Very nice job. Some rare photos, too. See also: Coming of Age in the Milky Way. Timothy Ferris. ( )

The comedian Severn Darden, in his persona as Professor Walther von der Vogelweide, did a routine titled “The Metaphysics Lecture” or “A Short Talk on the Universe”. He starts “Now, why, you will ask me, have I chosen to speak on the Universe rather than some other topic. Well, it's very simple, heh. There isn't anything else.”

So it is with Simon Singh’s Big Bang. This is not a discussion of the details of Big Bang cosmology (although the Big Bang figures in the final chapters), but rather a history of the history of the universe, starting with miscellaneous mythologies through the Greeks to Archbishop Ussher to Einstein and eventually the Cosmic Microwave Background versus Fred Hoyle. Capsule biographies of the various participants are included, with a number of important ones I’d never heard of.

All of this is quite clearly explained; Singh is even brave enough to include graphs and equations in a book intended for a popular audience (I remember reading a claim somewhere that every graph, equation or footnote in a book cuts sales by 10%). For me, the single most impressive accomplishment of the book is the way Singh deals with usual lay questions (which, to my considerable embarrassment, often puzzled me):

What was going on before the Big Bang?

How can galaxies be moving away from us faster than the speed of light?

What’s outside the edge of the Universe that it’s expanding into?

By explaining that the Big Bang, despite the possibly unfortunate name, is not the explosion of matter into previously empty space which had been sitting around waiting for the event for some indeterminate time but the explosion of intimately linked matter and space and time. Thus “before” the Big Bang has no meaning – there was no time “before” the Big bang, time starts then; galaxies can be moving away from us faster than the speed of light because the Universe is expanding that fast (there is a limit to how fast matter can move through space, but there is no apparent limit to how fast space can expand); and there is no “edge” of the Universe because, heh, there isn’t anything else. (OK, I’ve heard that there are cosmological models where the question of what was there before the Big bang actually has some meaning. I’ll have to wait for another book.)

Highly recommended. ( )

‘Curiosity’ is a curious thing! It’s the only quality that differentiates humans from all the other living organisms (well, at least on the surface of Earth!). Solely driven by this ‘exclusive feature’, Man has discovered the intricate design of nature and invented his way to mimic it. If one speculates enough, he will find that all our technologies are simply based on the happenings going on around us in the nature. If you are a romantic one and like to see the nature’s creation as a Grand Opera, then perhaps, it won’t be too wrong to say that our technologies represent our rendition of this opera. The key to this derivation process is just raising a simple question, “How did this happen?” and raising questions is science. Science is a direct descendent of philosophy. While philosophy asks “Why?”, science asks “How?”. There are too many "How?" questions. The idea is if we can gather enough answers to these questions, they will eventually lead us to the “Why”. Finding an answer to one “How?” reveals that there are lots of other “Hows” lurking in the darkness. It’s like solving a ginormous cryptic puzzle. The clues are right before our eyes but they are way too scattered. You pick one wrong clue, you are horribly led astray and this is a very frequent case. Throughout the course of civilization, humans often forgot to raise questions, picked up the wrong clues and acted upon doctrinal views. These were (and still are) the obstacles in the way of finding the answers of “How”. The point today science is standing at, is achieved by walking through such an uneven path and the history is often bloody as well. Starting from the Greek philosophers’ era to the modern times, people have been wondering about the origin of everything and the idea of a "Big Bang" seems to give us the answers, finally. Today Big Bang has become a very common concept and almost everyone you find on the streets can spend a few words on it. Like many other science theories, Big Bang also had to fight a tough battle to survive. It might sound a little exaggerated, but Big Bang theory is said to be human kind’s greatest achievement (accumulating all the philosophical and scientific disciplines). So, one naturally can ask now how this great idea, that explains the creation’s origin, was conceived?

British science writer Simon Singh produces a weighty tome on the history of Big Bang that tells the enthralling tales of the origin of the universe. There is science and there is history, a lot of history. Singh proves himself to be a great story teller who makes the highly complicated ideas very much accessible, literally to anyone. This book proves again that one doesn't have to be a science major to learn the science. You will have a good idea how scientists are calculating the enormous distances from our planet to the stars just by reading few paragraphs. No mathematical manipulation, no tedious calculation, nothing! You will be badly hooked on this book once you start it, I can almost bet on it! The way the book is organized also allows you to keep things in mind without much stress. The tales of the mavericks, the mad scientists, based on whose contributions the Big Bang model is established, are very inspiring and fascinating. Famous astronomer Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” inspired many to become real life astronomers. I think it won’t be surprising if Singh’s “Big Bang: The Origin of The Universe” plays a similar role. For aspiring astronomers, physicists, even science writers, this book will be a great head start.

The Universe is quite old. The Big Bang model gives us an average age of 13.8 billion years, as of today. Once people asked how we were created and many centuries later we found that Big Bang is probably the answer. Now another question has already been raised. “What happened before Big Bang?” Well, this certainly will give birth to a very hot philosophical (and religious too) debate and I do not possess enough knowledge and audacity (probably the scientists do not either!) to continue this discussion. Instead, I will simply quote St. Augustine (b. 354 AD) as Singh himself did in the epilogue of the book. I am putting it here for the sheer fun of it and nothing serious!

“What was God doing before He created the Universe? Before He created Heaven and Earth, God created hell to be used for people such as you who ask this kind of question”!
( )

Completely missing the very important studies by Robert MacKay and Colin Rourke that make the Steady State model up-to-date and serious contestor of the Big Bang. Also, discussions of relativity and electromagnetic theory are totally incomplete in this book. A good thing is that Michelson-Morley experiment is discussed in more detail than is usual in these types of books. ( )

2 stars-- An "okay" book, possibly draggy or too light, not my thing

From the back cover: Everybody has heard of the Big Bang Theory, but how many of us can claim to understand it? With characteristic clarity and a narrative peppered with anecdotes and personal histories of those who have struggled to understand creation, Simon Singh has written teh story of the most important theory ever.

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It pains me to write this, as I loved Singh's exemplary "Fermat's Last Theorem" and "The Code Book" -- but this tome, and it is in high need of an editor--- was not nearly up to those other books' execution and quality.

First off--- this is not about the Big Bang Theory per se. This is about the history of various theories of the Cosmos, from Eratosthenes to Copernicus to Galileo, and up into modern times, the "Steady State Theory" vs. "The Big Bang theory". The BBT is not particularly talked about more or less than any of the others. If I had wanted a history of comsological theory I would have asked for it...

As someone with a reasonable education in physics and history of the cosmos, I found little new here, and it wasn't all that interesting or insightful. I technically quite reading this, but I read about half word for word, then did a somewhat skim but mostly read for a quarter, then pretty much skimmed/ skipped the end (ironically, the portion on the BBT which I already knew the precepts of in the detail explained here).

A few portions / quotes I found interesting:

[After describing Eratosthenes calculations to work out the size of the Earth] : It proved that all that was needed to measure the planet was a man with a stick and a brain. In other words, couple intellect with some experimental apparatus and almost anything seems achievable.

[a quote contained within, but Henri Poincare]: The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not speak of that beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and appearances; ... I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp."

Einstein once made a tongue-in-cheek comment when asked by a student how he would have reacted if God's universe had turned out to behave differently from the way the general theory of relativity had predicted. In a wonderful demonstration of mock hubris, Einstein answered: 'Then I would feel sorry for the Good Lord. The theory is correct anyway.'"

{Einstein] eventually came to appreciate the irony of his position [as a an authority], and once lamented 'To punish me for my contempt for authority, Fate made me an authority myself.'"

'The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land." T.H. Huxley.

Furthermore, those who want to be touched by serendipity must be ready to embrace an opportunity when it presents itself, rather than merely brushing down their seed-covered trousers, pouring their failed superglue down the sink or abandoning a failed medical trial. ... Winston Churchill once observed: 'Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened." ( )