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Before The Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond
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About This Book
"A riveting tour of the cosmos from one of the brightest minds in astrophysics." —The Washington Post A revolutionary new account of our universe's creation—and a breathtaking exploration of the landscape from which we sprang—from one of the world's most celebrated cosmologists What came before the Big Bang, and what exists outside of the universe it created? Until recently, scientists could only guess at what lay past the edge of space-time. However, as pioneering theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton explains, new scientific tools are now giving us the ability to peer beyond the limits of our universe and to test our theories about what is there. And what we are finding is upending everything we thought we knew about the cosmos and our place in it. Mersini-Houghton is no stranger to boundaries—or to pushing through them. As a child growing up in Communist Albania, she discovered a universe beyond her walled-off world through the study of math and science, and through music. As a female cosmologist in a male-dominated field, she transcended the limits that society and her profession tried to place on her. And as a trailblazing researcher, she helped to revolutionize the study of our universe by revealing that, far from living in a cosmic Albania, with a world that ends at its borders, we are part of a larger family of universes—a multiverse—that holds wonders we are only beginning to unlock. Mersini-Houghton's groundbreaking research suggests that we sit in a quantum landscape whose peaks and valleys hide a multitude of other universes, and even hold the secret to the origins of existence itself. Recent evidence has revealed the signatures of such sibling universes in our own night sky, confirming Mersini-Houghton's theoretical work and offering humbling evidence that our universe is just one member of an unending cosmic family. The incredible scientific saga of one woman's mind-expanding journey through the multiverse, Before the Big Bang will reshape our understanding of humanity's place in the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos.
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Reviews
"In her book, Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond, quantum cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton focuses on the prequel to this galactic episode, pondering what happened beforehand that put our universe in the position to be banged open...There is no physical evidence for this era, so it's a little like investigating a murder before the murder's taken place...But this quandary is still possible to explore, at least in the field of theoretical physics...Students of physics and the broader sciences will be deeply fascinated by this riveting tour of the cosmos from one of the brightest minds in astrophysics...But for anyone who got an A-minus or lower in high school physics and longs for the Cliffs Notes version, here it is: Our universe is large, far larger than we can conceive of, and possibly part of a strangely behaved multiverse, and it all started from a point infinitesimally small that erupted in a bang indescribably big...Mersini-Houghton has the receipts to prove it, or at least to show how she arrived at her persuasive conclusions...She soberly admits that her multiverse theory isn't for everyone...At one point she recalls when, during a debate with another astrophysicist, the two mostly agreed that only about half of their colleagues believe in the multiverse, and of those, there are a handful of different ideas about how it's shaped and how it behaves."
"There is no shortage of books exploring this subject, and this is a solid addition to the literature...As the author explains, roughly 14 billion years ago, everything slammed together, and the universe went through an accelerated expansion...While there is evidence (the cosmic microwave background radiation) for such an explosion in the distant past, problems remain...Our cosmos is surprisingly homogenous...Around 1980, physicists proposed the idea of cosmic inflation, a spectacular expansion an instant after the Big Bang...By the 2000s, string theory offered tantalizing solutions that were also replete with difficulties and complications...Intrigued, the author considered the matter and found a solution that combines quantum theory with gravitational theory (both long accepted) and string theory (still under debate), producing a testable concept that required innumerable worlds: a multiverse...Mersini-Houghton's long explanation of her concept will be heavy going for those unfamiliar with physics, and she does not deny that it remains controversial, but the possibilities suggested by her research are undeniably intriguing...A well-informed cosmology lesson for dedicated readers."
"The state could not prevent us from looking up'...She eventually left the country after winning a scholarship to the University of Maryland...Alongside the stirring personal narrative, the author lays out her theory of the universe, which, she writes, changes 'how we conceive of our world and our place in it'...This one's worth it for the hard-won personal success story, but the theory end of things doesn't quite land."
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