The Very First Light: The True Inside Story Of The Scientific Journey Back To The Dawn Of The Universe [Paperback]

John Mather (Author), John Boslough (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 1998

In 1990 and 1992, a NASA-led team of scientists from the COBE project changed the way we view the universe. They showed that the microwave radiation that fills the universe must have come from the Big Bang itself—effectively proving this theory beyond any doubt. It was one of the greatest scientific findings of our generation, perhaps of all time.In this no-holds-barred account, COBE’s originator and Project Scientist, John Mather, and science writer John Boslough provide the intimate and startling details of how big science is done today. They tell of the discovery of the cosmic background radiation and of the fifteen-year struggle to design, build and launch the COBE satellite, including the unwelcome controversy when one team member breached the project’s publication policy and stepped into the limelight alone.The Very First Light presents a rarely seen inside account of the world of big science, where cooperation and competition battle for supremacy. At the height of the project, more than 1,500 scientists, engineers, designers, and support staff worked on the spacecraft. The project was especially difficult because two of the three instruments were cooled to within a few degrees of absolute zero.When the Challenger exploded in 1986, the shuttle program was grounded indefinately, leaving the COBE with no route to space. The last available Delta rocket was approved for the mission, but now the team had to slash the spacecraft’s five-ton weight in half. The story of this feat provides a remarkable behind-the-scenes look into the high-stakes, frenetic world of a big science project and NASA itself.The Very First Light is a portrait of science no serious reader will want to miss.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a top-notch scientific adventure, astrophysicist Mather, with an assist from freelance writer Boslough, tells how, as chief project scientist, he organized the team that designed, built and oversaw NASA's 1989 launch of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). That satellite's instruments provided data widely believed to have verified the Big Bang theory of the universe's creation in a primordial explosion. In 1992 NASA scientists announced that COBE had detected minuscule fluctuations in the temperature and density of cosmic background radiation, a microwave energy suffusing the entire universe that is generally considered a remnant, or "afterbirth," of the Big Bang. These fluctuations were interpreted as an indication of "primordial seeds" in the early universe, giving rise to its present-day clumpiness (uneven distribution) of galaxies and galaxy clusters. This lucid, gracefully written narrative combines a suspenseful account of how the COBE team overcame technical and bureaucratic obstacles with a concise survey of modern cosmology from Edwin Hubble to Stephen Hawking. COBE team member George Smoot, a Berkeley physicist, violated team policy by leaking news of COBE's discoveries to the press before NASA's formal announcement, a leak that, to Mather, smacks of self-promotion and betrayal. This excellent insider's report complements and broadens the COBE story as presented in Smoot's Wrinkles in Times. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This book is wonderful reading. Mather, an astrophysicist and chief project scientist of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft, and freelance writer Boslough have succeeded in creating an interesting and personal account of this historic scientific event. Free of the mathematics normally required by modern cosmology, this book focuses on the personal trials and tribulations of the scientists involved and provides the reader with an understanding of Big Science and large scientific enterprises such as NASA. Mather is well qualified to tell this story as he managed COBE from its inception and through its growth to a $160 million project. Hailed by Stephen Hawking as "the discovery of the century, if not all time," COBE's measurement of the cosmic background radiation and tiny variations therein confirmed the Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe. Recommended for anyone with an interest in the history of science or cosmology.?James Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (November 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 046501576X
• ISBN-13: 978-0465015764
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,809,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If this one doesn't make you laugh and weep, I surrender., December 16, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Very First Light: The True Inside Story Of The Scientific Journey Back To The Dawn Of The Universe (Hardcover)

the very first light is a luminous book, filled with the joys and sorrows of physical experimentation at its best. This is some of the best science journalism I have ever read. I know some of the people so lovingly and painstakingly described: they are honest portraits, beaut- ifully rendered. The range of emotions runs the gamut: the highs, the lows, the trill of discovery, the constant re- trenching to make experimental packages of equiptment cheaper, smaller, cheaper, fool proof. This is one of the most human books ever written about scientists. Please, don't miss it.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Account of NASA's Shining Moment of the Last Twenty Years, July 21, 2009

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Very First Light: The True Inside Story of the Scientific Journey Back to the Dawn of the Universe (Paperback)

When first published in 1996, "The Very First Light" received a warm reception as a singular explanation for a non-technical audience of the work of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). Most important, COBE's instruments provided data verifying the Big Bang theory of the universe's origins 13.7 billion years ago. John Mather led the science team that announced in 1992 that COBE had detected minuscule fluctuations in the temperature and density of cosmic background radiation, a microwave energy suffusing the entire universe that is generally considered a remnant, or "afterbirth," of the Big Bang. It was a stunning achievement, one for which John Mather of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center shared the Nobel Prize in 2006 with George F. Smoot of the University of California. Mather, lead author of this book, is the first NASA scientist to receive the Nobel Prize.

"The Very First Light" relates a history of COBE, its origins, approval, design and development, flight, and analysis of the results. It is a worthwhile examination of the process of big scientific pursuits in modern America, and both the priorities and the pitfalls of working in the confines of a bureaucracy where one is not free to pursue everything that might be desired. As one example, one member of the science team, decided to violate some of the strictures about group publication to pursue individual renown.

At the center of this book is the question of how to design and build instruments to search for remnants of the Big Bang, now the standard explanation of how the universe originated. Mather and Boslough offer a useful short history of this effort, as background for COBE. The Big Bang theory's adoption came in the heady years following World War II when new technologies offered startling new scientific understandings. Using radio telescopes and advances in spectroscopy, scientists discovered that the uneven distribution of galaxies in the universe called into question other models of origination. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson proved to be the critical scientists in collecting and interpreting this data, finding that background radiation existed in the cosmos and gaining the Nobel Prize in 1978 for this discovery. Others research followed.

The most important was the effort of NASA's COBE satellite in the early 1990s, which discovered background radiation of varying densities clumped in various parts of the universe. These probably fostered the formation of galaxies, and through this connection Mather and others on his COBE science team were able to draw the connection between the Big Bang and the present universe. It mapped the distribution of matter across the sky, and discovered infrared and submillimeter background light, the possible faint emission from the first generations of stars and galaxies. COBE recorded how the radiant energy of the Big Bang gradually cooled and diluted as the universe expanded in all directions from the point of origin. Even so, it still fills the universe almost uniformly in every direction. It was a stunning discovery, one truly altering the course of scientific knowledge about the cosmos.

A new concluding chapter in this second edition of the book, entitled "Stockholm Calling," relates the reception of the COBE findings and John Mather's personal history since the completion of COBE studies. He offers his perspective on the announcement of his receiving the Nobel Prize and the manner in which the knowledge generated has become part of the everyday understanding of cosmology. He also relates his experiences with the Wilkinson Microwave Anistrophy Probe (WMAP), which determined the age of the universe as 13.7 billion years with and accuracy of +/- 200 million years. It also determined that "the universe is composed of 4 percent ordinary baryonic matter (atoms), 23 percent an unknown type of dark matter that does not emit or absorb light, and 73 percent a mysterious dark energy that seemed to be responsible for accelerating the universe's expansion" (p. 273). This fascinating discovery suggests that we know far less about the universe than previously thought. Mather also discusses the Next Generation Space Telescope, now known as the James Webb Space Telescope, where he is currently leading the science team. Scheduled to be launched in 2014, will improve by at least an order of magnitude current capabilities image the universe in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Mather and Boslough conclude: "What do we know with certainty? Only that the universe exists and is vaster than we had ever imagined: A great firmament of galaxies and quasars, nebulae and dust, luminous stars, planets, and people, along with the unknown if not unknowable dark matter and, now, a dark energy, intersecting gravitational fields, and powerful force fields deep within the fundamental particles of nature--all endowed with an evolving creative power of both great simplicity and great complexity, suffused with an ancient glow of magnificent uniformity and surprising beauty and containing, in our scientific concept of creation, the seeds of everything to come" (p. 282). No one else could have said it better.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Informative..One of Best Scientific Journals I've read, April 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Very First Light: The True Inside Story Of The Scientific Journey Back To The Dawn Of The Universe (Paperback)

This is a great book. And every physicist, future-physicist, or any science lover should really read this book. One of best ways to get the brief summary of whole history of cosmology, while learning about the satellite that proves one of most famous theory we have in physics: big bang. I had borrowed this from library, and I loved it so much, I went ahead and bought a copy, and am in process of re-reading it. Really cool. Check it out!