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A Little Book about the Big Bang - Hardcover | Diverse Reads

A Little Book about the Big Bang

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A concise introduction to the greatest questions of modern cosmology.

What came before the big bang? How will the universe evolve into the future? Will there be a big crunch? Questions like these have no definitive answers, but there are many contending theories. In A Little Book about the Big Bang, physicist and writer Tony Rothman guides expert and uninitiated readers alike through the most compelling mysteries surrounding the nature and origin of the universe.

Cosmologists are busy these days, actively researching dark energy, dark matter, and quantum gravity, all at the foundation of our understanding of space, time, and the laws governing the universe. Enlisting thoughtful analogies and a step-by-step approach, Rothman breaks down what is known and what isn’t and details the pioneering experimental techniques scientists are bringing to bear on riddles of nature at once utterly basic and stunningly complex. In Rothman’s telling, modern cosmology proves to be an intricate web of theoretical predictions confirmed by exquisitely precise observations, all of which make the theory of the big bang one of the most solid edifices ever constructed in the history of science. At the same time, Rothman is careful to distinguish established physics from speculation, and in doing so highlights current controversies and avenues of future exploration.

The idea of the big bang is now almost a century old, yet with each new year comes a fresh enigma. That is scientific progress in a nutshell: every groundbreaking discovery, every creative explanation, provokes new and more fundamental questions. Rothman takes stock of what we have learned and encourages readers to ponder the mysteries to come.

ISBN-13: 9780674251847

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Publication Date: 03-01-2022

Pages: 240

Product Dimensions: 4.25(w) x 6.38(h) x (d)

Tony Rothman has taught physics at Harvard, Princeton, and NYU. A former editor at Scientific American, he is the author of thirteen books, including Sacred Mathematics: Japanese Temple Geometry (with Fukagawa Hidetoshi) and A Physicist on Madison Avenue.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Gravity, Pumpkins, and Cosmology 11

2 A Special Theory 20

3 General Relativity, the Basis of Cosmology 29

4 The Expanding Universe 47

5 Cosmology's Rosetta Stone: The Cosmic Background Radiation 63

6 The Primeval Cauldron 76

7 Dark Universe 93

8 Darker Universe 105

9 Galaxies Exist and So Do We 116

10 The Universal Pipe Organ 126

11 The First Blink: Cosmic Inflation 142

12 To Inflate or Not to Inflate 156

13 Crunches and Bounces 167

14 Why Quantum Gravity? 176

15 Multiverses and Metaphysics 195

Further Reading 209

Acknowledgments 213

Index 215