Product Description

The age of the universe has been one of the great scientific mysteries of our time. This engrossing book tells the story of how the mystery was recently solved. Written by a brilliant science writer who was involved, as a research astronomer, in the final breakthrough, the book provides details of the ongoing controversies among scientists as they groped their way to the truth-that the universe is between 13 and 16 billion years old, older by at least one billion years than the star systems it contains. In clear, engaging language, Gribbin takes us through the history of cosmological discoveries, focusing in particular on the seventy years since the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe. He explains how conflicting views of the age of the universe and stars converged in the 1990s because scientists (including Gribbin) were able to use data from the Hubble Space Telescope that measured distances across the universe.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #746882 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-08
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
How can we measure the age of the universe? Renowned astronomer Gribbin (Almost Everyone's Guide to Science, etc.) answers this question by describing both the early guesswork and later refinements that finally converged on an answer. He masterfully explains the techniques to measure astronomical distances available to both ancient and modern astronomers, from simple triangulation to the regular pulsation of Cepheid stars. By the 1950s, physicists understood in detail the fission reaction that occurs in the Sun and calculated its age to be 4.5 billion years. This understanding spawned new theories on the creation and ages of stars. Still, the oldest measurable star only provides a lower limit to the age of the universe. It took the realization that the universe is expanding--the measurement of the "red shift" of light from distant stars--to give a closed-ended estimate of its age. The measurement of the rate of expansion, the "Hubble Constant," is the Holy Grail that Gribbin spends the latter half of the book refining. This quest, which concludes with Gribbin's own research, does finally arrive at an age for the universe, but it is the journey, not the destination, that makes the trip worthwhile. In the end, Gribbin's conclusions seem no more mysterious than if he had determined the age of a tree by simply counting the rings. The text is written clearly and concisely for the general reader, yet nevertheless manages to educate on a wide range of topics in physics. Illustrations. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
If you have ever wondered how scientists determine the age of the universe, then this is your book. Gribbin, one of the best science writers working today, recounts the history of the problem and describes the people who have worked on it. Since the age of the universe is inextricably linked to its size, he devotes most of his work to dealing with methods that have been used, are being used, and are proposed as future means to determine cosmic distances. Since this is intended for a general audience, the technical details and mathematical models have been omitted. However, the work is a very satisfying qualitative depiction of the state of the art. For general science collections.
-Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUNY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
How old is the universe? The answer (and the story of how the answer was determined) is the subject of this demanding but not overwhelming account of astronomers at work. The prolific Gribbin (Almost Everyone's Guide to Science, 1999), an astrophysicist turned science popularizer, has a special interest in this question, for a project that he initiated at the University of Sussex contributed to the answer. He traces the search for the age of the universe from the early 17th century (when the Christian establishment pronounced 4004 b.c. to be the date of creation) through the ensuing encroachment of scientists into what had originally been the domain of theologians. He shows the difficulties faced by early geologists and physicists who grappled with the issue (Kelvin calculated the age of the sun at 20 million years, while shortly thereafter Rutherford estimated the age of the earth at not less than 500 million years) and outlines the work of the 20th-century astronomers who created the Hubble Space Telescope. The central character is Edwin Hubble, who built a cosmic distance ladder outward from the Milky Way to the globular clusters, the Magellanic Clouds, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Virgo cluster of galaxies. The subsequent controversy over the best estimate of the number known as Hubble's Constant (from which can be calculated the date of the Big Bang) is the topic of Gribbin's later chapters. He explains why one side in the debate argued for a value twice as large as the other side, the differences in the various measuring techniques employed to find the correct answer, and the technical advances that made such work possible. The absence of unnerving mathematical formulas and the use of everyday imagesthe movement of a swarm of bees, for example, or a person walking down an up escalatorto depict unfamiliar cosmic phenomena help smooth the way for the nonscientist reader. Close attention is required, but the fascinating story Gribbin has to tell is worth the effort.-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.