Book 38 - John Brockman "The Universe"
May. 8th, 2020 07:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveJohn Brockman "The Universe" (Harper Perennial)
The matter originated in the Big Bang. Firstly as a soup of quarks, W's, Z's, electrons etc. As the new universe expanded and cooled, the quarks coalesced into particles like protons. As the expansion continued a point was reached where nuclei could trap electrons and make neutral atoms. This occurred about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Once neutral atoms existed, the universe became transparent to photons, which we now see as the Cosmic Microwave Background. In our laboratories such as CERN, we can recreate the conditions that existed about 0.0000000001 seconds after the Big Bang and study the processes that would have been occurring at that time.
The offerings in this collection provide a look at what some of the worlds leading experts are working on and thinking about in the realm of theoretical physics. The quality of the writing varies widely, as one might expect from a collection of essays by multiple people. The prose ranges from childishly simple to quite technical. A few even exhibit some artistic flair with words. But all are interesting. One, perhaps untended, revelation is a glimpse of egos, and the (mostly) polite clash of egos in cases where scientists do not agree.
Generally, a very good overview.
The matter originated in the Big Bang. Firstly as a soup of quarks, W's, Z's, electrons etc. As the new universe expanded and cooled, the quarks coalesced into particles like protons. As the expansion continued a point was reached where nuclei could trap electrons and make neutral atoms. This occurred about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Once neutral atoms existed, the universe became transparent to photons, which we now see as the Cosmic Microwave Background. In our laboratories such as CERN, we can recreate the conditions that existed about 0.0000000001 seconds after the Big Bang and study the processes that would have been occurring at that time.
The offerings in this collection provide a look at what some of the worlds leading experts are working on and thinking about in the realm of theoretical physics. The quality of the writing varies widely, as one might expect from a collection of essays by multiple people. The prose ranges from childishly simple to quite technical. A few even exhibit some artistic flair with words. But all are interesting. One, perhaps untended, revelation is a glimpse of egos, and the (mostly) polite clash of egos in cases where scientists do not agree.
Generally, a very good overview.
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