Customer Reviews

In Search of the Big Bang: The Life and Death of the Universe

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Despite the Amazon listing, this book is about the "Big Bang," not "Big Bands." Far more comprehensive and understandable than "A Brief History of Time," Gribbin's effort trys to show how the Big Bang theory could result in today's universe. On the way he gives you an overview of astronomy, physics -- including particle physics -- cosmology, chemestry and history. The sections that tell how man has perceived and measured the universe are wonderful, as are his explanation of how the heavy elements resulted from the Big Bang. He manages to leave out the math, and I can truly say that as I'm reading it, I understand particle physics, though I forget most of it within a couple of days. The new version does not look nearly as ambitious. I've given all of my copies away, so hang on to yours.

I would recommend any avid reader of cosmology not to buy this book. Since I think there are lots of other better books on this topic. The first problem with the book is that it virtually wastes three chapters (chapters 2,3 and 4) with issues like how to measure distances to stars and galaxies, which any avid reader on cosmology is always conversant with. The author's coverage of the Big Bang Standard Model is quite good. It gives a reasonable idea about the two rival theories about the origin of the universe as well as concepts like neucleosynthesis of matter. The major blunder of this book is its coverage of the Inflation Theory, which I found to be very very superficial. The number of lines used to describe how the Inflation Theory explains the Horizon Problem and the Flatness problem, are less than the number of lines in the problem statements themselves. Any modern book that deals with the creation of the universe must emphasize a lot on the latest theory about it and the Inflation theory did not get its due in this book. The author gives a good idea about the significance of the dark matter in the universe and what it could constitute of. But once again his explanation of concepts like the CPT symmetry is very very superficial.