A Little Book About The Big Bang

Tony Rothman Harvard University Press £19.95  HB

Cosmology is said to be the subject where physics and philosophy meet. It asks the really big questions about the origins of our Universe, its composition and evolution and why things are the way we see them today. The answers to these cosmological questions are often hotly disputed, and new theories are being developed and discoveries are being made almost daily. Indeed, to some of those questions pertaining to the birth and evolution of the Universe, the only answer is that we just don’t know... yet.

This book aims to guide both laymen and experts through the latest scientific thinking on the subject. Author Tony Rothman, a former physics teacher at Harvard, Princeton and New York universities, explains complex ideas clearly with useful analogies, some simple diagrams and very little mathematics, but there is no time to relax as he goes at a quick pace.

Each chapter is short but densely packed, so you really need to concentrate. The four forces of nature, relativity, inflation and the expansion of the Universe, dark matter and dark energy, universal crunches and bounces, Planck units, quantum gravity, multiverses and metaphysics are all dealt with in rapid succession.

Frustratingly, but perhaps understandably, as the book is aimed at both novices and seasoned cosmologists, when things get too tough, or where knowledge ends and we enter into areas of speculation, the author breaks off abruptly.

This book may look small in size but, much like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, on the inside it is so much bigger. ★★★★★ Jenny Winder is an astronomy writer and broadcaster