After The First Three Minutes

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist explains what happened at the very beginning of the universe, and how we know, in this popular science classic. Our universe has been growing for nearly 14 billion years. But almost everything about it, from the elements that forged stars, planets, and lifeforms, to the fundamental forces of physics, can be traced back to what happened in just the first three minutes of its existence. In this book, Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg describes in wonderful detail what happened in these first three minutes. It is an exhilarating journey that begins with the Planck Epoch - the earliest period of time in the history of the universe - and goes through Einstein's Theory of Relativity, the Hubble Red Shift, and the detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background. These incredible discoveries all form the foundation for what we now understand as the "standard model" of the origin of the universe. The First Three Minutes examines not only what this model looks like, but also tells the exciting story of the bold thinkers who put it together. Clearly and accessibly written, The First Three Minutes is a modern-day classic, an unsurpassed explanation of where it is that everything really comes from.

The evolution of our Universe and the formation of stars and galaxies are mysteries that have long puzzled scientists. Recent years have brought new scientific understanding of these profound and fundamental issues. In lively prose, Professor Padmanabhan paints a picture of contemporary cosmology for the general reader. Unlike other popular books on cosmology, After the First Three Minutes does not gloss over details, or shy away from explaining the underlying concepts. Instead, with a lucid and informal style, the author introduces all the relevant background and then carefully pieces together an engaging story of the evolution of our Universe. Padmanabhan leaves the reader with a state-of-the-art picture of scientists' current understanding in cosmology and a keen taste of the excitement of this fast-moving science. Throughout, no mathematics is used and all technical jargon is clearly introduced and reinforced in a handy glossary at the end of the book. For general readers who want to come to grips with what we really do and don't know about our Universe, this book provides an exciting and uncompromising read. Thanu Padmanabhan is a Professor at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India. He is the recipient of numerous awards and author of three books, Structure Formation in the Universe (Cambridge, 1994), Cosmology and Astrophysics Through Problems (Cambridge, 1996), and, together with J.V. Narlikar, Gravity, Gauge Theories and Quantum Cosmology. He is also the author of more than one hundred popular science articles, a comic strip serial and several regular columns on astronomy, recreational mathematics, and the history of science.

One of the world’s most captivating scientists challenges us to think about nature’s foundations and the entanglement of science and society. Steven Weinberg, author of The First Three Minutes, offers his views on fascinating aspects of physics and the universe, but does not seclude science behind disciplinary walls, or shy away from politics.

Lively and authoritative, this survey by a renowned physicist explains the formation of the galaxies and defines the concept of an ever-expanding universe in simple terms. 1961 edition. 40 figures.

Ragnarok. Armageddon. Doomsday. Since the dawn of time, man has wondered how the world would end. In The Last Three Minutes, Paul Davies reveals the latest theories. It might end in a whimper, slowly scattering into the infinite void. Then again, it might be yanked back by its own gravity and end in a catastrophic "Big Crunch." There are other, more frightening possibilities. We may be seconds away from doom at this very moment. Written in clear language that makes the cutting-edge science of quarks, neutrinos, wormholes, and metaverses accessible to the layman, The Last Three Minutes treats readers to a wide range of conjectures about the ultimate fate of the universe. Along the way, it takes the occasional divergent path to discuss some slightly less cataclysmic topics such as galactic colonization, what would happen if the Earth were struck by the comet Swift-Tuttle (a distinct possibility), the effects of falling in a black hole, and how to create a "baby universe." Wonderfully morbid to the core, this is one of the most original science books to come along in years.

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe's history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe. This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself. Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy.

When Glenn Kurtz stumbles upon an old family film in his parents' closet in Florida, he has no inkling of its historical significance or of the impact it will have on his life. The film, shot long ago by his grandfather on a sightseeing trip to Europe, includes shaky footage of Paris and the Swiss Alps, with someone inevitably waving at the camera. Astonishingly, David Kurtz also captured on color 16mm film the only known moving images of the thriving, predominantly Jewish town of Nasielsk, Poland, shortly before the community's destruction. "Blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that lay just ahead," he just happened to visit his birthplace in 1938, a year before the Nazi occupation. Of the town's three thousand Jewish inhabitants, fewer than one hundred would survive. Glenn Kurtz quickly recognizes the brief footage as a crucial link in a lost history. "The longer I spent with my grandfather's film," he writes, "the richer and more fragmentary its images became." Every image, every face, was a mystery that might be solved. Soon he is swept up in a remarkable journey to learn everything he can about these people. After restoring the film, which had shrunk and propelled across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; and into archives, basements, cemeteries, and even an irrigation ditch at an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield as he looks for shards of Nasielsk's Jewish history. One day, Kurtz hears from a young woman who had watched the video on the Holocaust Museum's website. As the camera panned across the faces of children, she recognized her grandfather as a thirteen-year-old boy. Moszek Tuchendler of Nasielsk was now eighty-six-year-old Maurice Chandler of Florida, and when Kurtz meets him, the lost history of Nasielsk comes into view. Chandler's laser-sharp recollections create a bridge between two worlds, and he helps Kurtz eventually locate six more survivors, including a ninety-six-year-old woman who also appears in the film, standing next to the man she would later marry. Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. "I began to catch fleeting glimpses of the living town," Kurtz writes, "a cruelly narrow sample of its relationships, contradictions, scandals." Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the most important record of a vibrant town on the brink of extinction. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a poignant yet unsentimental exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival—a monument to a lost world.

Contrary to popular belief Polio is not extinct. This is the true story of an indomitable spirit afflicted with unimaginable physical and psychological challenges. Paul Alexander’s life is a saga that started in 1946 and has been profoundly shaped by the Polio epidemic of the early 1950’s. Survivors of the 1950’s Polio Epidemic in America are rare. Polio victims, like Paul Alexander, who require the assistance of an “Iron Lung” respirator for their life’s breath are even rarer. Paul Alexander has crafted his life against all odds and has a courageous and compelling story to share with us all. Victims of Polio, their families, friends and communities are struggling to cope with this obscure but still dangerous infectious disease. This book is a testimony to the strength of the human spirit and an affirmation of the need to continue efforts to eradicate the pestilence of Polio from the planet.