Skip to main content

13.8: the quest to find the true age of the universe ad the theory of everything - John Gribbin ****

If we had such a thing as a science writers' hall of fame, John Gribbin would be one of its first inductees. As one of the UK's most respected veterans of the field, and with a background in astrophysics, Gribbin is uniquely placed to take us on a guided tour of the history of attempts to establish the age of the universe, and to combine the general theory of relativity and quantum theory, almost certainly necessary if we are to have an effective picture of the earliest moments of existence.

 It says a lot for Gribbin's grasp of the topic that he can write a book where, to be honest, the only real new aspect is changing the generally accepted age of the universe from 13.7 billion years to 13.8 and yet still make his content feel fresh and approachable. One of the ways he does this is to avoid going into too much depth on stories that have been told many times before. It's always a difficult balance. Do you, for instance, tell the story of the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) in any detail, as any regular reader of popular science will have seen it many times before? But on the other hand, there will be some readers for whom it is a new and interesting story.

  The only downside of the trimming of the stories to their bare bones is that they lose a certain personal flavour and intrigue. So, for instance, in the CMB case, although the infamous pigeon droppings are mentioned, we don't hear the rather bizarre story of the way that the pigeon problem was dealt with. There is one point where this brevity is definitely overplayed. In the prologue, Gribbin tells us how Gamow, Alpher and Herman were upset when the discovery of the CMB was announced without any mention of then. He then goes on to say 'The resulting recriminations have been well documented by John Mather and John Bgoslough, two later players in the cosmic background game: there is no need to elaborate on them here.' In this case, we don't just missed the story, we're told there is a story but that we aren't going to hear what it is. That's just frustrating.

 If I have one other slight complaint it is that the author rather repeatedly throws in remarks about having worked with somebody involved, or that he has been supervised by somebody involved, or been on a team that worked on something connected... this doesn't really add anything to the telling, but leaves the reader feeling as if there's an unnecessary attempt to make this history personal.

 Overall, 13.8 is a very solid account of how we came to the currently accepted age of the universe. It may not offer much on the alternative theories of the origin of the universe, but it's not trying to do this. Instead it gives powerful insights into a detective story that is attempting to perform the ultimate cold case CSI - uncovering what happened 13.8 billion years ago - and that has over the years had many false starts and misapprehensions before reaching our current state of knowledge. What's more, as a handsome hardback it is an attractive addition to any popular science shelf. Once again, Gribbin delivers.
Hardback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Roger Highfield - Stephen Hawking: genius at work interview

Roger Highfield OBE is the Science Director of the Science Museum Group. Roger has visiting professorships at the Department of Chemistry, UCL, and at the Dunn School, University of Oxford, is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a member of the Medical Research Council and Longitude Committee. He has written or co-authored ten popular science books, including two bestsellers. His latest title is Stephen Hawking: genius at work . Why science? There are three answers to this question, depending on context: Apollo; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, along with the world’s worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl; and, finally, Nullius in verba . Growing up I enjoyed the sciencey side of TV programmes like Thunderbirds and The Avengers but became completely besotted when, in short trousers, I gazed up at the moon knowing that two astronauts had paid it a visit. As the Apollo programme unfolded, I became utterly obsessed. Today, more than half a century later, the moon landings are
Post a Comment
Read more

Splinters of Infinity - Mark Wolverton ****

Many of us who read popular science regularly will be aware of the 'great debate' between American astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis in 1920 over whether the universe was a single galaxy or many. Less familiar is the clash in the 1930s between American Nobel Prize winners Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton over the nature of cosmic rays. This not a book about the nature of cosmic rays as we now understand them, but rather explores this confrontation between heavyweight scientists. Millikan was the first in the fray, and often wrongly named in the press as discoverer of cosmic rays. He believed that this high energy radiation from above was made up of photons that ionised atoms in the atmosphere. One of the reasons he was determined that they should be photons was that this fitted with his thesis that the universe was in a constant state of creation: these photons, he thought, were produced in the birth of new atoms. This view seems to have been primarily driven by re
Post a Comment
Read more

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on
Post a Comment
Read more