Product Description

Cosmologists yearn to behold the unseen elements of our universe. And as new technologies become more powerful and precise, scientists are getting their wish – though these tools are challenging the limits of our imagination as fast as they are answering many long standing questions.

Space is one of the last great frontiers for modern man. A never-ending source of investigation and inspiration, it beckons to scientists with an irresistible siren’s call. And in this glorious age of cosmology, astronomical measurement has never been more precise. The power provided to us by extraordinary new observational mechanisms has shattered former suppositions and stimulated exciting new visions of the universe.

Using modern instruments such as the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) astronomers have access to information about the age and composition of the universe. By producing such exact results, high-resolution satellite data and novel telescopic techniques have transformed one of science’s most speculative fields into a triumph of meticulous and rigorous detection.

Yet, as the technological tools grow increasingly robust, as we are able to see further and know more, we find that we have even more questions. Could there be realms beyond ordinary space? Might time, space, and matter simply be illusions? What unique blend of cosmological factors influences life on Earth?

Featuring interviews with leaders in the field as well as thought-provoking descriptions of their work, Brave New Universe is a guided tour of current advances and controversies in cosmology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #705786 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Halpern and Wesson, both physics professors and authors, give us a history of 20th century cosmology, and how its development was influenced by the concepts of relativity, new technology and the mathematical explanations they engendered. In a brain-twisting tour of time and space, each chapter explores an aspect of contemporary physics and cosmology, including infinity, the accelerating universe, dark matter and the slippery notion of reality. They describe competing models for the geometry of space, including string theory, additional dimensions, and "branes," evaluating each model in terms of observational and experimental data. So far, all these models fail to reproduce the entirety of the known universe; certain aspects of the universe's structure cannot be reproduced by the complex mathematics of cosmologists, and the dense text makes it easy to see why-though not quite so easy to see how. The discussion of Einstein's cosmological constant and the subsequent discovery of universal cosmic background radiation is intriguing, as are chapters describing the mysterious nature of matter and its invisible counterpart, dark matter. General readers may find other passages difficult, like those describing newer efforts to reinvigorate the "steady-state" cosmology of Hoyle and his colleagues. Without a pre-existing knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry, many readers will be frustrated. But for readers with at least one college-level class in physics, this will prove an interesting, illuminating challenge.
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Review
Cosmology is enjoying a golden age, yet facing a revolution. The most recent experiments have taught us a great deal about the universe, but also revealed how much remains unknown. Dark matter, dark energy, hidden dimensions...these are the strange ingredients of Brave New Universe. It is not for the faint-hearted: the physics is deep and the philosophy deeper. Journeying through the latest observations and theories, the authors ask whether the ultimate truth about reality is hiding in the darkness. If so, can we ever know it, or are we just seeing shadowy projections of our own minds? -- New Scientist

Halpern and Wesson lead us on a poetic journey through the universe's guiding principles by weaving together historical and contemporary cosmological developments. The authors' infectious passion for cosmology is evident throughout, and they use beautifully crafted analogies to explain the concepts of relativity, quantum mechanics, extra dimensions, string theory, and dark energy, writing in an easy-to-understand manner that will ignite general readers' interest. -- Library Journal

Not another book about the Big Bang!" I hear you say. Well, yes, in a way, but there's much to recommend "Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos." In the first place, there is (depending on how close your ear is to the ground) a lot of new news about the universe; in the second, this book makes an excellent primer. The authors, Paul Halpern and Paul Wesson, are both physics professors but not the kind who don't care whether the public understands them or not. They're blessedly lucid. If you've always wanted to know what physicists mean when they talk about such things as CP invariance or left-handed neutrinos, it's all here, plain as day. -- Los Angeles Times

About the Author
Paul Halpern is a professor of physics and mathematics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. He is a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, an Athenaeum Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is the author of nine previous books, including Countdown to Apocalypse and The Great Beyond.

Paul Wesson is a professor of physics at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He is the founder of the 5D Space-Time-Matter Consortium, an international group of scientific researchers. He is known for his popular expositions of scientific ideas and his entertaining articles have appeared in Analog, Astronomy, and New Scientist.

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Work on Cosmology
Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos


I found Paul Halpern and Paul Wesson's work, Brave New Universe, to be an excellent work on cosmology. It is clearly written, engrossing and witty. It tells the story of such pioneers in the field as Hubble, Newton, Einstein, Gamow, Eddington, Kaluza and Klein among others. I especially enjoyed the description of the theories about more than a four dimensional universe, such as M-theory. While the authors cannot answer if there really are more than four dimensions, that is a limitation of the state of physics today, and not of their work. I found the work highly intriguing, and a real page turner. I highly recommend it.

Just ok
As an avid reader of cosmology, super-string theory and the like, I am always up for a good book on any related physics subject. But this book is a little too much rehash of what has already been said in many other books. I was hoping that was only a lead up to a presentation of new theories and discoveries. And I bet the authors thought that is what they were doing.
However ... the two physics professors have missed an important point. The number of hair brain theories in cosmology are legendary. Unless there is math, and/or observation to support the theory in some way, it remains nothing but nonsense. They end with a plethora of such philosophical ideas without presenting any supporting evidence. That is not science.
The preceeding is my main point, but I would also like to give two other criticisms. First, the analogies are really bad and need some work. Secondly, no matter how I tried I could not get certain things out of my head once I had read them. Here is an example: On page 21 it says, "None of us has been to the surface of Pluto or to the bottom of the Marianas trench." I beg your pardon, but the United States Navy bathyscaphe Trieste reached the bottom at 1:06 p.m. on January 23, 1960. That is like saying we didn't land on the moon. No, we haven't been to Pluto - yet.
If what you want is a first book on cosmology and you don't plan on digging into it too deeply and want something pretty light weight I can still recommend this book. If you are looking for the next step forward in an emerging science, this is not it.