Cosmic Origins tells the story of how physicists and astronomers have struggled for more than a century to understand the beginnings of our universe, from its origins in the Big Bang to the modern day. The book will introduce the science as a narrative, by telling the story of the scientists who made each major discovery. It will also address and explain aspects of our theories that some cosmologists are still hesitant to accept, as well as gaps in our knowledge and even apparent inconsistencies in our measurements. Clearly written by a master of scientific exposition, this book will fascinate the curious general reader as well as providing essential background reading for college-level courses on physics and astronomy.
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1 | (10) |
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1.1 Four Radical Shirts in Perspective |
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2 | (2) |
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4 | (5) |
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9 | (2) |
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11 | (26) |
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2.1 The Fabric of Space and Time |
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11 | (8) |
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2.1.1 Maxwell's Conundrum and Einstein's Resolution |
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11 | (5) |
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2.1.2 Space, Time, and Gravity |
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16 | (1) |
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2.1.3 The Foundations of Cosmology |
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17 | (2) |
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2.2 The Puzzle of the Nebulae |
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19 | (14) |
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2.2.1 Celestial Fingerprints |
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21 | (2) |
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23 | (6) |
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2.2.3 A Universe That's Big and Getting Bigger |
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29 | (4) |
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33 | (4) |
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3 The Discovery of the Big Bang |
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37 | (24) |
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3.1 Bright but Very Rapid Fireworks |
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37 | (2) |
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3.2 The Fireball's Fossils |
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39 | (14) |
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3.2.1 The Star-Stuff Conundrum |
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39 | (3) |
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3.2.2 Back to the Nucleon Soup |
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42 | (6) |
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3.2.3 Continuous Creation? or a Big Bang? |
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48 | (5) |
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3.3 The Big Bang's Afterglow |
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53 | (5) |
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58 | (3) |
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61 | (40) |
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4.1 Grand Unified Cosmology |
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62 | (14) |
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4.1.1 The Two Standard Models |
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62 | (3) |
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4.1.2 Cosmic Phase Transitions |
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65 | (2) |
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4.1.3 The Quark Epoch: 10-5 s |
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67 | (1) |
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4.1.4 The Electroweak Epoch: 10-12 s |
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68 | (3) |
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4.1.5 The Grand Unification Epoch: 10-36s |
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71 | (5) |
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76 | (8) |
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4.2.1 A Spectacular Realization |
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76 | (5) |
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4.2.2 New Inflation--With Lumps |
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81 | (3) |
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4.3 Eternal Inflation, the Multiverse, and the Anthropic Principle |
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84 | (6) |
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4.4 Alternatives to the Multiverse? |
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90 | (3) |
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93 | (8) |
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101 | (34) |
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101 | (17) |
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102 | (4) |
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5.1.2 MACHOs, MOND, or WIMPs? |
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106 | (8) |
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5.1.3 The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe |
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114 | (4) |
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118 | (7) |
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5.2.1 Was Einstein Right? |
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119 | (2) |
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5.2.2 A Shift in the Paradigm |
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121 | (4) |
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125 | (10) |
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6 The Age of Precision Cosmology |
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135 | |
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6.1 A Crisis Over the Age of the Universe? |
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136 | (4) |
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6.2 The Case of the Missing WIMPs |
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140 | (5) |
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6.3 Concordance--and Beyond? |
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145 | (4) |
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149 | |
M. Mitchell Waldrop is a freelance writer and editor. He earned a Ph.D. in elementary particle physics at the University of Wisconsin in 1975, and a Masters in journalism at Wisconsin in 1977. From 1977 to 1980 he was a writer and West Coast bureau chief for Chemical and Engineering News. From 1980 to 1991 he was a senior writer at Science magazine, where he covered physics, space, astronomy, computer science, artificial intelligence, molecular biology, psychology, and neuroscience. He was a freelance writer from 1991 to 2003 and from 2007 to 2008; in between he worked in media affairs for the National Science Foundation from 2003 to 2006. He was the editorial page editor at Nature magazine from 2008 to 2010, and a features editor at Nature until 2016. He is the author of Man-Made Minds (Walker, 1987), a book about artificial intelligence; Complexity (Simon & Schuster, 1992), a book about the Santa Fe Institute and the new sciences of complexity; and The Dream Machine (Viking, 2001),a book about the history of computing. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Amy E. Friedlander.
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