How It Began: A Time-Traveler's Guide to the Universe [Hardcover]

Chris Impey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 2012 | ISBN-10: 0393080021 | ISBN-13: 978-0393080025 | Edition: 1

A majestic account of the most fascinating phenomena in our universe—and the science behind them.

In this vibrant, eye-opening tour of milestones in the history of our universe, Chris Impey guides us through space and time, leading us from the familiar sights of the night sky to the dazzlingly strange aftermath of the Big Bang.

What if we could look into space and see not only our place in the universe but also how we came to be here? As it happens, we can. Because it takes time for light to travel, we see more and more distant regions of the universe as they were in the successively greater past. Impey uses this concept—"look-back time"—to take us on an intergalactic tour that is simultaneously out in space and back in time. Performing a type of cosmic archaeology, Impey brilliantly describes the astronomical clues that scientists have used to solve fascinating mysteries about the origins and development of our universe.

The milestones on this journey range from the nearby to the remote: we travel from the Moon, Jupiter, and the black hole at the heart of our galaxy all the way to the first star, the first ray of light, and even the strange, roiling conditions of the infant universe, an intense and volatile environment in which matter was created from pure energy. Impey gives us breathtaking visual descriptions and also explains what each landmark can reveal about the universe and its history. His lucid, wonderfully engaging scientific discussions bring us to the brink of modern cosmology and physics, illuminating such mind-bending concepts as invisible dimensions, timelessness, and multiple universes.

A dynamic and unforgettable portrait of the cosmos, How It Began will reward its readers with a deeper understanding of the universe we inhabit as well as a renewed sense of wonder at its beauty and mystery. 75 black-and-white illustrations

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Starred Review. ...readers learn just how many astrophysical mysteries scientists have already penetrated and how many more they hope to unravel with daring new grand unified theories of the universe. But what will especially impress readers is just how entertaining Impey can make science as he regales them with his own piquant experiences as a researcher and translates arcane mathematics into metaphors (guitar strings, apple pies, Tootsie Pops) drawn from everyday life. Readers will never find more intellectual adventure packed into fewer pages.” (Booklist )

“Chris Impey has achieved the near-impossible: an accurate, up-to-date account of ‘the state of the universe’ that is told in gripping human terms. A great achievement and a ‘must-read’ book.” (Ben Bova, author of Faint Echoes, Distant Stars )

“How It Began is the perfect companion to How It Ends—another star-studded tour of the cosmos, full of fascinating ports of call and revealing views of Earth, this time with imaginary voyaging which really brings the journey alive.” (Diane Ackerman, author of One Hundred Names for Love )

“Here is a universe wrapped in a dream of spacefaring for everyone to share. Author Chris Impey combines the vision of a practicing scientist with the voice of a gifted storyteller. He has crafted some of the finest metaphors imaginable for capturing astronomy’s most grandiose concepts. How It Began glitters with a sprinkle of Moon dust.” (Dava Sobel, author of A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos )

“The universe is a big place. It’s not easy to pack it all into a single book. Chris Impey takes on this difficult task with gusto, starting in the vicinity of the Earth and gradually moving outwards to the edge of the cosmos. This is a compelling story of science and the human faces behind it.” (Sean Carroll, author of From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time )

About the Author

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor in the Astronomy Department at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He has written popular pieces on astronomy and is the author of The Living Cosmos, How It Ends, and How It Began. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (March 26, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393080021
• ISBN-13: 978-0393080025
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #387,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor and Deputy Head of the Department, in charge of all academic programs. His research interests are observational cosmology, gravitational lensing, and the evolution and structure of galaxies. He has 170 refereed publications and 65 conference proceedings, and his work has been supported by $20 million in grants from NASA and the NSF. As a professor, he has won eleven teaching awards, and he has been heavily involved in curriculum and instructional technology development. Impey is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society. He has also been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, and the Carnegie Council on Teaching's Arizona Professor of the Year. Impey has written over thirty popular articles on cosmology and astrobiology and co-authored two introductory textbooks. His first popular book "The Living Cosmos," was published in 2007 by Random House. His second and third, called "How It Ends" and "How it Began," both on the subject of cosmology" were published in 2010 and 2012 by Norton. He has a book coming out later in 2013 on iconic NASA missions called "Dreams of Other Worlds" and a book coming out in 2014 on his work teaching cosmology to Buddhist monks called "Monk Gravity." He was a co-chair of the Education and Public Outreach Study Group for the Astronomy Decadal Survey of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Catching up with the universe April 13, 2012

By Roberto Perez-Franco

Format:Hardcover

(Review published in MIT's The Tech on April 13, 2012)

I grew up in the Panamanian countryside, under pristine skies bursting with stars. Defenseless against the nightly spectacle, I had no choice but to become a backyard astronomer. A Spanish translation of Isaac Asimov's The Universe (1966) transformed a romantic interest in constellations into a healthy scientific understanding of the cosmos. Asimov's tome, although dated, satisfied my thirst for cosmological knowledge long enough for me to shift my attention to more mundane things. Two decades went by until I discovered -- with a mix of delight and trepidation -- that while I was not looking, a third revolution in cosmology, by no means smaller than those triggered by Copernicus and Hubble, was taking place right under my nose, during my lifetime.

Obscure and puzzling terms, such as dark matter and dark energy, were now ubiquitous in a discussion that I no longer recognized as familiar and that -- much to my dismay -- I was no longer able to follow with confidence. The good old Big Bang I was familiar with had now been revised and expanded to include exotic concepts such as an inflationary stage, an accelerating rate of expansion, and the possibility that our whole universe may be only a tiny part of a bubbling multiverse, explainable by means of microscopic vibrating strings. Ouch! Eager to catch up with the fantastic new questions and findings of the ongoing third cosmological revolution, I searched again for an instructive and entertaining book that could do for me now what Asimov's book had done 20 years earlier.

Alas! A pilgrimage through the pages of a dozen books, each with diverse strength and shortcomings, was necessary for me to catch up with our current understanding of the universe.... After the effort, I do feel confident, again, that -- while still a layman -- I am no longer an ignoramus in regard to current cosmological questions. Interestingly, the process of educating myself in these matters left in me the impression that the whole exercise had been terribly inefficient. The common person deserved -- I thought -- to have an up-to-date summary of the current understanding of the universe, presented in accessible language, and in a single comprehensive book.

Chris Impey's latest work may be that book. If it is not, at least it comes closer to that ideal than any other volume I have seen in a long while. Let me put it in these terms: if I had to recommend a single book today to a friend wanting to learn the basics of what's out there, Impey's How It Began would be my first choice. Ambitious in its scope, up-to-date in its content, accessible in its exposition and pleasantly poetic in its execution, the book is an imaginative yet scientifically grounded promenade through the cosmos, which starts next door with a fact-packed (and fascinating!) look at the Moon and ends up, past the beginning of time and space, with speculation about the Multiverse.

But How It Began is more than a crash-course on modern cosmology: it is a sort of epic narrative about the human quest to understand the universe, to bring it within reach, and to find our place in it. It includes not only concepts from astronomy and cosmology, but also nuggets of knowledge from other fields that help put them in an interesting context. The whole volume seems designed to blow you out of the water. And it delivers. Some passages - like the description of the space race -- read like a thriller, while others (such as the description of a desolate moonscape in Europa) read like a poem. Every page packs a punch, every paragraph presents a surprising fact, a memorable analogy, or an interesting anecdote. A sense of awe and marvel seems to permeate it all, as if Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe had been rewritten in the style of Richard Dawkins's The Magic of Reality.

Impey's work is a far cry from the formulaic books on popular science that present findings in a chronological fashion, mere recollections of whose ideas replaced whose. Instead it is thoroughly original. It feels like a conversation in a cafe with an old and dear friend, who happens to be brilliant and engaging, versed in all things related to space and time. Refreshingly, Impey is unafraid to employ wildly diverse cultural, historical, even mythical references -- as well as personal anecdotes -- where they are less expected as long as they help convey the `wow' factor of an explanation. Some visualizations that border on science fiction, as well as abundant quotations from thinkers of all epochs, have been used to good effect throughout the text. Undoubtedly an expert in his field, Impey is also a bit of a dreamer, a bit of a poet, and a lot of fun. This book, which takes strongly after its author, is -- in my opinion -- an entertaining and illuminating tour de force, which deserves to be read and savored slowly. For it is clearly a work of love. Read more ›

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Contemplating the Infinite April 18, 2012

By J. Groen VINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

As I read this book, the most striking sense that I got was the overwhelming size of the universe. These are numbers that I can't even fathom, approaching infinite from both a large perspective and a small perspective.

From the large perspective, here are some numbers quoted in the book. The size of the universe is 10 to the 34th power (that is 34 zeroes after ten) light years where a light year is approximately 5.8 trillion miles. The total mass (weight) of the universe is 10 to the 54th power kilograms. There are 100 billion galaxies (Milky Way is just one) in the universe. The universe is 14 billion years old.

From a small perspective, in the process of finding out how the universe started, physicists have been pursuing smaller and smaller items, coming to the concept of a quark which can only be identified through collisions from these huge accelerator units.

This is impressive stuff to the layman in the world of astronomy like myself and therefore very interesting.

The book pursues the origination of the universe by starting with the earth, the moon, the solar system, our galaxy and continuing onto other galaxies in the universe that have been found via telescopes on earth and the Hubble telescope. Through this trip, the author shares stories of important physicists along the way, Hubble, Einstein, Lemaitre (sp?) etc. and stories regarding himself. The stories regarding himself are apparently provided for human interest and are not a highlight of the book. In these stories, we find how dedicated and eccentric these individuals are (including the author, I daresay), but I suppose that this is necessary to come to the conclusions that they have....

The author comes to the "Big Bang" theory which originated from a Belgian Jesuit priest (Lemaitre) and is the most recognized theory today for the universe's origination. The author lays the reasoning why he would "give a limb as a bet that this theory is true" starting with the tip of a pinky to his arm. This is interesting as are some of the analogies that he uses. (One that didn't work for me was the importance of symmetry in marriage.)

At times, the author bounces around these analogies and stories giving the impression at times that he is lost in his story of black holes, quasars, quarks, neutrinos, etc. and he is hard to follow. He also uses numerous graphs and terms that are also hard to follow with the writing. It all seems to be so esoteric. Finally, there is even some math, including Euler's identity (which I enjoyed as a Math major) but is hard to determine in this context why it is important.

At the end, the author pursues the current theories and future direction, none of which have really been proved, and more like philosophies than science, like string theory, M-theory, multiple universes, etc. And, the book ends in an almost ambivalent state after such a strong start - do I like this book or not?

For making an attempt at defining the universe and the "Big Bang" theory, this is an interesting book. However, the analogies, the personal stories, the rambling, the use of graphs that are not clearly defined for the layman, etc. make this book a difficult read for anyone without a scientific background. Maybe, he should have made the book 200 pages and kept to the script.

So, if you are so inclined and are interested in a book on the universe, jump in, but beware of the challenges. Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The beginning of everything June 4, 2012

By Fletcher

Format:Kindle Edition

This is a very good book overall and a fantastic read for any budding amateur scientist. One of things I particularly liked about the book were the descriptions he gave on various cosmological occurrences a if were in the middle of it all. It gave a really nice addition to the book. The way that Chris describes the various concepts requires no previous reading or any expertise. He has a unique ability amongst science writers to bring very complex situations out in the open and allow the basics to be understood. I've read a lot of books over the last few years in this genre and some can be a bit repetitive but this book is not one of those. It has a great combination of new information portrayed in an understandable way that is quite a lot of fun to read. If you want to know how it all began, how the solar system got here, how the sun got here and how the universe began then this book is for you.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars EXPANDS ON THE CURRENT UNIVERSE TV SERIES June 29, 2012

By Doctor Feelgood

Format:Hardcover

IF YOU HAVE BEEN ENJOYING THE UNIVERSE SERIES, ETC. ON TELEVISION THIS BOOK WILL EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE. IT SEEMS TO ME TO BE A CROSSOVER BETWEEN AN INTRODUCTORY TO UNIVERSE SCIENCE AND A COLLEGE TEXT PRIMARILY AS A HISTORY FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN BECOMING ASTROPHYSICISTS. THE COMPLEXITY OF THE NOVEL IS NOT FOR THE CURIOUS. THIS IS A BOOK THAT NEEDS TO BE READ MORE THAN ONCE TO ENHANCE ONE'S KNOWING THE CONTENT IN DEPTH. DR. IMPEY DOES AN ADMIRABLE PRESENTATION OF THE FACTS WE CURRENTLY HAVE AT HAND AND AN AWARENESS THAT OUR KNOWLEDGE IS INCREASING SO RAPIDLY THAT I WOULD HOPE DR. IMPEY WOULD FOLLOW UP WITH A SECOND BOOK. TAKE YOUR TIME, READ THE BOOK, AND INCREASE YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE AT THIS TIME!!!