Ebook: The Big Bang - A View from the 21st Century

THE BIG BANG relates the development of two parallel strands of scientific thought, describing how particle physicists and cosmologists are working together to study the origin and evolution of the Universe. Physicists studying the subatomic realm concluded that fundamental particles are tiny vibrating strings and membranes, and that the forces of nature evolved as the Big Bang's fireball cooled. Contrary to long-held belief, the expansion rate is not slowing down but accelerating, suggesting that an insight which Einstein dismissed as his 'greatest blunder' might not have been so outlandish after all.
David Harland explains how 'black holes' were first theorised, and then identified in multiple-star systems and, on a much larger scale, in the cores of galaxies. Might what we perceive as the Big Bang have been the view - from the inside - of the creation of a black hole in another Universe?