The Universe: A Biography
Paul Murdin Thames and Hudson £25 HB
Tackling the life story of the entire Universe is a fairly daunting prospect, for the prospective author (and, potentially, for the reader), but Paul Murdin’s marvellous new book pulls it off in style.
With some 13.8 billion years to cover, the book moves along at a brisk pace. After an initial chapter outlining the fundamental evidence that the Universe was born and has evolved over time, the bulk of the book progresses broadly forwards in time while diminishing in scale. From the broad cosmological questions of the early chapters, we move forward to the formation of our Galaxy, the life cycles of stars and the origins of planets before finally coming up to date with the story of Earth. Despite the familiarity of this approach, I was pleased that Murdin still finds room to include entire chapters that cover topics that are often skated over, such as the emergence of structure from the Big Bang and the importance of planetary migrations.
Above all, it’s the wealth of knowledge on display that impresses. A long career at the forefront of astrophysics (including the co-discovery of Cygnus X-1, the object that dragged black holes from the realm of theory into the remit of observational astronomy) provides Murdin with copious experience of the past half century of research, out of which he judiciously picks and chooses his stories, evidence and examples. This results in a refreshing perspective and some unusual lines of evidence that explore roads less travelled in other popular accounts.
While each chapter tackles a specific topic in broadly chronological order, it’s often necessary to follow these threads to a present-day conclusion for the sake of narrative coherence. To help the reader navigate, crossheads at the top of each right-hand page, track the period being discussed as each chapter progresses. It’s a clever innovation, albeit one that takes a little getting used to. Minimalist illustrations for each chapter opener and a pair of plate sections provide some visual reference, but it’s Murdin’s text that takes centre-stage, and rightly so, as it’s a model of concision and clarity. ★★★★★
Giles Sparrow is a science writer and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society