Book Review: The Book of Universes

[Ad Astra]

John Barrow's new offering is The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos, published by Norton.

Many of us enjoy Stephen Hawkings work, but Prof. Hawking is what I like to call a 'compact' writer; he packs a great amount of meaning and detail into very short works which are very challenging to the reader in spite of the wonderful humor and casual style. Prof. Barrow (also from Cambridge) is more like your favorite science instructor; a clear and logical fellow who neatly integrates a vast amount of material, placing it in historical context, and sprinkling in quite a number of personal stories from his own considerable career.

The book takes a historical perspective on the idea of 'Universe', and begins with the ancient Greeks and Ptolemy, then jumps briefly to Copernicus' conception of the sun centered solar system before jumping off into Einstein's relativistic Universe. Einstein, de Sitter, Friedman and LeMaitre together developed the fundamental modern idea of a static, relativistic universe in the early years of the 20th century.

Barrow then introduces Hubble and the expanding Universe, and takes the reader forward through Big Bang and oscillating universes, and reintroduces us to the steady-state model of Hoyle, Bondi and Gold. We tend to sneer a bit at the steady state model today, but Barrow shows us that put in context, it wasn't foolish, but rather like Ptolemy, and interesting idea that did not happen to fit the facts discovered by the astronomers of the day.

The next stop is Guth's inflationary Universe. If you have heard about cosmic inflation, but never really understood the idea - Barrow will take you through it painlessly, and effortlessly. We see the necessity for the inflationary hypothesis; and how, rather like the Big Bang, it is a fantastic idea that not only solves conceptual problems in cosmological models, but is now well supported by observational evidence.

The last stop is a jump off into cutting edge models involving dark matter and dark energy. Barrow dances lightly over these ideas with skill and aplomb, taking the reader up to the present day and our quest for a grand unified theory and shows us that the constants of Nature that we take for granted such as the speed of light or the charge of the electron may not be so 'fundamental' after all.

For anyone who has hoped for a thorough introduction to basic cosmology in a way that is understandable without tipping over the deep end into incomprehensible maths - this book is very highly recommended. Professor Barrow makes puts the ideas of cosmology into a historical context and helps us to see this deepest of sciences as a very human process of discovery and adventure that we all can be a part of.

Dan

[NGC 1502]

Thanks for that Dan. I've read lots of books on cosmology, but this sounds like one

I could do with getting.

Regards, Ed.