Customer Reviews

The Big Bang: What It Is, Where It Came From and Why It Works

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book appears to be aimed at novice readers, and I have commented on that basis. At 200 or so small format pages, the paperback attempts to be both entertaining and lively in style. But in my opinion this book misses the mark, and is full of errors, ambiguities and sloppy language. It is plain bad!

For instance, when talking about the naked eye view of the sky, she indicates that the planets in their various motions "would get even larger, as if they were coming closer". I presume the author means "brighter" rather than "larger" since to the naked eye, none of the planets subtends a disc. This is typical of the sloppy language used throughout - to those who know, the sloppiness is recognisable as such, but to the true novice, how potentially misleading!

The book frequently wanders into the relationship between philosophy, religion and science, not only in regard to the early cosmologies, but also the acceptance (and lack of acceptance) of the Big Bang in the 1950's and 60's as it and the science of cosmology became more well established.

The second part of the book addresses the Big Bang Theory and its "problems" subsequent to the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This introduces inflationary Big Bang models, and the curvature of space as a function of the mass content of the Universe and so on. In attempting to describe how the expansion rate of the Universe can be deduced from the observed properties of the distant galaxies, the author becomes thoroughly confused and confusing (even more so than is usual for this tome).

In terms of the various post-COBE higher resolution balloon and land based CMB experiments which successfully resolved the first and subsequent peaks in the anisotropy spectrum of the CMB over the last few years, these are within a couple of lines, initially declared as being "comforting" in one sense as they "hit just where the maths predict..." and then are effectively dismissed as "...but other instruments haven't found peaks at all". No conclusions are reached, and the author lumps all her cosmological "eggs" into the basket of the Microwave Anisotropy Project (MAP) spacecraft, which "will" collect data for two years. That's funny, by 2001 MAP was launched and in 2002, MAP was already collecting data, wasn't it?

Even worse, the author trots out "alternative" non-cosmological interpretations of the expansion driven red-shift data such as "tired light" - she does not rebut these ideas, but says effectively that scientists regard general relativity and its description of the way light behaves so highly, that they do not wish to scrap their existing beliefs - potentially implying of course that the "tired light" alternative has some credence, which it doesn't.

A brief discussion of the observations of distant supernovae reported in the late 90's, which concluded that the expansion of the Universe was now accelerating, requiring the reintroduction of something akin to Einstein's cosmological constant is mentioned, but couched more in terms the equivalent of ".. how dare the scientists just re-work the Big Bang Theory to incorporate this new idea, rather than chuck it (the theory) out...". The author recognises that the energy of this repulsive field nicely solves the "missing mass" problem to provide a Universe at critical density as required by the inflationary Big Bang theories, but more in a "...how convenient..." tone.

In "conclusion" the author effectively claims that some alternative theories fit the data as well as the Big Bang theory, but because the alternatives don't fit the data better, they have been ignored by 99% of the world's scientists, who want to stick to their biases.

It is only after the above "conclusions", that there is some information on "Current and Future Research" which includes Dark Energy, Quintessence, the CMB Spectrum expected to be measured by the MAP spacecraft, some details of the results of high resolution balloon and land based CMB measurements, and an admittedly speculative foray into the ekpyrotic alternative to the inflationary beginning of the Universe. The latter material is relatively up-to-date, but presented in an episodic manner.

This book shows all the signs of being originally written in the mid to late nineties, and then having been updated with the addition of a few extra chapters on more recent work in 2001 - except none of the results of the more recent work are used to change or modify or limit any of the previous conjecture or conclusions in the earlier text.

Do not buy this book - as an introductory level text it is potentially extremely misleading in many areas. Far better introductory guides to the subject for the same outlay are available.

Wow, this is a brief presentation! Einstein's theories of relativity (both special and general) get four pages -- and this includes a bio. The period from Plato to Kepler (about 2000 years) gets all of fourteen pages. I can only assume we're supposed to know all this stuff already, because one couldn't become more than introduced to names given the author's treatment of the topics. On top of this, many "facts" are plain wrong. E.g., the author claims that Hans Bethe knew nothing of his name's addition to the famous Alpha-Beta-Gamma (Alpher-Bethe-Gamow) paper (p. 61). Not true.

There are many much better presentations of this material; for one, see Singh's _Big Bang_. It's better researched and a lot more thorough.

Who among us has not wished to know more about the creation of our universe and the fantastic nature of how we all got here? Who also has not felt his eyes quickly glaze over and wanted to scream "no mas" when we actually enlisted the help of a scientific type to try to explain such a complicated topic? Well, Karen Fox has devised the magic bullet to slay such dilemmas with this book! Ms. Fox explains science's most well-known theory with a clarity and deftness that causes the complexities of the matter to be transparent to us curious laymen. With a thorough yet thoroughly readable style that is ceaselessly engaging, Ms. Fox rewards our curiousity by serving up a delectably fun and informative serving of information that goes down easy and causes no heartburn. Whether or not you were able to get past Intro Physics, if you want to know all you should want to know about astronomy's biggest mystery and enjoy doing it, this is the book for you.

This book was written in 2002 and is, on the whole, very up to date. It comes in at a very reasonable 206 pages (including the Index). It has a silly cover, but don't let it fool you into thinking it lacks depth. It actually is a great little book that is, on the whole, well researched and well written. It covers all of the salient points within the historical evolution of the accepted modern cosmological model of Universal origins. The biggest questions about the big bang are what does it say and how does it say it? This book answers those two questions briefly, but adroitly. It spends just enough time on each concept and delves deeply enough to bring clarity to this complex subject. It is unafraid to look at the triumphs (high energy particle physics, an expanding universe, big-bang nucleosynthesis, the Cosmic Background Radiation) and the pitfalls (homogeneity, flatness, horizon and magnetic monopole problems) within the model.

The book has 7 Chapters and is broken up into two main sections. Section 1 is titled,"How we came to believe the big bang theory." I actually am not offended by her use of this phrase. Rather than be afraid to consider the big bang theory a belief, if it is given the respect it is due (which Karen does quite well), then we can readily admit that when it comes to much of cosmology, we have to have a starting point, an assumption, an ideology, in short, a belief. Section 2 is titled, "How good a theory is it?" Karen C. Fox deserves credit for not holding back, giving us its blemishes and its warts (she calls them "glitches" a term I think fits: personally I think the biggest wart of the big bang theory is its failure to *predict* inflation. Left on its own, the big-bang gives us a homogeneous gas of Hydrogen, Helium and trace amounts of Lithium, that's it. No stars, no us. How inflation was initially discovered is quite an extraordinary tale all its own. I recommend "The Inflationary Universe" by Alan Guth for a first hand account of it), but still making quite sure we are not confused when we see the truth of the theory, her real face, in this, a model of our cosmic origins, one of this most incredible achievements of mankind.

This book does right what others books can't. It actually dismantles the theory, analyses the parts, draws us a picture of how they were formed, where they came from, and then puts it all together coherently and with the right amount of respect. Most of the books I've read on the big bang don't handle the difficulties this theory has faced well enough. In Chapter 7, "The Edge of the Unknown", she asks several questions that she later answers. The questions are:

1. Why is there a universe at all?
2. Is there a creator?
3. How was something formed out of nothing?
4. Why are the laws of physics exactly as they are?
5. Is our universe one among many?
6. How will the universe end?
7. And, of course, what happened before the big bang?

For the most part she does a very decent job of surveying the literature and coming up with answers to these 7 great questions with well read and topical answers. She makes sure to state that there are many different answers and all of them "take us well out of the realm of experimental, provable science." This I agree with and think is a must point. I don't have a problem with asking these questions, but I think they are unnecessary. And yet, the answers we provide to them are very important.

For the first question she doesn't hesitate to mention the fact that both science and religion are interested in the answers to these somewhat metaphysical questions. Because this book is a work that addresses our origins, including the second question is quite natural. She admits naturalism may not need a creator, but she goes on to claim that science might be used to "support a deity" by using the argument from fine tuning. I don't think fine tuning of the constants of nature, etc. is any argument at all for "support" of a deity. Fine tuned against what? What are we comparing this to? We exist. The universe is. That's all we can say about why we are here. Something regulates it and holds it together. That doesn't speak for or against a deity (certainly not an anthropomorphic one). In answer to why are the laws of physics the way they are she goes into further detail into the problems with the standard inflationary explanation (it simply pushes the whys back a step) and this allows her to introduce Linde's chaotic inflation and its postulate of branes and multiverses, very hot topics today. To answer what came before the universe she gives us a quote from Roger Penrose, that asking what came before the universe is a little like asking what is North of the North Pole. She doesn't think this helps by concluding , "Nice rhetoric, but distinctly unsatisfying." I disagree completely. This is actually the answer we are looking for. We don't want to say anything for or against a creator, we want to explain the universe in terms we can identify with and can understand in our lives, simply, like everything else in our world, we want to be able to get our mind's around it. To help us get our mind around our cosmic origins and how we deal with the problem of the "singularity" and what came before the start of the universe, I strongly recommend that the reader look into Stephen Hawking's explanation of our cosmic origins using the example of a sphere with longitudinal and latitudinal lines of imaginary time. These examples can be found in both his "A Brief History of Time" and "The Universe in a Nutshell", both of which I highly recommend along with this book.

Karen Fox has made unexplainable explainable. She has taken a very tough subject and made it accessible to the lay reader. I highly recommend this book. I also had the good fortune to see her discuss her book at a local independent book store. She was great. If her book tour comes to your city, don't miss it.

Karen Fox has the freshest of writing styles and a complete grasp of her subject. Her voice is, at once, playful and intimate. Readers will follow her anywhere. With a winning, light touch, she presents just the right details to give such characters as Plato, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton memorable personalities, and places their accomplishments in the context of a greater story. Inspiring work. An irresistible read.

This book is so much fun. It takes a playful approach to help explain one of the most interesting theories of modern science, being the Big Bang. Did you ever wonder how the theory came about? Well, you'll read about the roots of the theory, and why its now considered the best theory to explain current state of universe. I never knew about some of the competing ideas. Don't miss this book. I look forward to other books in the Series.

Karen Fox has a unique ability to explain difficult scientific concepts to lay people, and has done so brilliantly in her new book explaining current theories of the origin of the universe. She is to be highly commended for putting these theories in perspective, telling us what appears to be supported by compelling evidence, yet letting us know how much uncertainty still exists. We can only hope that Ms. Fox will continue to expand our scientific horizons in language that one does not have to be a PHD to understand.

All i have to say i dont believe in the big bang theory or evolutionism. I believe in something called creationism which means as you should know that I am a Christian and believe in God. You should think that a creator built tis world and its creatures perfectly. He also says that he only created life on earth so there literally is no such thing as aliens. Meaning NASA should stop looking for life on other planets because, unless we brought bacteria to another planet it could thrive on, LIFE IS NOT ON ANY OTER PLANET BUT EARTH!!!!!!!! Write something like a response if you agree with anything i said in this review. BTW a twelve year old wrote this because I believe you should stand up for what you believe in. Finally that is what the world is trying to get rid of Christianity...

The author makes scientific topics understandable and interesting to the non-scientist. Truly remarkable book!