Before the Big Bang
eBook - ePub

Before the Big Bang

The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond

  1. 224 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Before the Big Bang

The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond

About this book

"A riveting tour of the cosmos from one of the brightest minds in astrophysics." The Washington Post

A revolutionary new account of our universe’s creation—and a breathtaking exploration of the landscape from which we sprang—from one of the world’s most celebrated cosmologists

What came before the Big Bang, and what exists outside of the universe it created? Until recently, scientists could only guess at what lay past the edge of space-time. However, as pioneering theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton explains, new scientific tools are now giving us the ability to peer beyond the limits of our universe and to test our theories about what is there. And what we are finding is upending everything we thought we knew about the cosmos and our place in it.

Mersini-Houghton is no stranger to boundaries—or to pushing through them. As a child growing up in Communist Albania, she discovered a universe beyond her walled-off world through the study of math and science, and through music. As a female cosmologist in a male-dominated field, she transcended the limits that society and her profession tried to place on her. And as a trailblazing researcher, she helped to revolutionize the study of our universe by revealing that, far from living in a cosmic Albania, with a world that ends at its borders, we are part of a larger family of universes—a multiverse—that holds wonders we are only beginning to unlock. Mersini-Houghton’s groundbreaking research suggests that we sit in a quantum landscape whose peaks and valleys hide a multitude of other universes, and even hold the secret to the origins of existence itself. Recent evidence has revealed the signatures of such sibling universes in our own night sky, confirming Mersini-Houghton’s theoretical work and offering humbling evidence that our universe is just one member of an unending cosmic family.

The incredible scientific saga of one woman’s mind-expanding journey through the multiverse, Before the Big Bang will reshape our understanding of humanity’s place in the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos.

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Yes, you can access Before the Big Bang by Laura Mersini-Houghton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Physical Sciences & Social Science Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Contents
  6. Prologue: My Albanian Universe
  7. 1. Is Our Universe Special?
  8. 2. How Did Our Universe Start?
  9. 3. A Quantum Leap
  10. 4. Fine-Tuning
  11. 5. Are We Alone?
  12. 6. Eleven Dimensions
  13. 7. First Wave
  14. 8. Into the Multiverse
  15. 9. The Origin of Our Universe
  16. 10. Fingerprints of Other Universes
  17. 11. Infinity and Eternity
  18. Epilogue: A Place to Dream
  19. Acknowledgments
  20. Index
  21. About the Author
  22. Copyright
  23. About the Publisher