Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins

Afshordi, a physics professor at the University of Waterloo, and Halper, a Royal Astronomical Society fellow, debut with a heady overview of scientific efforts to understand the events surrounding the big bang. The authors note that while few astronomers doubt that an explosion forged the cosmos 13.8 billion years ago, many challenge the idea that this explosion emerged from a “singularity of infinite density, pressure, and temperature” that marked the beginning of time. Surveying alternative explanations, Afshordi and Halper describe how researchers led by physicist Abhay Ashtekar forwarded the “big bounce” theory in the mid 2000s after running computer simulations that indicated the universe alternates between periods of collapsing and expanding. Each of the more than two dozen proposals is wilder than the last; for instance, the 4D black hole theory posits that “our universe is a membrane, expanding out of the horizon of a higher-dimensional black hole,” while the cosmological natural selection explanation holds that “a universe is born inside every black hole, each with slightly different laws of physics.” With helpful diagrams and illustrations, the authors succeed in breaking down for lay readers the mind-bending physics behind each theory. This will expand readers’ minds. Photos. (May)