Instant Expert: Where the Universe Came From, New Scientist
These books are based on the Instant Expert events that New Scientist hosts on various topics. I’ve been to two of them (one on genetics, one on consciousness), and they’re pretty great: pitched at a level most educated people can understand, but delving a bit deeper into some of the latest events and innovations in whatever area of science they cover. They generally have a panel of experts and, honestly, some pretty good food… Anyway, so I was interested to read this one, even without the good food.
Sadly, it’s more relativity than Big Bang; it’s more worried about how to resolve the issues between quantum physics and relativity than about what we do know. That said, it’s pretty accessible and I did follow most of it, which is more than can be said for most attempts to educate me about relativity. However, it does contain repeated material from New Scientist collections and possibly also previous books; how much, I couldn’t say, since I haven’t read those exhaustively.
I can answer the question that is the book’s title for you: Nobody knows.
Bit short for an entire book, I know – probably why they waffled on about quantum gravity and relativity theory instead…
Well, I was hoping for more on the formation of the universe after the Big Bang, less ‘what came before’.
I’m not really genned up on cosmology so I can’t recommend anything. 🙁
I should probably be embarrassed about this, seeing as I’m officially an astronomer, now.