In a brilliant flash about fourteen billion years ago, time and matter were born in a single instant of creation. An immensely hot and dense universe began its rapid expansion everywhere, creating space where there was no space and time where there was no time. In the intense fire just after the beginning, the lightest elements were forged, later to form primordial clouds that eventually evolved into galaxies, stars, and planets. This evolution is the story told in this fascinating book. Interwoven with the storyline are short pieces on the pioneering men and women who revealed those wonders to us.
Sample Chapter(s)
Chapter 1: Island Universes (1,264 KB)
Contents:
- Island Universes
- The Large and the Small
- Big Bang
- Elementary Particles — Fundamental Forces
- The Primeval Fireball
- Galaxy Clusters, Galaxies, and Stars
- The Future Universe
Readership: General readers as well as undergraduates, graduate students and academics in cosmology, astrophysics, astronomy and theoretical physics. The book can be used for a general science course at the college level.
“This is a book with a soul — a strange compliment for a non-fiction presentation on the physics of our universe. The author is familiar with the subject from his own work. Yet he knows how to present the breathtaking discoveries to the educated layman in a grand overview from the quarks to the Universe. Even physicists who work in other fields may benefit from the book. The stories about how some of the facts were unraveled, read like a detective story. But unlike many other books on the same subject, the author, who has been a lifelong researcher, succeeds to convey the feeling of personal attachment, which develops between the researcher and the object of his research. After reading this book one feels more at home in our universe.”
Professor Emeritus Joerg Huefner
Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Heidelberg
“… the author is particularly enlightening on early ‘eras’ in the history of the universe (superradiant, hadronic, leptonic, etc.), when elementary particles and then atoms were just starting to come together … this account will serve a range of readers, from casual browsers to dedicated science enthusiasts.”
Publishers Weekly
