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Before the Big Bang: The Prehistory of Our Universe |  | Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.99
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 20761
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 0312385471
Dewey Decimal Number: 523.1
EAN: 9780312385477
ASIN: 0312385471
Publication Date: August 4, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780312385477 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
According to a recent survey, the most popular question about science from the general public was: what came before the Big Bang? We all know on some level what the Big Bang is, but we don’t know how it became the accepted theory, or how we might know what came before. In Before the Big Bang, Brian Clegg (the critically acclaimed author of Upgrade Me and The God Effect) explores the history of this remarkable concept. From the earliest creation myths, through Hershel’s realization that the Milky Way was one of many galaxies, to on-going debates about Black Holes, this is an incredible look at the origins of the universe and the many theories that led to the acceptance of the Big Bang. But in classic scientist fashion Clegg challenges the notion of the “Big Bang” itself, and raises the deep philosophical question of why we might want to rethink the origin of the universe. This is popular science at its best, exploratory, controversial, and utterly engrossing.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
Quite interesting reading that brings up many ideas March 9, 2010
A. Menon (Hong Kong)
Before the Big Bang by Brian Clegg is lively reading. It starts out with early mytholology of our universe and then progresses into how we started to answer basic questions about the universe. It describes much of the history of what people have thought about the universe and how they have attempted to measure it in terms of both time and space. It moves into modern cosmology theories and embraces non conventional ideas and the fundamental fact that scientific theories are never proved but can either have evidence shown in their favor or disproved.
The part of the book discusses how early civilization approached people's perspective of the universe in terms of both space and time and positional relationships between the planets and the sun is described. It serves a refreshing introduction to early ideas. The paradox's arising from the fixed positions of stars compared to the floating positions of other celestial bodies is brought up and the methodology of winning by debate rather than evidence is discussed in ancient greece.
The substance of the book starts with modern cosmology and the eternal universe is discussed in terms of absense of a beginning and absence of spatial boundaries. The book goes into how the debates by astronomers evolved and how they stacked evidence to show the general acceleration of bodies away from each other in terms of redshifting. The book then goes into the problems with the age of the universe implied by big bang theories and then goes into the patchwork fixes of the inflation theories. Also discussed are some string theory ideas, a little bit of quantum loop theories, theres a brief description of the holographic universe. He discusses the problems of dark matter and dark energy and their general non uniformity and unpredictability of the theories that surround them and more importantly the evidence that doesnt exist to support them. Anthopic principles are discussed and multiverses from both bubble universes and quantum multiverse ideas. All of these are discussed quite briefly.
The author seems to be quite a skeptic of inflation theories of the universe, and provides some of his own preferred routes, which i take to be some string theory ideas in particular. He also seems to be quite a stong believer in the idea that in a multiverse world the law of large numbers implies our goldilocks universe must exist. I am not so sure this is true, one can have an infinite set of measure 0 in a larger infinite set, so just because there could be infinite universes doesnt mean that ones with our ingredients are probability 1. I like most of the imagery of the book and think its very readable, but I dont think its entirely accurate. The author describes the travelling salesman problem as not being solvable by an ordinary compuuter. That to my knowledge is a millenium math problem and is an open problem- it is the P vs NP problem. In anycase, the author isnt an active researcher but has a very solid background and obviously keeps up with modern research, the result of which might mean that a lot of his beliefs and biases could be argued against forcefully. The value I got out of it was the author's great ability to communicate and present a enjoyable history to a large amount of ideas that people have had about the origin and evolution of the universe, how it might work, how it might have started and how it might end.
 Price too high! February 19, 2010
J. Giles (USA)
0 out of 11 found this review helpful
I would love to read this book on my Kindle but $14.29 is way too much. Lower it to $9.99 like it is supposed to be priced for Kindle and I'll buy it!
 Interesting . . . some fresh thinking November 28, 2009
Patrick J. Callahan (La Crosse, WI USA)
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
I must be honest and state I did not read the book in its entirety. I was waiting for my wife at Barnes & Noble during one of her shopping campaigns. I had over an hour to read and skim.
The author spends half a chapter on Genesis. He may offend fundamentalist Christians since he considers the account to be myth -- a story intended to teach a moral lesson. His discussion of Genesis seemed very intelligent to me -- for many of us, the Biblical writers did not set out to write science as such. In their bronze-age culture, there was little interest in such speculation. They were trying to convey values concerning ourselves, the one God, and the world we live in.
One surprise is that the author does not accept many tenets of current cosmology. He is far from sure that the Big Bang ever occurred. He is particularly skeptical of the concept of "inflation" which supposedly happened a millisecond after the Bang began. It appears that inflation was dreamed up to solve very serious problems with the initial Big Bang theory, such as the flatness of space and the homogeneity of the current cosmos. The author is also skeptical of "black holes." His doubts remind me of a recent article in Scientific American discussing "black stars." This article also discounts the classic description of black holes as found in most popular accounts of cosmology.
The book is very interesting and is well written. It is refreshing for disagreeing at many points with the "party line" as presented today -- often on a highly speculative basis.
I was a bit unclear as to the credentials of the author. He is a much published science writer, but I do not recall seeing any impressive credentials, such as a Ph.D. in astrophysics, or the like. The best book of this kind I've encountered is Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace," which covers much the same ground.
 Excellent but no answer! November 13, 2009
Jos Pols
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nutshell review - If you are a fan of popular science books about cosmology then this book is for you. It is very well written, in a fluid and easy to follow style. The author does an excellent job of explaining the various theories about how our universe may have begun in an entertaining and enlightening way.
However, if you are looking for answers to the question implied in the book's title then, alas, there are none. Although we may begin to understand how this universe might have begun (with lots of ifs, buts and maybes) one is always left with a sense that even if there is no "before", as argued in some theories, there must surely be a precursor or pre-existing state and then we must inevitably ask where that came from ;) All round a great read.
Also highly recommended is Why Does E=mc2?: (And Why Should We Care?) by Brian Cox and The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.
A fascinating review of contemporary theories on the origins of the universe October 13, 2009
Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
By the time I reached the last page of this book, I just wanted to go to Arizona, drive into the desert and marvel at the glory of the night sky.
The title is a bit misleading in implying a discussion of "the prehistory of our universe" when, in fact, the presentation is about the various contemporary theories attempting to explain what existed before the Big Bang - if, of course, there was a Big Bang. Some of the theories postulate otherwise.
Clegg, who has a physics degree, writes easily of the theories of the universe beginning with the dawn of recorded history. The earlier theories, involving gods and the like, were easier to digest, though Clegg makes an exception for the Egyptians who managed to imbue the Sun with a number of different gods. The Buddhists are given short shrift for not involving a pantheon of deities, but instead adopting a "because it's there" approach. Clegg moves on to describe the earliest efforts to determine the size of the universe. The history of humankind and its quest to determine the nature of the universe is fascinating and Clegg does well at describing the search for answers.
By the time we come to the recent era, the last three centuries or so, the reader has a firm grasp of where we were in our understanding and how we got there.
The explosion of scientific knowledge in the Western world began in earnest in the 17th Century and has not slowed. Clegg describes each of the giants upon whose shoulders the next giant stood; thus Bacon and Newton were the precursors for Einstein. Clegg employs an interesting device here, though I am not sure if it is of his own design or a natural result of explaining the increasing knowledge of the universe. Whichever it is, it works. By the time Clegg begins to seriously address the question of what existed before the Big Bang, the reader has been given a short, but thorough, course in cosmology. The education is needed as Clegg begins his census of modern thinking on the origins of the universe and, more to the point of the title, what came before.
Clegg, by the way, never tells us. In that, the title is a bit misleading.
Instead Clegg offers an exposition of the various contending theories - and while all of them are breathtakingly incomprehensible in toto, some are more incomprehensible than others!
My brain is still spinning with David Bohm's conception of the universe as a hologram: "there are no individual particles; everything is part of the same thing". We are here, but we are there as well and we aren't here at all, so to speak, all depending on vantage point.
In just under 300 pages, Clegg deftly summarizes our understanding of the universe as it evolved over the past several thousand years. Today about a half-dozen major theories of the origin of the universe and explanations of what went before contend for general acceptance within the scientific community. As Clegg makes clear, none of the existing theories are likely to gain universal acceptance and the question of what existed "before the Big Bang" will remain unanswered (and perhaps unanswerable).
In the interim, read Clegg's "Before the Big Bang: The Prehistory of Our Universe" and you'll have a pretty good idea of what scientists yesterday and today thought and believed. This is good stuff, but be forewarned that there are numerous places that may required several readings in order to understand the theory being described.
Jerry
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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