The State of the Universe: A Primer in Modern Cosmology [Paperback]

Pedro Ferreira (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2007

The universe is a mess. Or rather, our understanding of it is. That’s the message of this lively introduction to the conundrums shaking up the field of cosmology. Pedro Ferreira, a noted lecturer in astrophysics at Oxford, explains how a universe once ruled by Einstein’s simple equations has given way to a more complex and confusing one: where mysterious “dark matter” outweighs visible matter a hundred to one, and “dark energy” seems to be hurling the galaxies apart. Ferreira takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of astronomy to show how we arrived here, clarifying today’s many contending theories.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Deeply interesting' THE GUARDIAN 'Authoritative, accurate, clear and up to date' THE INDEPENDENT 'Ferreira does a good job of balancing the likely with the improbable.' FINANCIAL TIMES 'a short, clear and logical introduction which assumes no background knowledge and uses simple analogies to explain unfamiliar ideas.' OXFORD TODAY --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Pedro G. Ferreira is a Lecturer in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Tutor and Fellow of Oriel College. He studied physics at the Technical University of Lisbon and obtained a doctorate from Imperial College, London in 1995. He was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2000. Jem Finer is an artist, musician and composer living in London. From 2003 until 2005 he was artist in residence in the Astrophysics Department at the University of Oxford.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Phoenix (October 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753822563
• ISBN-13: 978-0753822562
• Product Dimensions: 1 x 5 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,117,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cosmology Primer, August 6, 2006

By 

Mark K McKinney (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The State of the Universe: A Primer in Modern Cosmology (Hardcover)

This book is a fantastic cosmology primer. I have a penchant for reading physics books and this one describes all the missing pieces I have about cosmology. Many of you have probably heard of dark matter, he explains why scientists think this exists, rather than just going on about trying to prove it. He lays down some necessary basics like how we measure the distances to stars and galaxies and how me measure the speeds that they are traveling. It uses the vast amounts of new data we now have thanks to Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, COBE and the WMAP satellites and tells the reader with clear explanations what it all means as relating to our current standard model. Or lacking complete understanding of an area, he expounds on the latest theories that physicists are grappling with in trying to unify physics. Overall, this is a great book with a lot of information succinctly delivered to give the reader an excellent primer on modern cosmology.

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Knowable and Unknown Universe, July 3, 2006

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The State of the Universe: A Primer in Modern Cosmology (Hardcover)

It wasn't long ago that there was no science of cosmology. Now it is a career path: "I am a practicing cosmologist," begins Pedro G. Ferreira in _The State of the Universe: A Primer in Modern Cosmology_ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). "My job is to try to unravel the history and workings of the Universe, using a combination of mathematical tools, observations made with powerful telescopes, and above all, educated guesses." He admits that megalomania infects everyone who takes up such a project, but he has to sum up his book eventually with so many "Don't Knows" that it is hard not to admire the humble attacks against huge questions. There will be for readers, even under Ferreira's sure and informed guidance, plenty of "Don't Knows" even as he discusses the well-established ideas of relativity, quantum mechanics, and unimaginably huge stretches of space and time. It is only fair that cosmologists understand this counterintuitive stuff which leaves laymen baffled. It is also a good idea for laymen to try to get some understanding of it, however limited; after all, cosmologists are merely trying to make sense of the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and the Universe that we call home.

The increase of knowledge about where we live has made people uncomfortable over the centuries because it has involved the realization that we are not as supremely important as we might like. Not only is the Earth not the center of everything, the everyday matter that we think of as the building blocks of everything around us is not the main stuff of the Universe at all, despite our telescopic views of planets, moons, and galaxies. Counting up all the atoms in our Universe shows that 99% of them are helium or hydrogen, not at all what we expect in our idiosyncratic and self-centered view. And that's not all. Galaxies, including our own, are bigger and heavier than they appear; the way they spin around shows that there is much more mass circulating within them than we can see. There is a big problem, though: we don't know what the dark matter is. The weakly interacting particle called the neutrino has been proposed, or perhaps the neutralino, or the axion, or other strange matter described here. Don't worry if you can't understand what this dark matter is; your cosmologist guide says, "We have no real idea of what it is or how to see it."

Ferreira's book is an appealing and up-to-date primer. Part of its attraction is that it has an orderly progression of facts and understanding, without the "Gee, Whiz" exclamations of awe that are prominent in other books covering the same topics. He is content to let the explanations, many of them startling and strange, suffice in provoking the awe. His explanations are clear, although the material progresses in increasing bizarreness and difficulty. He eventually mentions such concepts as string theory or an even stranger "loop quantum gravity", and the idea that our universe may be just one of millions out there (just as we discovered that our star or our galaxy was just one of millions of similar objects). And finally, he is careful to show that although there is much we have discovered that is completely reliable, with some properties and constants having been measured to great precision, there are still huge areas of questions that we have barely begun to understand.

23 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Warning: This book can be hazardous to your understanding of elementary concepts, May 20, 2009

By 

Larry L. Orr - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The State of the Universe: A Primer in Modern Cosmology (Paperback)

I bought this book for a high school grad who had expressed an interest in cosmology -- on a quick scan, it seemed like a good introduction. I also bought a copy for myself, just because I like this sort of thing and find that, since I don't have any training in this field, I usually learn something from even elementary treatments (and it was cheap). Then I started reading it. I got as far as p. 25, where I found the following:

"...Venus has phases, like the Moon. To understand this, let us consider the Moon. The Moon, as any of the other planets, shines because it reflects light from the Sun. At different times of the month, the Earth obscures part of the sunlight in such a way as to cast a shadow on the Moon. If the Earth moves exactly in front of the Sun, the Moon is completely darkened by the shadow. This is what is known as the 'new Moon'. In the exact opposite case, the Moon is completely illuminated by the Sun, with no intervening shadow cast by the Earth. This phase is known as the 'full Moon'. During the intermediate phases, slices of varying sizes are darkened."

I quote the passage at length, just to make clear that the author wasn't talking about some ancient's understanding of the phases of the moon. He was presenting this as fact.

At that point, I stopped reading. How could I trust anything that someone with such an egregious misunderstanding of something as simple as the phases of the moon says? Next time, I'll read the book before I give it to some impressionable youngster.