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A review by mariesiduri
The Inflationary Universe by Alan Guth
4.0
According to the preface, this book was written for the nonscientist. It is designed to explain not only the traditional Big Bang models but also a handful of the many that use author Alan Guth's (b. 1947) idea of inflation, that is, a brief time of exponential expansion of the early universe. Remarkably free of mathematics, it relies instead on graphs, pictures (I like pictures!) and analogies to get the points across. The writing is clear, even lighthearted at times, despite the esoteric topics under discussion. The author uses footnotes frequently, not only to explain in further detail some technical point but also to give biographical background information on a scientist or even to make a joke.
The forward was written by M.I.T professor Alan Lightman who also wrote “Einstein’s Dreams.” In it, he states that the explanatory power of Guth’s theory of the inflationary universe is such that “it has become an underlying assumption of many working cosmologists today.” (p. xi)
Guth starts with a history of physics which covers much of the same ground as beginning textbooks tend to, but somehow make it a whole lot more entertaining. In the first short chapter, he explains the idea of conservation of energy as it developed in the works Parmenides ("Being is ungenerable and imperishable") and Lucretius ("Nothing can be created from nothing") through Lavoisier, Newton, Einstein and others to conclude, in the last sentence, that the universe is the ultimate free lunch. A few footnotes explain things such as the use of scientific notation and vector additions.
Please read the rest of the review here.
The forward was written by M.I.T professor Alan Lightman who also wrote “Einstein’s Dreams.” In it, he states that the explanatory power of Guth’s theory of the inflationary universe is such that “it has become an underlying assumption of many working cosmologists today.” (p. xi)
Guth starts with a history of physics which covers much of the same ground as beginning textbooks tend to, but somehow make it a whole lot more entertaining. In the first short chapter, he explains the idea of conservation of energy as it developed in the works Parmenides ("Being is ungenerable and imperishable") and Lucretius ("Nothing can be created from nothing") through Lavoisier, Newton, Einstein and others to conclude, in the last sentence, that the universe is the ultimate free lunch. A few footnotes explain things such as the use of scientific notation and vector additions.
Please read the rest of the review here.