What do you think?
Rate this book
Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe
Draws on new cosmological discoveries to reveal what today's scientists are learning about the beginning and fate of the universe, citing theories in dark matter, dark energy, and the particle zoo to make predictions on how the universe will end. first printing.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
25 people are currently reading
545 people want to read
About the author
Charles Seife
14 books173 followersCHARLES SEIFE is a Professor of Journalism at New York University. Formerly a journalist with Science magazine, has also written for New Scientist, Scientific American, The Economist, Science, Wired UK, The Sciences, and numerous other publications. He is the author of Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea, which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He holds an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University and his areas of research include probability theory and artificial intelligence. He lives in Washington D.C.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
June 14, 2017
uçsuz bucaksız evren... madde,karanlık madde,karadelikler,galaksiler,atomun yapısı, her şey çok sade şekilde anlatılmış... akla durgunluk veren büyüklükler uzaklıklar...
September 25, 2022
Seife looks at a number of 20th century cosmological discoveries to summarize what scientists know about the birth and fate of the universe. He focuses on topics like dark matter, dark energy, and the various sub-atomic particles. In some ways, it's a reasonably good overview of cosmology as of 2002. On the other hand, there are several problems with the book. For example, Seife tries to explain some pretty advanced ideas without using mathematics, which doesn't always work. His reliance on analogy and metaphor isn't particularly successful. Sometimes Seife overstates the case, as when he says that "once scientists figure out what lambda really is, they will have unraveled the deepest mystery in physics today [and will] understand [what] drove the big bang itself." Seife tries to be funny at times, but for the most part, his attempts at humor fall flat. But for most readers, it's probably a good place to start exploring cosmology.
August 29, 2019
Trying to elucidate a difficult subject
Science writer Charles Seife, author of the award-wining Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (2000), begins with two chapters on pre-modern cosmology followed by a chapter on Hubble's discovery of the expansion of the universe using the new 100-inch telescope placed atop Mount Wilson in 1917. Seife sees Hubble's discovery as "The Second Cosmological Revolution." In Chapter Four we learn, thanks in part to the Hubble Space Telescope, that the Hubble constant is not so constant after all and is indeed larger today than it was in the past. Conclusion: the universe is not only expanding, but is accelerating in its expansion. Seife calls this "The Third Cosmological Revolution." The chapter is subtitled, "The Universe Amok."
Maybe the universe is indeed running amok, or maybe it's the astrophysicists and cosmologists themselves who are possessed. Too much data too soon may have untoward consequences, especially when one is feeling about in the dark with limited instruments focused on an immensity perhaps beyond human comprehension.
First there is the problem of the so-called dark matter. With the curvature of the universe at one, meaning that it will expand forever and eventually after many an eon die a cold and lonely death, there will be no big crunch, no bounce, and no time reversal. This is okay. However, when cosmologists go looking for the correct amount of matter and energy to support this flat curvature they come up a little short. About ninety percent short, in fact. In other words nearly all that there is, is not only invisible to our perception, it is completely mysterious except that it does indeed influence gravitationally the rest of the stuff in the universe. As Seife explains, the stars in a galaxy as they rotate around the galactic center are not moving in concert with Newtonian (or Einsteinian) motion; instead the stars furthest from the center are moving at about the same speed as those near the center, an impossibility.
What to do about this? Cosmologists have postulated some "dark matter" surrounding galaxies like a halo. With just the right amount of dark matter (again approximately a whopping nine times that observed) the speed of the stars is nicely accounted for. There is another solution: reject Newtonian/Einsteinian dynamics. That (as radical an idea as one would like to entertain) has been tried and, as Seife notes, it has failed. (See p. 100) Furthermore, as Seife observes in "Darker Still" (Chapter 7), this invisible stuff cannot be all ordinary (baryonic) matter. It has to be of some "exotic" variety that we can't identify.
Okay, let's put the dark matter conundrum on hold and look at the next problem: something from nothing. It appears that, due to the uncertainty principle from quantum mechanics, there is no such thing as nothing. That is, matter is probabilistically jumping in and out of existence down near the Planck level in the "foam" regardless of how complete the vacuum. Indeed, some theorists have imagined whole universes popping randomly out of...what? It would appear that underneath, beneath, inside of--what?--there is, like an unfelt cauldron beneath our feet or inside the very fabric of space/time, something unimaginably immense and/or unimaginably tiny.
This "zero point energy" is now being postulated as the source of Einstein's cosmological constant (lambda) that is expanding the universe. Lambda was once thought to be an error; now "omega sub lambda" is thought to equal 65% of the matter/energy in the universe. Hello!
Seife's book suffers from that familiar plague on the house of popular science writers: trying to explain mathematical ideas without using mathematics, and trying to explain particle physics and quantum mechanics to people who haven't been trained in those sciences. One must rely on analogy and metaphor. Naturally using such devices things can make things even fuzzier than they already are. Also there is some inexactness in Seife's expression employed for what he calls "the sake of clarity."
Sometimes Seife's metaphors reduce to something close to meaningless, as in his ice cream-flavor-slurping hydrogen atoms from page 179. Such metaphors can send chills down the spine of some scientists, and they can mislead. A slightly different example is his statement that "the Heisenberg uncertainty principle forces nature to create and destroy...particles that appear out of nowhere...in the deepest vacuum." (p. 185) Not to disparage the uncertainty principle, but it is "nature" that is doing the forcing and not the other way around. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is a way of explaining to ourselves what is observed (or not observed, as the case may be).
At other times Seife leaps from the uncertainty of a strained metaphor to runaway dramatics, as on page 183 where we find this: "once scientists figure out what lambda really is, they will have unraveled the deepest mystery in physics today...[they will] understand...[what] drove the big bang itself...They will see beyond even the era of the quark-gluon plasma...to a time when the quantum vacuum held the fate of the universe in its grasp."
As for Seife's several attempts at witticism, I will give him a Cheshire cat's smile and applause to extend for the entire half-life of a virtual particle in the foam of space.
Okay, okay. Writing science that is both fair to the science and explicable to nonscientists is no easy task. I don't think Seife is as successful here as he was in "Zero," especially because the writing gets a little beclouded in the latter parts of the book but also because I have the sense that Seife is not as comfortable with physics as he is with mathematics. What is clear is just how removed even well-educated and knowledgeable laypersons are from the cutting edge of physics. Still this is an attractive book that added to my knowledge of cosmology.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
Science writer Charles Seife, author of the award-wining Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (2000), begins with two chapters on pre-modern cosmology followed by a chapter on Hubble's discovery of the expansion of the universe using the new 100-inch telescope placed atop Mount Wilson in 1917. Seife sees Hubble's discovery as "The Second Cosmological Revolution." In Chapter Four we learn, thanks in part to the Hubble Space Telescope, that the Hubble constant is not so constant after all and is indeed larger today than it was in the past. Conclusion: the universe is not only expanding, but is accelerating in its expansion. Seife calls this "The Third Cosmological Revolution." The chapter is subtitled, "The Universe Amok."
Maybe the universe is indeed running amok, or maybe it's the astrophysicists and cosmologists themselves who are possessed. Too much data too soon may have untoward consequences, especially when one is feeling about in the dark with limited instruments focused on an immensity perhaps beyond human comprehension.
First there is the problem of the so-called dark matter. With the curvature of the universe at one, meaning that it will expand forever and eventually after many an eon die a cold and lonely death, there will be no big crunch, no bounce, and no time reversal. This is okay. However, when cosmologists go looking for the correct amount of matter and energy to support this flat curvature they come up a little short. About ninety percent short, in fact. In other words nearly all that there is, is not only invisible to our perception, it is completely mysterious except that it does indeed influence gravitationally the rest of the stuff in the universe. As Seife explains, the stars in a galaxy as they rotate around the galactic center are not moving in concert with Newtonian (or Einsteinian) motion; instead the stars furthest from the center are moving at about the same speed as those near the center, an impossibility.
What to do about this? Cosmologists have postulated some "dark matter" surrounding galaxies like a halo. With just the right amount of dark matter (again approximately a whopping nine times that observed) the speed of the stars is nicely accounted for. There is another solution: reject Newtonian/Einsteinian dynamics. That (as radical an idea as one would like to entertain) has been tried and, as Seife notes, it has failed. (See p. 100) Furthermore, as Seife observes in "Darker Still" (Chapter 7), this invisible stuff cannot be all ordinary (baryonic) matter. It has to be of some "exotic" variety that we can't identify.
Okay, let's put the dark matter conundrum on hold and look at the next problem: something from nothing. It appears that, due to the uncertainty principle from quantum mechanics, there is no such thing as nothing. That is, matter is probabilistically jumping in and out of existence down near the Planck level in the "foam" regardless of how complete the vacuum. Indeed, some theorists have imagined whole universes popping randomly out of...what? It would appear that underneath, beneath, inside of--what?--there is, like an unfelt cauldron beneath our feet or inside the very fabric of space/time, something unimaginably immense and/or unimaginably tiny.
This "zero point energy" is now being postulated as the source of Einstein's cosmological constant (lambda) that is expanding the universe. Lambda was once thought to be an error; now "omega sub lambda" is thought to equal 65% of the matter/energy in the universe. Hello!
Seife's book suffers from that familiar plague on the house of popular science writers: trying to explain mathematical ideas without using mathematics, and trying to explain particle physics and quantum mechanics to people who haven't been trained in those sciences. One must rely on analogy and metaphor. Naturally using such devices things can make things even fuzzier than they already are. Also there is some inexactness in Seife's expression employed for what he calls "the sake of clarity."
Sometimes Seife's metaphors reduce to something close to meaningless, as in his ice cream-flavor-slurping hydrogen atoms from page 179. Such metaphors can send chills down the spine of some scientists, and they can mislead. A slightly different example is his statement that "the Heisenberg uncertainty principle forces nature to create and destroy...particles that appear out of nowhere...in the deepest vacuum." (p. 185) Not to disparage the uncertainty principle, but it is "nature" that is doing the forcing and not the other way around. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is a way of explaining to ourselves what is observed (or not observed, as the case may be).
At other times Seife leaps from the uncertainty of a strained metaphor to runaway dramatics, as on page 183 where we find this: "once scientists figure out what lambda really is, they will have unraveled the deepest mystery in physics today...[they will] understand...[what] drove the big bang itself...They will see beyond even the era of the quark-gluon plasma...to a time when the quantum vacuum held the fate of the universe in its grasp."
As for Seife's several attempts at witticism, I will give him a Cheshire cat's smile and applause to extend for the entire half-life of a virtual particle in the foam of space.
Okay, okay. Writing science that is both fair to the science and explicable to nonscientists is no easy task. I don't think Seife is as successful here as he was in "Zero," especially because the writing gets a little beclouded in the latter parts of the book but also because I have the sense that Seife is not as comfortable with physics as he is with mathematics. What is clear is just how removed even well-educated and knowledgeable laypersons are from the cutting edge of physics. Still this is an attractive book that added to my knowledge of cosmology.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
February 13, 2023
Took me way longer to finish this one than I would have liked. Though I thoroughly enjoyed it, I often would put off reading it if I didn't feel like I was mentally prepared to retain information in that moment. After a while I began to dread it as if it were school work.
This book was written in 2002, so I would love to read a more up to date book that covers the same material. Near the end of the book it brought up a lot of very interesting theories that had yet to be tested, and in a quick Google search you find out that not only had some of the theories been proven already, but they were proved back in 2011 lmao
This book was written in 2002, so I would love to read a more up to date book that covers the same material. Near the end of the book it brought up a lot of very interesting theories that had yet to be tested, and in a quick Google search you find out that not only had some of the theories been proven already, but they were proved back in 2011 lmao
November 3, 2014
Very cleanly written investigation into the scientific understanding of the Big Bang (as of 2001), and how the conditions set up by the beginning of the universe also define how the universe will end. While the book is cosmological in scope, the nature of the Big Bang as an infinitely powerful event in an infinitely tiny space, means we get a nice discussion of quantum mechanics as well. I learned quite a lot from this book, and was a great pleasure to read.
April 9, 2009
Really thorough and well-written. If you have little or no exposure to the topic it is a great read. At the publication date it was completely up-to-date, but now 6 years later I long for a sequel! The author ranges far and wide tying together cosmology, astronomy, the "real world" and particle physics. Nicely done.
August 19, 2012
I love this book. These days it's a little dated, but I started reading it back right after it came out and have been slowly going through it since then. Seife uses analogies to explain some of the most difficult cosmological concepts. I only hope he does and updated version now that the Higgs boson particle has been indirectly observed, and I am emailing him currently to ask him for so much!
August 8, 2019
Charles Seife has done it again; he wrote a book that both entertains and informs in equal portions. I read his previous book several years ago, but seem to remember enjoying it. I could always check my previous review of Zero assuming I made one in the first place, but I don’t feel like doing that at the moment.
So Seife begins at the beginning. Originally, before we had the Big Bang Theory and all of that interesting stuff, we only had guesses and stories from books and legends. We have the story from the book of Genesis, legends and creation myths like where some gods killed a giant and fashioned the universe out of its body. The main point is that we didn’t know, so we made up some stuff about supernatural beings and murder.
Eventually, science came out of the dark ages of not knowing things and people formulated theories about the universe itself, with the main difference being that we looked for evidence. So again, Seife talks about the revolutions in Cosmology and how they affected our perceptions of the universe as a whole. As long as people have been around, they have wondered at the stars and our place in the Universe. The main ideas began with Aristotle and Ptolemy. Aristotle thought that there were four elements and that earth was heavy, so the Earth was the center of the Universe. Ptolemy constructed this ridiculously complex system that put the Earth in the center of everything. There were epicycles and retrograde motions and explanations that made the Universe seem like it was made for us.
Copernicus came along and ruined all of that with one simple change; he put the Sun at the center and the Earth revolved around it. This is a very counterintuitive idea. It was also not as popular since it didn’t work as well as the Geocentric Model of Ptolemy. Kepler comes along with Brahe’s extensive notes and data logs and says the revolutions aren’t circular but instead describe an ellipse. Galileo made observations of his own too, observations that countered Church doctrine and got him into a heap of trouble with the Pope and the Inquisition. Finally, Newton came around and said how all of this was possible. Gravity was a unifying force that allowed planets to stay their courses. Angels and other weird beings weren’t necessary.
This universe that was created was a static, clockwork model that had absolute predictability. From the perturbations of Saturn, we found Uranus and other planetary bodies. It seemed perfect, so perfect that no one bothered questioning the little issues. For example, Mercury’s wobble seemed to suggest another planet that was even closer. Eventually, Einstein came along with his General Theory of Relativity. It describes gravity in the framework of his Special Relativity by saying that the universe is akin to a rubber sheet and massive objects distort that sheet. However, the rabbit hole of equations led Einstein to a stunning discovery; the universe is inherently unstable. It has to either collapse on itself or expand forever. Einstein didn’t like that idea, so he added a fudge factor that he termed the Cosmological Constant. This mysterious energy pushes against the forces of Gravity and makes the universe balanced. Later on, Einstein would call this his greatest blunder.
A guy named Hubble found evidence of an expanding universe. Another team found this evidence around the same time, but it’s named after Hubble, so I guess he gets priority. Anyway, Hubble found that galaxies were flying away from us. He did this by observing that the light from those galaxies was Red-Shifted to lower energy. This is where the Big Bang was theorized. In the 1960s we discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. This along with the specific ratio of elements in the universe is further proof of the Big Bang. The biggest issue is finding more stuff about the Big Bang. We can tell what happened mere nanoseconds after, but before that it becomes hazy. Why did the Big Bang happen at all? Was there a proverbial button? Ah well.
So once scientists found the beginning of the universe, they also sought to find its end. Religion has answers for that too, but it’s mainly stories from a book written during the bronze age and other myths and legends that take on the final end of the universe. We have the Book of Revelation from the Bible and the idea of Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods and other stuff. Scientists found that the universe will eventually spread out so far that everything will freeze. If we go by that Robert Frost poem, it will be a death by Ice.
So this book was pretty good. I enjoyed it a lot. The images and pictures were charming and the prose was done in a style that was easily accessible.
So Seife begins at the beginning. Originally, before we had the Big Bang Theory and all of that interesting stuff, we only had guesses and stories from books and legends. We have the story from the book of Genesis, legends and creation myths like where some gods killed a giant and fashioned the universe out of its body. The main point is that we didn’t know, so we made up some stuff about supernatural beings and murder.
Eventually, science came out of the dark ages of not knowing things and people formulated theories about the universe itself, with the main difference being that we looked for evidence. So again, Seife talks about the revolutions in Cosmology and how they affected our perceptions of the universe as a whole. As long as people have been around, they have wondered at the stars and our place in the Universe. The main ideas began with Aristotle and Ptolemy. Aristotle thought that there were four elements and that earth was heavy, so the Earth was the center of the Universe. Ptolemy constructed this ridiculously complex system that put the Earth in the center of everything. There were epicycles and retrograde motions and explanations that made the Universe seem like it was made for us.
Copernicus came along and ruined all of that with one simple change; he put the Sun at the center and the Earth revolved around it. This is a very counterintuitive idea. It was also not as popular since it didn’t work as well as the Geocentric Model of Ptolemy. Kepler comes along with Brahe’s extensive notes and data logs and says the revolutions aren’t circular but instead describe an ellipse. Galileo made observations of his own too, observations that countered Church doctrine and got him into a heap of trouble with the Pope and the Inquisition. Finally, Newton came around and said how all of this was possible. Gravity was a unifying force that allowed planets to stay their courses. Angels and other weird beings weren’t necessary.
This universe that was created was a static, clockwork model that had absolute predictability. From the perturbations of Saturn, we found Uranus and other planetary bodies. It seemed perfect, so perfect that no one bothered questioning the little issues. For example, Mercury’s wobble seemed to suggest another planet that was even closer. Eventually, Einstein came along with his General Theory of Relativity. It describes gravity in the framework of his Special Relativity by saying that the universe is akin to a rubber sheet and massive objects distort that sheet. However, the rabbit hole of equations led Einstein to a stunning discovery; the universe is inherently unstable. It has to either collapse on itself or expand forever. Einstein didn’t like that idea, so he added a fudge factor that he termed the Cosmological Constant. This mysterious energy pushes against the forces of Gravity and makes the universe balanced. Later on, Einstein would call this his greatest blunder.
A guy named Hubble found evidence of an expanding universe. Another team found this evidence around the same time, but it’s named after Hubble, so I guess he gets priority. Anyway, Hubble found that galaxies were flying away from us. He did this by observing that the light from those galaxies was Red-Shifted to lower energy. This is where the Big Bang was theorized. In the 1960s we discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. This along with the specific ratio of elements in the universe is further proof of the Big Bang. The biggest issue is finding more stuff about the Big Bang. We can tell what happened mere nanoseconds after, but before that it becomes hazy. Why did the Big Bang happen at all? Was there a proverbial button? Ah well.
So once scientists found the beginning of the universe, they also sought to find its end. Religion has answers for that too, but it’s mainly stories from a book written during the bronze age and other myths and legends that take on the final end of the universe. We have the Book of Revelation from the Bible and the idea of Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods and other stuff. Scientists found that the universe will eventually spread out so far that everything will freeze. If we go by that Robert Frost poem, it will be a death by Ice.
So this book was pretty good. I enjoyed it a lot. The images and pictures were charming and the prose was done in a style that was easily accessible.
March 18, 2022
I kind of like the author's another book about how statistics works in the voting in US. So this encouraged me to open this book which I bought quite some years ago in HK. Again an easy read. I thought it is a simpler version of Big Bang，but only the opening chapters read like Big Bang, and then the book totally turns to topics about various labs worldwide that study particles, quarks, dark matter and dark energy and even M theory.
Compared to Big Bang, the author didn't try to explain science in a step by step why (while by reading Big Bang I feel like getting taught by a high school physics teacher and the author is really trying to make me understand how it works). But not for this book. So when I read in this book some of the same tech topics mentioned in Big Bang I don't think I really understand them by reading this book.
But the merit is that the author clearly knows that his readers don't know such things and don't have the training for tech details. So he kept moving along one topic after another, seldom going too deep, while keep various interesting topics floating all the time. Luckily, the universe and its origin and it's fate are filled to the rim (this is an idiom I learned from this book) fun topics.
I probably have immediately forgot what I read the minute I finish the last page. Probably the most impressive memory is that the universe is made of 5% matter, 30% dark matter and 65% dark energy.
From ancient Greek guys to Copernicus till Hubber, people deal with the 5% matter.
Till the past decades people are trying to understand the 95% dark things, matter or energy.
Compared to Big Bang, the author didn't try to explain science in a step by step why (while by reading Big Bang I feel like getting taught by a high school physics teacher and the author is really trying to make me understand how it works). But not for this book. So when I read in this book some of the same tech topics mentioned in Big Bang I don't think I really understand them by reading this book.
But the merit is that the author clearly knows that his readers don't know such things and don't have the training for tech details. So he kept moving along one topic after another, seldom going too deep, while keep various interesting topics floating all the time. Luckily, the universe and its origin and it's fate are filled to the rim (this is an idiom I learned from this book) fun topics.
I probably have immediately forgot what I read the minute I finish the last page. Probably the most impressive memory is that the universe is made of 5% matter, 30% dark matter and 65% dark energy.
From ancient Greek guys to Copernicus till Hubber, people deal with the 5% matter.
Till the past decades people are trying to understand the 95% dark things, matter or energy.
January 6, 2021
For such a deep scientific book, this is surprisingly readable. I was able to understand it (at least on the surface) most of the time. This is a highly interesting (to me) field of knowledge and I'm glad I was able to say I enjoyed this book!
December 28, 2022
Seife keeps the brain going. The Book is about 15 years behind. Some of the experiments he talks about being built have been built and tested. Still important information though. It brought a lot of knowledge on particle physics I didn't know or didn't have a full grasp on. Great book!!
May 14, 2022
Very accessible but not watered down. Super interesting.
February 22, 2023
This was easy to read and had keeps the readers interest despite explaining complex ideas.
March 4, 2023
A little out of date at this point—came out in 2003–but understandable explanations from a science journalist, rather than a scientist, and with effective illustrations.
June 4, 2023
read this to teach myself to be an alpha 🤓
May 21, 2024
üst düzey mistisizm ve ezoterizm içeren nefis bir kitap.
November 19, 2010
I am hesitant to put a lot of science in the non-fiction category, just because so much of what they do these days feels to me like conjecture / speculation / extrapolation.
Too much is published by those with a point to try and prove, and so any minor, infinitesimal piece of datum collected is then constured as definitive proof of whatever theory (crackpot or intact pot - if that is the opposite of crackpot) the author is pushing.
I acknowledge that some of this is the nature of science, we are always figuring stuff out and revising earlier (mis)conceptions of the universe we live in - and I am not one who thinks that that fallibility is reason enough to not try and piece things together.
But I am the guy who watches pretty closely and knows just when the trolley goes off the tracks, so to speak...
All that said this book doesnt cut any new ground, it is just a rehash to bring you up to a general idea of what is going on in the world of physics. It did that pretty well. And it tried fairly hard to be entertaining too.
Too much is published by those with a point to try and prove, and so any minor, infinitesimal piece of datum collected is then constured as definitive proof of whatever theory (crackpot or intact pot - if that is the opposite of crackpot) the author is pushing.
I acknowledge that some of this is the nature of science, we are always figuring stuff out and revising earlier (mis)conceptions of the universe we live in - and I am not one who thinks that that fallibility is reason enough to not try and piece things together.
But I am the guy who watches pretty closely and knows just when the trolley goes off the tracks, so to speak...
All that said this book doesnt cut any new ground, it is just a rehash to bring you up to a general idea of what is going on in the world of physics. It did that pretty well. And it tried fairly hard to be entertaining too.
June 13, 2015
As a book which gives a scientific historical perspective on development of cosmological thought, this is definitely a good read. However, by almost totally omitting anti matter and the nature of arrow of time, Charles fails to place a holistic definite workable model of the alpha and the omega . You can't even think of alpha / omega of the universe without incorporating the concepts of entropy, thermodynamics,antimatter, and nature of time. May be read by beginners but for seekers of higher truths, may not be worth it.
November 1, 2023
Ottimo saggio sulla cosmologia e sulla storia della cosmologia. Seife scrive impeccabilmente, è un ottimo divulgatore. Anche in questo caso non tratta il lettore da mentecatto. Ripercorre la storia della cosmologia da Tolomeo fino ai giorni nostri, partendo da Hubble, passando per la costante cosmologica alla radiazione di fondo, fino alla fisica delle particelle, la materia e energia oscura e le onde gravitazionali. Perfetto, consigliato.
December 10, 2008
Really good book on the nature of that whole universe thing. Very understandable. Lots of math, but explained in a very friendly way. Great idea of uncovering the discoveries layer at a time. Might be a little confusing though as different parts of the book can contradict earlier sections, because it it written from a more enlightened perspective.
February 15, 2016
The amount of speculation in this book, including the repeated use of the phrase "Physicists believe", make it more of a religious text than a science text. Many of the ideas presented do not really even reach the hypothesis level, let alone mathematical
July 14, 2008
This is a great introduction to the art of cosmology and strangely enough, quantum theory. It's five years old (at this point) and so is somewhat dated, but the history and descriptions of how and why scientists came to view the origin of the universe holds up.
May 8, 2016
3 stars because I liked it. But, it is not a casual read about Astronomy. The first 3 chapters are light and the context is historical. But, it quickly jumps into in depth science and theory. Unless you are a astronomy buff, skip.
August 22, 2009
The book is full of great information and ideas, but it's not written as eloquently in layman's terms as Sagan, Hawking, or Gott. Still worth reading if this sort of topic fascinates you.
December 8, 2011
Out of date now but okay ( has a glossary and ' expirements to watch ' )
February 15, 2013
A brilliant cosmological history
Read
June 26, 2013cosmological constant
Einstein
ordinary matter less then 5% of omega
dark energy 65%
exotic dark matter
quark - gluon plasma
nucleosynthesis
recombination, reionization
Einstein
ordinary matter less then 5% of omega
dark energy 65%
exotic dark matter
quark - gluon plasma
nucleosynthesis
recombination, reionization
November 13, 2016
İçerisinde ufak bir kaç hatalı bilgi olsa da gayet güzel bir kitap. Kozmoloji ile ilgili çok güzel bilgiler veriyor.
October 27, 2008
Wonderful explanations on the clockwork of the universe.
January 5, 2011
Very interesting, but pretty dense
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews