|
5 out of 5. The "readability" is great. This book is very well written, and explains complex ideas in easy to understand ways.
He stated the average density of the universe, but I found this to be a little presumptuous considering that no mention was made as to how the actual (or estimated) volume of the universe was calculated. By the time you're finished, you have a basic, but clear, understanding of the important discoveries and the Big Bang.If I have any criticism, it is the fact that there were some key explanations that he did NOT explain as well as most of the rest of the book. He just stated it as fact. So why did he skip these.- He skipped completely over how they made a leap from the idea that galaxies were receding inside of space to the fact that all of space was expanding.
I loved this book. What if beyond the last "layer" of galaxies, there are millions of light years of empty space, thus reducing the average density. But the rest of the book he walks you through each step of how they discovered the next step in proving the Big Bang, so why not explain HOW or WHY there is a loss of mass in fission to generate energy.- The density of the universe was stated, mathematically, but how does one calculate density if you're not certain of the volume. As someone who has had a fascination with astronomy and the cosmos for most of my life, I found this book to be both informative and simple to follow.
He stated it as a fact, but did not explain how they determined this.- More significant, I found it odd that he completely skipped explaining mass defect, or how or why there is a loss of mass during fission. And if we know this isn't true, why skip over explaining how we know it's true.All in all, I could not put the book down. The author walks you, step-by-step, through the process of HOW they figured out the Earth revolves around the Sun, then all the way through each subsequent (significant) breakthrough. I'm sure entire volumes could be written about some topics in the book, but even with highly complex theories being proven, he did an excellent job explaining them.
Chapter 3 discusses the great debate between supporters of the Big Bang Model and the Steady state Model of the universe. Singh remains faithful to his engrossing style of explaining science by narrating the stories of those who made it. This book is certainly the most reachable account of cosmology I have encountered to date.Chapter 1 follows the progress of Astronomy from ancient Greece until the door steps of the 20th century. Those with even a mediocre background will not get much out of it.
(2) Some of hottest topics that certainly deserved a place in the bulk of the book are only mentioned in passing in the epilogue. (3) It gets a bit too superficial at times, (4) It lacks almost any coverage of quantum physics or string theory which have been so instrumental to our understanding of the universe.BOTTOM LINE: Readers with little or no prior knowledge of cosmology will love this book. The Epilogue discusses some of the problems still facing our understanding of the universe and speculates over such questions as "What came before the Big Bang.".I gave this book four out of five because (1) Very little if any mention is made of more recent advances in our vision of the big bang. Chapter 4 describes how the few remaining obstacles facing the Big Bang model were finally leveled.
Some of the heroes encoutered here are Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. The bulk of the chapter is concerned with the ground breaking discoveries of Edwin Hubble. In this book, He describes the history and evolution of our understanding of the universe by introducing the key human figures who contributed to this noble quest. It also explores the efforts of cosmologists to measure distances to stars and some of the ingenious techniques they utilized.
It also introduces the notions of the Big bang and the steady state universe. It explores the various competing models that have been proposed to describe the universe. Chapter 2 is mostly concerned with Einstein's general theory or Relativity and its implications on out understanding of the universe.
A nice book. This is a very well written book which takes you from the early discovery of the solar system through modern arguments for/against the big bang. It contain enough details to keep it interesting.
There are many interesting characters who greatly contributed in various ways, and their scientific achievements as well as personal stories makes this book a page turner. This is also seen when the author discusses Einstein's theory of relativity. The author goes on to explain many of the phenomena that the big bang model could not explain at the time, and then shows when it was explained, by whom, and how. Other than that, this book is nearly flawless. It was a very fascinating and easy read. The justification for holding to geocentrism in then contrasted with the fact that as our telescopes improved, many scientists refused to accept the new theory and wanted to cling to the old. One does not need to know much science (if any) to appreciate this book and the drama that is the story of the big bang.
He even explains in simple terms how once we were able to calculate the size of the earth, we were able to approximate the sizes of both the sun and moon as well as their distances, all using elementary methods. From here, we meet many fascinating characters, including Gamow and Hubble. It was with Einstein's theory of relativity that some of the scientific community began to see that the universe may have begun to exist, and so the big bang model begins to form. The story continues as we learn about the discoveries of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and other famous names in the "classical" understanding of the universe. But that was because of the scale that we were working with.
It is an historical overview of all the scientific endeavors that lead to the discovery and ultimately acceptance of the big bang model of the origin of the universe, but it reads like a drama. His theory implied an overthrow of some of Newton's theories, which seemed to be tried and true tested. This was due to the fact that the stars were WAY further from us then we could have possibly imagined. The author begins with some of humanities very earliest knowledge of the cosmos. One thing that was very interesting was how the author made the case that at the time, humanity had very good reasons for holding to geocentrism, including geocentrism's ability to predict things as well as the inability to detect the parallax shifts.
|
