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Cosmic Origins

Science’s Long Quest to Understand How Our Universe Began

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Authors:
  1. M. Mitchell Waldrop

    1. Washington, USA

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  • Comprehensive overview of what scientists know about the origins of the universe
  • Introduces the science through engaging stories of how things were discovered
  • Tells the story of how cosmologists struggled to accept (or even believe) their own discoveries

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • M. Mitchell Waldrop
    Pages 1-9

  3. The Expanding Universe

    • M. Mitchell Waldrop
    Pages 11-35

  4. The Discovery of the Big Bang

    • M. Mitchell Waldrop
    Pages 37-60

  5. Behind the Veil

    • M. Mitchell Waldrop
    Pages 61-99

  6. The Dark Universe

    • M. Mitchell Waldrop
    Pages 101-134

  7. The Age of Precision Cosmology

    • M. Mitchell Waldrop
    Pages 135-152
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About this book

Cosmic Origins tells the story of how physicists and astronomers have struggled for more than a century to understand the beginnings of our universe, from its origins in the Big Bang to the modern day. The book will introduce the science as a narrative, by telling the story of the scientists who made each major discovery. It will also address and explain aspects of our theories that some cosmologists are still hesitant to accept, as well as gaps in our knowledge and even apparent inconsistencies in our measurements. Clearly written by a master of scientific exposition, this book will fascinate the curious general reader as well as providing essential background reading for college-level courses on physics and astronomy.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Washington, USA

    M. Mitchell Waldrop

About the author

M. Mitchell Waldrop is a freelance writer and editor. He earned a Ph.D. in elementary particle physics at the University of Wisconsin in 1975, and a Master’s in journalism at Wisconsin in 1977. From 1977 to 1980 he was a writer and West Coast bureau chief for Chemical and Engineering News. From 1980 to 1991 he was a senior writer at Science magazine, where he covered physics, space, astronomy, computer science, artificial intelligence, molecular biology, psychology, and neuroscience. He was a freelance writer from 1991 to 2003 and from 2007 to 2008; in between he worked in media affairs for the National Science Foundation from 2003 to 2006. He was the editorial page editor at Nature magazine from 2008 to 2010, and a features editor at Nature until 2016. He is the author of Man-Made Minds (Walker, 1987), a book about artificial intelligence; Complexity (Simon & Schuster, 1992), a book about the Santa Fe Institute and the new sciences of complexity; and The Dream Machine (Viking, 2001),a book about the history of computing. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Amy E. Friedlander.

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