Could there be a civilization on a mote of dust? How much of your fate have you made? Who cleans the universe?Through more than fifty Koans - pleasingly paradoxical vignettes following the ancient Zen tradition - leading physicist Anthony Aguirre takes us across the world from Japan to Italy, and through ideas spanning the age, breadth and depth of the Universe. Using these beguiling stories and a flair for explaining complex science, he covers cosmic questions that giants from Aristotle to Galileo to Heisenberg have grappled with - from the nature of time to the origin of multiple universes to the meaning of quantum theory.