At the edge of time Exploring the mysteries of our universe's first seconds

Dan Hooper, 1976-

Book - 2019

"A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang--and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universe. Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history. Taking readers into the remarkable world of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that sc...ientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. To help understand background for later ideas about matter and antimatter in early universe, Hooper examines the work of a Soviet physicist, activists, and nuclear architect Andrei Sakharov. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe's first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it. Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin"--

Saved in:

2nd Floor Show me where

523.1/Hooper
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 523.1/Hooper Checked In
Subjects
Published
Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press [2019]
Language
English
Main Author
Dan Hooper, 1976- (author)
Item Description
Includes index.
Physical Description
ix, 233 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [225]-226) index.
ISBN
9780691183565
  • Acknowledgments
  • 1. At the Edge of Time
  • 2. A World of Time and Space
  • 3. A World without a Beginning?
  • 4. Glimpses of the Big Bang
  • 5. The Universe and the Accelerator
  • 6. The Origins of Everything
  • 7. Hearts of Darkness
  • 8. A Beacon in the Dark?
  • 9. Radically Rethinking Dark Matter
  • 10. A Flash in Time
  • 11. Endless Worlds Most Beautiful
  • 12. Touching the Edge of Time
  • Credits
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

Hooper (Univ. of Chicago) leads the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in addition to fulfilling his academic role as professor of astronomy and astrophysics. Having authored two previous books on astrophysics for popular consumption (including Dark Cosmos: In Search of the Universe's Missing Mass and Energy, CH, Jan'08, 45-2581), he has also contributed to several hundred professional publications. This background has served Hooper well in that the text under review is both scholarly and highly accessible. Cosmic inflation, dark energy, dark matter, space curvature, and particle physics are addressed especially thoroughly here, yet these topics are transparently explained. Although Hooper is primarily a theorist, in this book he clearly describes the observational evidence produced by ground- and space-based telescopes as well as the Large Hadron Collider. While modest about his own accomplishments, Hooper openly affirms certain challenges he has faced as a scientist and acknowledges the limitations of our understanding of the universe: "If you are looking for a story with an ending that wraps up nicely, you may have chosen the wrong book," he cautions. Fittingly, the heading "Unsolved mysteries" (a prominent category in the index) lists more than twenty separate topics. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Timothy Barker, emeritus, Wheaton College (MA)

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A fine history of the universe from the Big Bang to the present.Hooper (Astronomy and Astrophysics/Univ. of Chicago Nature's Blueprint: Supersymmetry and the Search for a Unified Theory of Matter and Force, 2009, etc.), a senior scientist in the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at Fermilab, explains that the Big Bang is simply the consequence of rewinding time in today's universe, which is expanding and cooling. As time moves backward, the cosmos shrinks and becomes hotter until, 13.8 billion years ago, according to calculations, it becomes infinitely small and infinitely hot. During that early period, "matter likely interacted in ways that it no longer does, and space and time themselves may have behaved differently than they do in the world that we know." Nothing existed except a uniform soup. Since Einsteinwhose theory of relativity provides the science behind the Big Bangproved that matter and energy are equivalent, the particles that make up matter did not yet exist. After a few millionths of a second, the universe cooled enough for familiar subatomic particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) to form, but it remained too hot for these to combine. The universe was dark because charged particles (i.e., protons and electrons) soak up light. At 380,000 years ago, the temperature had dropped enough for these to combine into atoms. The universe became electrically neutral, and light spread everywhere; it is still present in the cosmic microwave background. Stars, galaxies, and planets followed. Progress in cosmology has increased our ignorance as well as our knowledge. A good sport, Hooper seems positively excited as he describes the discoveries of dark matter and dark energy, which reveal that everything we observe represents less than 5% of the universe. Beginning with Carl Sagan's Cosmos in 1980, Big Bang books have become a genre that curious readers should check out every few years to keep up with breakthroughs (gravity waves being the latest). They can't go wrong with Hooper's.A lucid account that is neither dumbed down nor overly difficult. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.