Skip to main content

Endless Universe – Neil Turok & Paul J. Steinhardt ****

The standard big bang inflationary model of cosmology describes our Universe as beginning as an infinitesimal point of infinite density, energy and mass known as a singularity, where all of the known laws of physics break down. For reasons we are still not certain about, this singularity started to expand. In order to explain certain features of the universe around us (mainly the smoothness of the cosmic background radiation), it has been proposed that our early universe went through an exponentially rapid period of expansion – this is dubbed ‘inflation’.
Although this is the conventional view that cosmology holds about the origins of our universe, it is not without its flaws. In particular some astrophysicists are unhappy about the proposed singularity at the start of our universe. Inflation theory has also had to be tinkered with in order to take in to account the existence of dark matter and more recently dark energy, driving our universe’s expansion to accelerate, contrary to the expectations from the original inflationary theory.
Turok and Stienhardt have been developing their repost to the inflationary model for a number of years. Known as the ekpyrotic (without fire) theory – in essence this puts forward the idea that instead of a singularity, our universe was created as the result of two branes colliding with each other and triggering a ‘big bang’ event. They take this idea further and propose that we live in a cyclic universe (this is not a new idea in itself) where the two branes move along higher dimensional space and regularly collide and separate over periods of billions of years. If they are correct their model could successfully explain the features of our universe that the inflationary model fails to cover.
This book describes in a highly accessible and readable manner the outline of Turok and Stienhardt’s new theory. Mercifully, in place of complex mathematics, diagrams are employed to get across the complex ideas featured. This is no mean feat given the fact that the book’s topic is at the cutting edge of 21st century cosmology.
After deftly describing inflationary theory and pointing out where its flaws lie, the authors give an account of how they developed their theory. Parts of this are auto-biographical, which really gives you a flavour of how cosmologists work.
At present there is little observational evidence to support the ekpyrotic model – as the authors themselves point out. This may be about to change within the next decade or so as gravitational wave detectors could detect the characteristic energy signature from gravity waves created in the brane collision.
The idea that there may well have been a universe before ours has also gained credence as some cosmologists have claimed as recently as this week to have detected imprints in the cosmic microwave background that suggest our universe may have ‘bubbled off’ from a previous universe.

Paperback:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Scotty_73

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We Are Eating the Earth - Michael Grunwald *****

If I'm honest, I assumed this would be another 'oh dear, we're horrible people who are terrible to the environment', worthily dull title - so I was surprised to be gripped from early on. The subject of the first chunk of the book is one man, Tim Searchinger's fight to take on the bizarrely unscientific assumption that held sway that making ethanol from corn, or burning wood chips instead of coal, was good for the environment. The problem with this fallacy, which seemed to have taken in the US governments, the EU, the UK and more was the assumption that (apart from carbon emitted in production) using these 'grown' fuels was carbon neutral, because the carbon came out of the air. The trouble is, this totally ignores that using land to grow fuel means either displacing land used to grow food, or displacing land that had trees, grass or other growing stuff on it. The outcome is that when we use 'E10' petrol (with 10% ethanol), or electricity produced by ...

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...