Reviews
Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond by Laura Mersini-Houghton
mystech's review
informative
slow-paced
2.5
This is a much more conversational approach to cosmology and physics than most. While there is some good information in the book, and it is presented in an accessible way, about 1/3 of the book is contextual anecdotes, author biography and general musings.
irinagoldberg1's review
5.0
This book was amazing!!! This is by far one of the best books on quantum cosmology I've read. The tone is clear and engaging. The personal stories are fascinating. The author explains her theory about the existence of the multiverse and the work that has gone into supporting it. Her theory is absolutely beautiful, as is this book!
Thank you to Mariner Books for the uncorrected proof of this masterpiece!
Thank you to Mariner Books for the uncorrected proof of this masterpiece!
oldmansimms's review
4.0
An interesting deep dive into the latest in cosmology, at least from the perspective of physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton, with a strong emphasis on multiverse theory. Mersini-Houghton has claimed to have demonstrated mathematically that we live in a multiverse, and provides some interesting evidence to that end (relying on quantum and string theory and certain observations of the cosmic microwave background), but as always when you get into quantum physics it remains a little opaque to me.
The book is really about 70% physics, 30% memoir, relating her childhood and education in Communist-dominated Albania before emigrating to the United States. The memoir-y parts are interesting, largely serving to explain why she was drawn to ideas outside the current mainstream. They do sometimes waver in importance, though -- one moment stands out when she begins a section talking about how she'd spend every weekend at a bookstore she liked, reading everything except physics, because physics was for weeknights; physics such as [.... begins discussing some physics idea]. I kept waiting for the bookstore anecdote to circle back around and be relevant to her understanding of that idea, but it never happened. Odd.
I do want to spend a moment discussing the title, which I suspect was a "suggestion" by the publisher to grab eyeballs, since the vast majority of the book is spent discussing the state of the singularity at the moment of the Big Bang and what happened immediately after, and seems entirely unconcerned with what happened "before" that (if such a concept can even be meaningful). The one bit of discussion of a possible "before" comes not from Mersini-Houghton's own work but from a colleague, and I bring it up primarily because it's probably the most arresting and exciting idea in the whole book, at least to me. Consider the initial singularity that became our universe as a constant high-energy region of uniform space, infinitely compressed; as the universe expands and entropy increases, the universe will eventually become a massive expanse of uniform, low-energy space -- the famed "heat death of the universe." The book points out that, mathematically, this is no different than the uniform high-energy region, just on a vastly different scale, setting up the idea that the "heat-dead" universe could serve as a singularity preceding a subsequent Big Bang for a new universe, orders of magnitude larger. Thus it posits not only a quantum, parallel multiverse, but a multiverse of sequential universes on and on forever. I find that concept enchanting.
Thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for the ARC.
The book is really about 70% physics, 30% memoir, relating her childhood and education in Communist-dominated Albania before emigrating to the United States. The memoir-y parts are interesting, largely serving to explain why she was drawn to ideas outside the current mainstream. They do sometimes waver in importance, though -- one moment stands out when she begins a section talking about how she'd spend every weekend at a bookstore she liked, reading everything except physics, because physics was for weeknights; physics such as [.... begins discussing some physics idea]. I kept waiting for the bookstore anecdote to circle back around and be relevant to her understanding of that idea, but it never happened. Odd.
I do want to spend a moment discussing the title, which I suspect was a "suggestion" by the publisher to grab eyeballs, since the vast majority of the book is spent discussing the state of the singularity at the moment of the Big Bang and what happened immediately after, and seems entirely unconcerned with what happened "before" that (if such a concept can even be meaningful). The one bit of discussion of a possible "before" comes not from Mersini-Houghton's own work but from a colleague, and I bring it up primarily because it's probably the most arresting and exciting idea in the whole book, at least to me. Consider the initial singularity that became our universe as a constant high-energy region of uniform space, infinitely compressed; as the universe expands and entropy increases, the universe will eventually become a massive expanse of uniform, low-energy space -- the famed "heat death of the universe." The book points out that, mathematically, this is no different than the uniform high-energy region, just on a vastly different scale, setting up the idea that the "heat-dead" universe could serve as a singularity preceding a subsequent Big Bang for a new universe, orders of magnitude larger. Thus it posits not only a quantum, parallel multiverse, but a multiverse of sequential universes on and on forever. I find that concept enchanting.
Thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for the ARC.
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