls. This quickly became his full-time job and ultimately unraveled a deeper fascination for nature and experimentation, which has carried over into the idea for this very book!

TERRY MUDGE opened the Stemcell Science Shop in 2016 with the goal of elevating the lackluster standard in scientific goods. After several successful years Terry launched his monthly Matter box, one of the most popular science subscription boxes around. He now spends his time hunting down fascinating pieces of nature and science to keep people tantalized by the infinite possibilities of the universe.