Just Six Numbers : The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe - Softcover

Martin Rees

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753810220 ISBN 13: 9780753810224

Publisher: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2000

Synopsis

How did a single 'genesis event' create billions of galaxies, black holes, stars and planets? How did atoms assemble -- here on Earth, and perhaps on other worlds -- into living beings intricate enough to ponder their origins? This book describes the recent avalanche of discoveries about the universe's fundamental laws, and the deep connections that exist between stars and atoms -- the cosmos and the microscopic world. Just six numbers, imprinted in the 'big bang', determine the essence of our world, and this book devotes one chapter to explaining each.

About this title

Review

Just six numbers govern the shape, size, and texture of our universe. If their values were only fractionally different, we would not exist: nor, in many cases, would matter have had a chance to form. If the numbers that govern our universe were elegant--1, say, or pi, or the Golden Mean--we would simply shrug and say that the universe was an elegant mathematical puzzle. But the numbers Martin Rees discusses are far from tidy. Was the universe "tweaked" or is it one of many universes, all run by slightly different, but equally messy, rules?

This is familiar ground, though rarely so comprehensively explored. What makes Rees's book exceptional is his conviction that cosmology is as materialistic and as conceptually simple as any of the earth sciences. Indeed,

cosmology is simpler in one important respect: once the starting point is specified, the outcome is in broad terms predictable. All large patches of the universe that start off the same way end up statistically similar. In contrast, if the Earth's history were re-run, it could end up with a quite different biosphere.

Rees demonstrates how the cosmos is full of "fossils" from which we can deduce how our universe developed as surely as we infer the earth's past from the relics found in sedimentary rocks. Rees's theme is nothing less than the colossal richness of the universe. It is an ambitious book, but if anything, it deserves to be longer. --Simon Ings, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author

Sir Martin Rees is an international leader in cosmology. He is Royal Society Research Professor at Cambridge University, and holds the title of Astronomer Royal. Together with his numerous collaborators he has contributed many key ideas on black holes, galaxy formation and high energy astrophysics. His most recent books are GRAVITY'S FATAL ATTRACTION: BLACK HOLES IN THE UNIVERSE (with Mitchell Begelman), BEFORE THE BEGINNING: OUR UNIVERSE AND OTHERS and JUST SIX NUMBERS: THE DEEP FORCES THAT SHAPE THE UNIVERSE.

Edition details

• Publisher: Phoenix Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0753810220
• ISBN 13: 9780753810224
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176