The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe [Paperback]

Dr. John Gribbin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0300089147 | ISBN-13: 978-0300089141

The age of the universe has been one of the great scientific mysteries of our time. This engrossing book tells the story of how the mystery was recently solved. Written by a brilliant science writer who was involved, as a research astronomer, in the final breakthrough, the book provides details of the ongoing controversies among scientists as they groped their way to the truth-that the universe is between 13 and 16 billion years old, older by at least one billion years than the star systems it contains. In clear, engaging language, Gribbin takes us through the history of cosmological discoveries, focusing in particular on the seventy years since the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe. He explains how conflicting views of the age of the universe and stars converged in the 1990s because scientists (including Gribbin) were able to use data from the Hubble Space Telescope that measured distances across the universe.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

How can we measure the age of the universe? Renowned astronomer Gribbin (Almost Everyone's Guide to Science, etc.) answers this question by describing both the early guesswork and later refinements that finally converged on an answer. He masterfully explains the techniques to measure astronomical distances available to both ancient and modern astronomers, from simple triangulation to the regular pulsation of Cepheid stars. By the 1950s, physicists understood in detail the fission reaction that occurs in the Sun and calculated its age to be 4.5 billion years. This understanding spawned new theories on the creation and ages of stars. Still, the oldest measurable star only provides a lower limit to the age of the universe. It took the realization that the universe is expanding--the measurement of the "red shift" of light from distant stars--to give a closed-ended estimate of its age. The measurement of the rate of expansion, the "Hubble Constant," is the Holy Grail that Gribbin spends the latter half of the book refining. This quest, which concludes with Gribbin's own research, does finally arrive at an age for the universe, but it is the journey, not the destination, that makes the trip worthwhile. In the end, Gribbin's conclusions seem no more mysterious than if he had determined the age of a tree by simply counting the rings. The text is written clearly and concisely for the general reader, yet nevertheless manages to educate on a wide range of topics in physics. Illustrations. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

If you have ever wondered how scientists determine the age of the universe, then this is your book. Gribbin, one of the best science writers working today, recounts the history of the problem and describes the people who have worked on it. Since the age of the universe is inextricably linked to its size, he devotes most of his work to dealing with methods that have been used, are being used, and are proposed as future means to determine cosmic distances. Since this is intended for a general audience, the technical details and mathematical models have been omitted. However, the work is a very satisfying qualitative depiction of the state of the art. For general science collections.
-Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUNY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300089147
• ISBN-13: 978-0300089141
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,557,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Measuring the Age and Size of the Universe, February 20, 2004

By 

Michael Wischmeyer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe (Paperback)

Questions about the age of the universe are tightly coupled to understanding the size and structure of the universe. John Gribbin, a research astronomer as well as a popular writer, tells the story of how astronomers and physicists gradually recognized that the universe was both very large and very old.

We all know today that the universe is immense, that the Milky Way is one of many galaxies, the age of the universe is measured in billions of years, and it began with a big bang. This fundamental understanding is actually quite new. In 1920 the scientific community was deeply divided over whether the Milky Way was essentially the entire universe or whether other large galaxies existed. The age of the universe was significantly underestimated. The Big Bang Theory was first considered seriously in the 1940s.

The Birth of Time is a 200-page detailed look at how this remarkable story unfolded. Gribbin writes well and his explanations are quite lucid. We learn not only about major breakthroughs, but we also explore blind alleys and dead ends. It is an exciting, intriguing story, one that definitely warrants reading.

Nonetheless, this book has one major drawback. Gribbin fails to use explanatory drawings or graphs. For example, he describes the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram entirely in words. We laboriously read: So in a diagram (a kind of graph) where the brightness of each star (its absolute brightness, after allowing for how far away it is) is plotted against its colour, all hydrogen-burning stars lie along a single band in the diagram, a band which is called the main sequence, running roughly diagonally from top left to bottom right.

Likewise, without any diagrams or graphs, or equations, Gribbin discusses parallax measurements, the redshift-distance relation, Hubble's Constant, gravitational lensing, spectral lines, and the Cepheid period-luminosity relation. (There were eight black and white full page astronomical photos that were indeed helpful.)

I hope John Gribbin updates his work to include recent findings regarding dark matter and dark energy, and the now highly precise age (13.7 billion years) assigned to the universe.

I reviewed the 2000 edition published by Universities Press.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Overview on the Astronomical Timescale, January 11, 2001

By 

"tdogwiler" (Columbia, MO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe (Hardcover)

As a geology instructor I have often taught students the age of the Earth and the age of the Universe. Although I have a thorough understanding of the methods by which the age of the Earth was determined, I really had no idea how astronomers dated the Universe. Thus, I read this book with great interest after I came across it in the library one day.

Gribbon's book is written in a way that is accessible to the non-astronomer, but not so watered down as to make the story seem oversimplified. His explanation of the methodologies with which the Universe was dated is quite good and easy to follow. But the really interesting aspect of the book is the way he follows the stories about how the field developed and progressed. In fact, the competition and collaboration between the many notable scientists working in this field is perhaps as interesting as the science itself. Towards this end I am going to have students in one of my classes read an excerpt of this book so that they can see how collaboration and competition between scientists can at one time hold a field back and at another stimulate rapid advances in understanding.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Earth Sciences, Astronomy, Physics, etc.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Measuring the Universe, May 2, 2004

By 

Robert A. Drensek (Huntsville, AL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe (Paperback)

Overall. I like the book. It had some short comings, and I get to those, but it did make approachable some of what astronomers do and how they do it. The book is basically a historical narrative of the science of astronomy and cosmology, and how they are continuously striving to answer some basic questions: How old is the Earth and consequently the Universe?; What is the nature of that Universe?

In this regard, the book does very well. It introduces historical figures, what they did, how they did it, who they influenced, and a few interesting side trips to historical oddities that later proved prescient. There are historically significant people, and people significant only to the field in the book. The book however, is not so much about people as the questions asked (fundamentally remaining unchanged), the answers each generation uncovered (constantly changing with new insight and new precision of the fundamental technology), and the politics of the scientific community.

The author makes approachable aspects of the theories of Einstein, Newton, Quantum Mechanics, the inner workings of stars and how this influenced astronomy. This is were the author is strongest.

The weak areas are primarily in the paucity if figures, diagrams, and pictures to highlight and illustrate key techniques, theories, and technologies.

What impressed me the most is how the science of astronomy and cosmology are built on estimates, built on assumptions, tied to just a few laws of nature or knowns. The answers the participants in the field devine from their work is constantly being refined as the estimates and assumptions are better understood or tossed out.