I review the first hardcover printing (1977, which includes ten-page mathematical supplement). My first reading of this book occurred 1977. My second reading of the book occurred 2017. I wanted to re-read this book ! Between those two years (1977 and 2017) much has transpired: my background education and cosmological research. Regarding my education, I have had the pleasure of studying from Steven Weinberg's great textbooks (beginning with Gravitation and Cosmology and concluding with his Lectures On Quantum Mechanics). Regarding Cosmology, I am young enough (and old enough) to have witnessed the birth of string theory and inflation theory, plus the discoveries of Higgs boson and gravitational waves. There is still 'dark energy' to contend with ! Be that as it may, Steven Weinberg's " First Three Minutes" is the first serious introduction to Cosmology I ever read. It still excites me (that is, the book and Cosmology) !
Let me quote from Steven Weinberg:
(1) "...an explosion which occurred simultaneously everywhere, filling all space from the beginning, with every particle rushing apart from every other particle."(page 5). Think about how often this concept, this 'Big Bang' gets muddled in the classroom discussions. Many have failed to read this line !
(2) "However, even if it is eventually supplanted, the standard model will have played a role of great value in the history of Cosmology." (page 9). Think about how often many fail to underscore the provisional nature of theories ! Steven Weinberg is well aware of limitations of physical theory.
(3) Read: "As often happens in science, this argument can be used both forward and backward," and "if the universe is isotropic around every point, it is necessarily also homogeneous." (page 23). You have a masterful educator presenting subtleties. Kinematics occupied initial thirty pages, dynamics (Newton and Einstein) begins page 31, and we now know that this will need emendation...
(4) Read: "The galaxies are not rushing apart because of some mysterious force that is pushing them apart, rather, the galaxies are moving apart because they were thrown apart by some sort of explosion in the past." (page 35).
(5) "No signal can travel faster than the speed of light, so at any time we can only be affected by events occurring close enough so that a ray of light would have had time to reach us since the beginning of the Universe." (page 41). The concepts causality and horizon, thus introduced.
(6) Chapter three, Cosmic Microwave Radiation Background, is a favorite. Weinberg's terminology "background radio static" is apt. Weinberg writes-out 'degrees Kelvin,' which, I believe is redundant (one need not write 'degrees' ). Read: "...although in a sense the Universe was expanding very rapidly at first, to an individual photon or electron or nucleus, the expansion was taking plenty of time---time enough for each particle to be scattered or absorbed or re-emitted many times as the Universe expanded. (page 55). It is here where the concept of thermal equilibrium is introduced and it is here where the topic of statistical mechanics first charmed me ! We learn that, strictly speaking "temperature" is only defined for thermal equilibrium and "it is crucial to the argument of this book that the Universe has once passed through a state of thermal equilibrium." (page 56). Much Physics in that one line !
(7) Photons, Black-Body Radiation, Stefan-Boltzmann Law, Planck's Energy Quanta: Chapter Three presents a veritable qualitative course in modern physics. We meet our friend Rainier Weiss (2017 Physics Nobel Prize Laureate).
(8) Read: "Eventually, as we look farther and farther back into the history of the Universe, we come to a time when the temperature was so high that collisions of photons with each other could produce material particles out of pure energy." That is a first hint of quantum field theory, read: "to every type of particle in nature, there is a corresponding antiparticle." (page 82 ). Next: "it is the balance between the gravitational field and the outward momentum of the contents of the Universe that governs the rate of expansion." Finally, the conserved quantities electric charge, baryon number and lepton number are described (page 92, chapter four). An introduction to particle physics !
(9) The first hundred pages have been preparation for chapter five: The First Three Minutes. It is here where it is all put together, assembled. Weinberg discusses neutrino background, among other things. Read his concluding words: "the appropriate response to such uncertainties is not to scrap the standard model, but rather to take it very seriously and to work out its consequences thoroughly, if only in the hope of turning up a contradiction with observation. (page 120). Words spoken by an honest scientist !
(10) "The present Universe is so cold that the symmetries among the different particles have been obscured by a kind of freezing; they are not manifest in ordinary phenomena, but have to be expressed mathematically, in our gauge field theories." (page 149). Yet another clue ! The book is completed. There is an eight page Glossary (always helpful) and a ten page mathematical supplement. That supplement includes: doppler effect, critical density, expansion time scales, black-body radiation, Jeans mass, neutrino temperature and density (using algebra and introductory physics). The supplement itself could be utilized for teaching, but being only ten pages the discussion needs to be amplified by the reader. References for further reading concludes the book. Among those references are textbooks which every physicist should study: Gravitation (Misner, Thorne, Wheeler), Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (Hawking and Ellis), Gravitation and Cosmology (Weinberg's own monograph). Returning to "The First Three Minutes"--there is plenty enough in this book to keep you thinking !
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Alexandre Lavrov
Great book, but poor condition - NOT as advertised by AMAZON
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 19, 2020Mrs G.
Best 3 minutes ever explained
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 12, 2020JJ
Nicely structured with just enough detail/repetition to allow non-scientists with ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 17, 2015
