Customer Reviews

The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe

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Stephen Weinberg received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Harvard university and has taught at the university of Texas for decades. He won the Nobel prize in physics in 1979 and has worked with such distinguished personages as the late Richard P. Feynman. In short, he is one of the leading minds in his field.

The First Three Minutes is an unusual book in astronomy / cosmology because it is now over 20 years old & yet it is STILL one of the classics of the "story" of the universe for the layman & non-expert. The book takes us on an exhilerating journey all the way back to the Plank epoch (10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang). Weinberg also deals with Einstein's theory of Relativity (which predicted the Big Bang), the Hubble Red Shift (the discovery that the universe is expanding) as well as the detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in the 1960's by Ralph Wilson and Arno Penzias. All three of these factors, plus numerous other details all form the foundation for the way most scientists think about our universe (presently known as the Big Bang theory).

One of the things about Weinberg that I admire is that, like Carl Sagan, he concedes that he MIGHT be wrong, but that what he has to work with is the best paradigm available. This is brutally honest & also quite a refreshing approach. I tire quickly of reading science books that are written by individuals who are so conceited as to believe they know everything there is to know. One certainly does not have to worry about that type of arrogance with Weinberg.

So, if you even have a passing interest in cosmology, I would HIGHLY recommend this book. The book may be especially appealing to many people as it is 150 pages in & out (anyone who has ever browsed the science shelf at their local bookstore can readily see that there have been far longer books written on this topic). But oh, what a plethora of info that Weinberg furnishes in those 150 pages!

All in all, this is a very readable book which deals with a quite recondite topic.

I am a true layman, having had NO education in physics beyond high school "physical science." However, I have read Hawking's "Brief History of Time," Timothy Ferris' "The Whole Shebang," and read Scientific American. I say this to point out that you do not need to bring a great deal of knowledge to the table to appreciate this book, provided you have some aptitude for cosomology. And, sure, it helps to have a passing acquaintance with General Relativity, Special Relativity, and some of the basics of particle physics. I can't imagine anybody would pick up this book if they didn't already have some passing interest in cosmology and had read a few magazine articles.

The text is clear and, considering the subject matter, amazingly brief. The author does not dummy down the mathematics too much either, which is a fault of some books written for laymen. On the other hand, he also doesn't overwhelm the reader with mathematics either. He wisely chooses to include a mathematics appendix and lets you either explore the math or not.

Quantum mechanics and general relatively are not particularly "intuitive" topics, so any beginning reader is going to have to read this slowly, carefully, and with some patience. But the book is as clear and open to lay people as I've yet encountered.

And, frankly, I think any educated lay person should have a BASIC understanding of the principles in this book. For the curious, this is a great place to start. And even if you've been through the "story" before, this book is great for reinforcing the story of the birth of the universe in a concise, holistic layout.

There is an acute shortage of the accounts of the early universe for the layman. This book covers the first few minutes of the universe written by a Nobel prize winning physists, Steven Weinberg. All in all, this text is a very good expose' and really not outdated for the casual reader. It covers string theory, the pros and cons for an open and closed universe, and dark matter question. The meat of the book is based on the fact that as the original universe cooled, seconds after the big bang and sub-atomic particles were allowed to form. "If" the big "If" this primordial ball attained equilibrium then many assumptions can be made from present day evidence directly back to early primordial conditions. The cooling proto-universe had particle formation ratios and radiation emitting frequencies that can be evidenced today. As the universe cooled additional particles were allowed to form and various radiation frequencies were allowed to escape.
The author Steven Weinberg has a very natural style of writing, translating the extremes of physical theory into a step- by-step progression of the beginning universe. A very rewarding book.

Why do I still like this book, written back in the 1970s, long before, say, the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating?

Well, I like it because it is well written. What it says is solid and valid. There's very little speculation, and when something speculative is said, it is clearly labeled as such.

This explains what we Know about the Big Bang. Not what we think happened, but what we can prove happened. What we know because we see the expansion of the universe, because we see the cosmic microwave background, and because we see the leftover helium from Big Bang nucleosynthesis in those awesome three or four minutes in which our universe was truly a hot place.

You need very little background to appreciate this book: just an interest in what happened in our Universe in less than four minutes, more than ten billion years ago. And even if you know plenty of physics and astronomy, if you haven't read this book, it's worth the time it takes to read it.

True that the first version of this book--appeard some time ago, that does not diminish its usefulness to the layman or person interested in the history of the popularization of cosmology--which is a steady business with many competitors.

To find one such book so clearly written is valuable in itself, even as a landmark in this stream of such publications. As such, it belongs on any amateur astronomer's bookshelf, as well as any true scholar who wishes to place more recent findings in their appropriate context. I can add one personal note, my father, Dr. Ralph A. Alpher, commented to me when Dr. Weinberg's book appeared that this was the first book to have the history of cosmology through 1977 "right." And he was in a position to know...on that basis alone, I'll recommend it--if you can find the early paperback edition, it is a fun and short read, also.

Highly recommended!

Beautifully written and highly recommended. Some physics knowledge is required but not much - certainly not undergraduate level. I wish Amazon would provide some editorial presence and delete the gibberish previous post titled "A creationist's fairytail on moving sands". This person populates his so-called review with a smattering of physics terms but makes absolutely no sense at all.

A masterpiece. Weinberg was able to keep all the physics, with almost no mathematics. There is, in this book, a sense of drama seldom to be found in scientific books. You should start your cosmology studies here, independently of how far you intend to go.

Despite some reviewers' concerns that the content of this book may be dated, it is not. What you read in this book is still the consensus among cosmologists on how the universe evoloved after the first one-hundredth of a second after the big bang. What happened before that is a matter of current debate. Though written for the layman in mind, this book is not an easy read: non-scientists may find the content a bit too difficult to follow, while scientists will find Weinberg's avoidance of the scientific notation for large numbers (e.g. two million millon degrees Kelvin) and the use of fully spelled out particle names in reactions instead of symbols (e.g. Neutrino plus neutron yields electron plus proton) annoying. If you are a physics/astophysics/astonomy student, this book is a must read.

Definitely not for the layman. He talks about several concepts and reaches several conclusions without explanation of how he got there. Its somewhat frustrating at times because you have to stop and look up in another text to understand what he is talking about before you can go on. I read "The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene" before I read this in the hopes of getting a better understanding of the big bang. That didn't happen. I would recommend the Brian Greene book over this even though only a small section was dedicated to the big bang.

This is to alert the reader to the fact that Amazon is mistakenly attributing this book to the wrong writer. The author of this early work, "The First Three Minutes," was, of course, Steven Weinberg (no middle initial), who is also the author of several other books for the general reader, and recent treatises on "Cosmology" and "The Quantum Theory of Fields." Perhaps in reviewing this comment, Amazon will correct the error.