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From the world-acclaimed author of Coming
of Age in the Milky Way comes this delightfully engrossing,
comprehensive, and comprehensible report on how science
today envisions the universe as a whole.
Timothy Ferris begins The Whole Shebang
with a succinct account of how we have come to know about
the universe. Then he explains the meaning behind the exciting
new developments that have put cosmology in the headlines
-- including the discovery of planets orbiting stars other
than our sun, glimpses through the Hubble Space Telescope
of how the universe looked when it was only a fraction of
its present age, and the detection of structure in relic
radiation from the big bang that may hint at the mechanism
of genesis.
Ferris provides a lucid, nontechnical overview
of current research and a forecast of where cosmological
theory is likely to go in the twenty-first century. A master
analogist, he presents accessible explanations of relativity
and quantum physics, "inflationary" models indicating
that the universe is much larger than had been thought,
and "string" theories that portray all matter
as made of space.
The centerpiece of The Whole Shebang
is a visionary account of near-future science, in which
light is shed on the possibility that our universe is one
among many universes, each with different physical laws
and differing prospects for the emergence of life.
The Whole Shebang explores questions that
have occurred to even casual readers who are curious about
nature on the largest scales: What does it mean to say that
the universe is "expanding," or that space is
"curved"? How could there have been an "origin"
of the universe; what happened "before"? Why is
quantum uncertainty so puzzling to many scientists, and
why do some regard it as one of the most important riddles
of all time? Is life an accident, or is the cosmos somehow
set up to favor the advent of life?
Written with the literary flair that earned
Ferris the accolade "the greatest science writer in
the world," The Whole Shebang interweaves probing
honed explication, lyrical descriptions, and finely honed
profiles of the lives and personalities of the scientists
and philosophers who have contributed to human understanding
of the cosmos. Above all, it demonstrates that for all its
abstractions, cosmology -- the scientific study of the universe
as a whole -- is a very human activity whose theories and
observations must ultimately answer to the human mind.
Timothy Ferris is the bestselling author
of Coming of Age in the Milky Way (winner of the
American Institute of Physics Prize) and The Mind's
Sky (named one of the best books of the year by The
New York Times), among others. An emeritus professor
at the University of California, Berkeley, he lives in San
Francisco.
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