This is an outstanding book, a story of everything that is known today about how the universe came to be, what it's made of, how we know what we know, and what we are still trying to find out. The writing is easily accessible to an intelligent and interested layperson - no math at all - using clear language and useful analogies. This is not to say that the material is in any way "dumbed down" for the reader. It's not. It's real science, well written, understandable, and - at least to me - a page turner.
The first 3 chapters cover how Einstein's general relativity leads inevitably to the conclusion that the universe began with the big bang. There's a lot to say about this topic, but I'm going to be brief here because it's been covered elsewhere. At the Edge of Time does a better job explaining it than most, much better than Hawking's "A Brief History of Time". The book starts out well enough.
And then it gets GOOD. Really good. Chapter 4 includes a great discussion of so called "big bang nucleosynthesis", or how the big bang created the lighter elements, and provides the only reasonable explanation for how much Helium there is in the Universe. Chapter 5 explains how physicists probe the conditions of the very early universe, a small fraction of a second after the big bang itself, using the worlds' most powerful particle accelerator, the famous Large Hadron Collider. Chapter 6 addresses why any matter exists in the universe at all. Hint, this is beyond the "Standard Model" of particle physics, which predicts that matter and anti-matter would be created in equal parts in the early universe, and the two would annihilate one another and leave no matter behind at all.
Chapters 7, 8, and 9 hit on the author's personal field of expertise - he's a leading Dark Matter theorist - beginning in chapter 7 with a discussion of how we know dark matter exists, and a pretty easy answer for what it might be. A "WIMP miracle" explanation, not a new kind of gravity or something ghostly and mysterious that we are all supposed to feel in awe of. This is how physicists actually think about it, a problem that is probably pretty well understood, and simply awaiting experimental discovery. That's not normal for a popular science book, but it's true. I couldn't stop reading. Then in Chapter 8, the author discusses his personal discovery of an excess of gamma rays in the center of the Milky Way, and how that looks a lot like annihilating dark matter. If it actually is, then an answer for dark matter might actually be at hand. Now I really couldn't stop reading! And then in Chapter 9 he challenges everything from the previous 2 chapters with a "radical rethinking of dark matter", that suggests it might be part of a "hidden sector" inaccessible to ordinary matter in any way other than through its gravitation. So it might be something ghostly and mysterious after all!
Those 3 chapters remind me why I think science is great.
Moving on, Chapter 10 is the best explanation of cosmic inflation, and why something like it probably HAS to be true, that I have ever read. If you have heard of it but don't quite get it, this is for you. And if you think you understand it, well, read it anyway, it will help you explain it to your friends. In chapter 11 the author takes on the anthropic principal in the context of Weinberg's anthropic explanation of Dark Energy. Chapter 12 is a grab bag of topics for future discovery, and something that I could have done without, personally, though maybe that's really just because the rest of the book is so darn good.
This is a really good book. I've asked myself what it is that makes me like it so much more than other science books I've read, and some of the usual explanations are front and center. The subject matter is profoundly interesting, the author is obviously an expert, the book is fast paced and explains everything well and without dumbing anything down. It's really well written, and like I said, it's a page turner.
But I think I have to add one more point to that. At the Edge of Time conveys something really unusual in a popular science book, if not unique, in my opinion. This is how theoretical physicists themselves think about the subject, at least as much as is possible without the math. If you want to understand it the way they do, this is the book that does that.
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About the author
The next three minutes!
Where Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes left off, Hooper’s At the Edge of Time picks up. A riveting tour of modern cosmology told by one of its savviest guides, Hooper's book takes us on a journey from our universe’s formerly inscrutable past to mesmerizing possible scenarios in its far future. A fascinating story that is to be savored.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2019
- Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2022
- Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2020
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Top reviews from other countries
- Amazonian doctorReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2024
Clear, honest and well informed - worthwhile read
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Luis Rodríguez CabaReviewed in Spain on January 22, 2022
La importancia de la materia oscura
