Product Description

This classic of contemporary science writing by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist explains to general readers what happened when the universe began, and how we know..

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100193 in Books
• Published on: 1993-07-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

A classic - but not so modern any more
In 'The First Three Minutes' Steven Weinberg takes the reader through a (quite) modern view of one of the most enigmatic subjects in physics - the origin of the universe. First of all he takes you on a tour of some of the key events in (quite) modern cosmology that led to the picture of the young universe we have now. The discovery of cosmic red shift was an amazing revelation and showed that all the galaxies seemed to be speeding away from each other. Then the accidental detection by Penzias and Wilson of a low level radiation that seemed to come from everywhere in the universe put the 'Big Bang' model firmly ahead of rivals like the 'Steady State' model. They had tuned into the radiation from the adolescent universe.

Then the first three minutes themselves are played like a film which is repeatedly paused to allow the reader to see what's going on. What's going on is subatomic particles and high energy photons colliding billions of times a second in a thick bath of heat. After everything has cooled to just three hundred million degrees Kelvin the author looks at the scientific discoveries in this story from a historical perspective and asks some questions he sees as very important like 'why wasn't anyone looking for the cosmic microwave background?' Then finally he looks the other way into the future and to what it might reveal about the beginning of time. His 'film' of the Big Bang starts at one hundredth of a second after its start and in this last chapter he asks what could have happened before this time and how we could discover it.

He says in the epilogue that he "didn't intend to write and easy book" and this is true - the evidence and the theories are quite detailed - but he is a very good writer and really knows what he's talking about so I didn't get very lost. There is a mathematical section at the back that looks at the ideas discussed in the book like black body radiation and critical density and it is pretty tricky but he purposefully keeps it very separate so it can be skipped if you want to avoid a headache. This book was first published in '77 and so some of it is dated - you realise how quickly physics moves on. Quarks are a very recent theory at the time of writing and strings are nowhere near but this doesn't matter at all. It is still accepted that the stuff in this book is true but it has been expanded on in the last twenty-five years. It is a tribute to Steven Weinberg's mind and writing that all of his predictions of the future of cosmological research have happened and all his theory is correct still.

If you're at all interested in cosmology or particle physics then this is defiantly for you. If you think a much more cutting edge view is what you want then go for something more modern but you'll be missing out. As a reviewer in the seventies put it, when it comes to the describing the Big Bang "it's hard to imagine the job being better done". Exactly - deserves a place on your bookshelf.

Wonderful. A source of ideas.
A masterpiece. Weinberg was able to keep all the physics, with almost no mathematics. There is, in this book, a sense of drama seldom to be found in scientific books. You should start your cosmology studies here, independently of how far you intend to go.

Simply Fantastic
Steven Weinberg is just incredible. He is able to bring complex material that high level physicists have trouble imagining to the general public. His book is easy to read, though not easy to understand. This isn't "High Energy Physics for the Complete Idiot," but it does provide simple conceptual (not mathmatical) arguments which help explain the first three minutes of the Universe. If you ever wanted to know what those physics professors do without having to take all their courses...this is the book for you! I recommend it highly.