Product Description

This is the story of the cosmic background radiation - the 'afterglow' of the Big Bang in which the Universe was born - and how it was discovered. Chown brilliantly weaves a tale of the search for the origins of the Universe, beginning in the 1920s and culminating with the flight of the COBE satellite and its crucial discovery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #913343 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 222 pages

From the Author
These are just some newspaper/magazine reviews of my book
"A very good piece of storytelling... Chown writes as if he were addressing his fellow human beings." New Scientist

"An excellent introduction to the most recent developments in cosmology... he carefully explains intricacies in which other writers would have been bogged down." The Observer

"Chown superbly captures the spirit of scientific endeavour... The story is told with panache and the science is so well explained it makes and effortless read. Afterglow of Creation is upbeat, witty and informed." The Sunday Times

"It's a long time since this reviewer has read a popular science book that so accurately communicates the science involved while maintaining the reader's interest through the beauty of the written word... Afterglow excels at portraying science as a human endeavour where personalities, ideas, egos, politics and money all mix in the endeavour we know as astronomy... This book should be in every middle school, high school and public library and on the shelves of anyone interested in either astronomy or the nature of science. It is a wonderful story, brilliantly told." The Science Teacher (US)

"Beautiful science, beautifully told." The Australian

"The secret of the universe in 170 pages!" Focus

Customer Reviews

An excellent introduction to the Big Bang
This is an excellent book for laypeople about the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, and its discovery of ripples in the radiation from the Big Bang.

Electrons jiggling around generate radio waves. Temperature is just a measure of the average speed with which the atoms of a body are moving, vibrating and spinning. So any body, at any temperature above absolute zero, emits radio waves. Cool!

Why tell you this? Well, when they say the Background radiation is at a temperature of 3 degrees what they mean is, it's of the type of radiowaves that are emitted by a body at a temperature of 3 degrees.

-- and that's something I didn't know, before I read the book.

It's the least of what you'll get:

1. You get a history of the theory.

2. Details about radioastronomy, and how astronomers work around their problems (since everything -- the ground, the air, the dust in the galaxy, the cables on a balloon carrying a detector -- glows with radio waves, it's a bit tricky seeing the backround radiation of the Big Bang)

3. Peeks into how science works: you propose a theory, and then chuck it if it doesn't fit the data, except that sometimes it's the data that's at fault not the theory

4. The importance of confirming your results, so that scientific discovery's a community effort despite all the pushing to get there first

5. The importance of looking at all the ramifications of a theory: gas clouds in interstellar space are warmed by the background radiation, and people measured their temperature, and wondered why they weren't stone cold, long before the radiation itself was observed

6. Why that famous photo of pink and blue patches is both the truth and not

7. Interesting tidbits on cosmology

8. the personalities involved

... and more, and more, in only 170 pages.

Students doing London A Level Astrophysics will find this an exceedingly useful read. (Though no mathematical equations at all, you get a load of physics, painlessly)

And to top it all, some neat rhetoric:

" ... COBE had reached its orbit 900 kilometres above the Earth. It was now circling the Earth every 72 seconds as it turned on its axis. It could be seen in the night sky, going from south to north a little after sunset, or from north to south a little before dawn.

COBE awakened, opening its eyes to the microwave Universe. "

The bit at the end's the best, though.

Read, enjoy, learn.

a great read
as usual, chown tells a brilliant story.

this book starts with the realisation that the milky way is just one galaxy amongst billions of others and goes on to explain the significance of that knowledge with reference to the more recently proposed big bang theory.

it's a fascinating tale. chown relates the serendipitous discoveries that astronomers and cosmologists have continued to find. these are men and women of gigantic intellect and genius. in short, you will probably find it as fascinating a read as i did.

on the other hand, it IS a shorter book than chown's other works. but that's not necessarily a criticism.