Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 304 pages
• Published by: Doubleday May 29, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0385509642
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0385509640
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
As has happened many times in the history of science, just when we finally are able to cozy up to an idea like the big bang that initially was hard to like, let alone understand, another even more mind-bending one comes along. Steinhardt and Turok, cosmologists at Princeton and Cambridge, respectively, present their case that string theory gives a more complete account of our origins; in this account, the big bang came about through the collision of two membrane-thick strings called "branes." Our universe sits on one brane, which floats parallel to the other, unseen one. Every few trillion years, the two branes approach each other; when they collide, a flash of radiation annihilates everything in both, kick-starting the creation process all over again. According to the authors, this solves certain problems with the standard big bang theory, such as inflation, dark matter and dark energy. General readers will be able to follow the authors' clearly laid out, equation-free arguments. Their new theory has little chance of being confirmed experimentally in the foreseeable future, but many who eventually embraced the big bang will doubtless find the notion of cyclic universes and parallel worlds attractive. Illus. (June 5)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* In the big bang, most physicists hear the violent beginning of everything. For theoretical physicists Steinhardt and Turok, however, that bang is but an echo, resounding within a bold new cyclical theory of the cosmos. To be sure, this revolutionary theory (dubbed ekpyrosis) shares much with the standard inflationary version of the big bang. The authors themselves have done much to ratify that generally accepted account of the universe's origins. But their new ekpyrotic paradigm tells a radically unorthodox story about what caused the bang, what happened in the first second after it occurred, and what consequences it will yet produce in the far-distant future. Invoking a sophisticated version of string theory, the authors argue that our universe began not in quantum nothingness but rather in the collision of "braneworlds" sliding together as remnants of an exhausted earlier universe. Moreover, while the regnant theory of the big bang predicts the eventual extinction of the universe, the dynamics of ekpyrosis promise a new beginning, a new cosmos--a trillion years from now. Professional discussion of the authors' daring proposal has scarcely begun. But thanks to this wonderfully lucid book, armchair physicists will understand much of the exciting debate now taking shape at the very frontiers of science. Bryce Christensen
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Reader Reviews
Not too many people know that there is a theory which is a rival to the inflationary Big Bang and it is, for the time being, completely compatible also with the WAMP satellite findings. This theory is the Cyclic Universe cooked up by Steinhardt and Turok and derived from M theory. Although the idea of a cyclic universe is already present in some of the ancient philosophies, this approach differs from previous ones in that it conjectures the existence of two disjoint parts of the universe, two so called "branes" which move to and fro each other along a fourth dimension. This new model avoids the problems Tolman's entropy problem with the classical models which leads to longer cycles. One way to distinguish experimentally inflation and the cyclic universe is to detect primordial gravitational waves, directly (very difficult) or indirectly (effects of gravitational waves on the polarization of the cosmic background radiation pattern). The inflationary scenario predicts more waves. Some new satellites, already planned or in the drawing boards, may give us an answer to this question in the next ten to twenty years. Although inflation is at present the standard cosmological paradigm, it has some weak points: creation of the universe about 13,7 billion years out of nothing, the strange inflation field, very strong and very short-lived, etc. The cyclic universe, by postulating an ethernal universe solves the problem of creation and only needs dark energy (no inglation field). In a few trillion years dark energy empties the universe and then the two branes collide and create a new cycle. The authors also claim that, although they did not create their model to solve the cosmological constant problem, an added benefit of the cyclic univers is a relaxing mechanism that very slowly decreases the value of this constant and, at each step, the number of cycles grows exponentially, so that most of the cycles are at a very low value such as the one found today. The theory also avoids having to make use of the controversial anthropic principle since most of the regions of the cyclic universe can be conducive to life. Although I learnt quite a few new things by reading this relatively easy to read book, I would have liked a more detailed analysis of the moment of the collision of the two branes. It would seem that at that moment a huge empty space already exists. Does the Big Bang occur locally or everywhere? How far apart can the branes be? It would seem they are very near, but they approach each other once every a few trillion years? What about the brane we don't see? It seems it has some different properties. If this brane has matter , shouldn't we feel its influence? According to some recent results dark matter is real and is not only the gravitational effect of the other brane. The book leaves us a little hungry for such answers. Comment (1) | | (Report this)