Lidsey J.E. The Bigger Bang

New York, "Cambridge University Press", 2002, -146p.Societies through the ages have always been fascinated with our origins. In the last few years, scientists have begun to answer some of the most fundamental questions about the origin and early evolution of the universe. This book presents a fresh, engaging and highly readable introduction to these ideas.
Using novel, down-to-earth analogies, author James Lidsey steers us deftly on a journey to the cutting edge of cosmology. Step-by-step, we travel back in time through Lidsey’s book until we arrive at the very origin of the universe. There we look at the fascinating ideas scientists are currently developing to explain what happened in the first billion, billion, billion, billionth of a second of the universe’s existence – the ‘inflationary’ epoch. Along the way, we are given lucid accounts of many fascinating topics in theoretical cosmology, including the latest ideas on superstrings, parallel universes, and the ultimate fate of our universe.We also discover how the world of the very small (described by the physics of elementary particles) and the world of the very large (described by cosmology) are inextricably linked by events which wove them together in the first few moments of the universe’s history.
Lucid analogies, clear and concise prose and straightforward language make this book a delight to read. It makes accessible to the general reader some of the most profound and complex ideas about the origin of our universe currently vexing the minds of the world’s best scientists.James E. Lidsey is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Queen Mary andWestfield College, University of London. His research interests focus on the very early universe, especially inflation and the cosmological aspects of superstring theory. In 1998, he appeared in the Sunday Times Hot 100 list of promising academics. For recreation, he is learning to play the mandolin, but with limited success to date.