The Birth Of Time: How We Measured The Age Of The Universe - Hardcover

Gribbin, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 029782001X ISBN 13: 9780297820017

Publisher: W&N, 1999

Synopsis

In the 19th century astronomers, geologists and evolutionists first suggested that the Earth and Sun were (at least) millions of years old. By the early 20th century, many assumed that the Universe was infinitely old. Then in the 1920s Edwin Hubble's discovery of the expanding Universe, combined with Einstein's general theory of relativity, pointed to a Universe with a beginning -- the Big Bang. Taken at face value, however, Hubble's early measurements suggested that the Universe was younger than the Earth. And when scientists began to understand how stars work, it really did appear that the stars were older than the Universe itself -- and astronomy was faced with a major crisis. The work and the debate continued in the 1970s and 1980s, with great hopes pinned on the Hubble Space Telescope. In 1994 and 1995 measurements from the HST shattered this hope, by seeming to support a relatively young age for the Universe. The HST measurements concentrated the attention of astronomers worldwide in a renewed assault on the problem. At Sussex University John Gribbin and his colleagues were developing a new technique to measure the Hubble Constant. By mid 1997 they had achieved the elusive breakthrough, which finally established that the Universe really is older than the stars it contains.

The Birth of Time is an intriguing tale of false leads, blind alleys, and groping in the semi-dark towards the truth, told by a brilliant science writer who was also involved, as a research astronomer, in the final breakthrough.

About this title

Review

How long is a piece of string? Or, if you prefer, how do you work out your place in the universe while sitting on a backwater planet in a dusty corner of an unexceptional galaxy hurtling through a space whose fabric is itself expanding, so that some neighbouring galaxies are observed moving towards us and away from us at the same time? Husband-and-wife team John and Mary Gribbin are arguably this country's finest writers of popular science. This time round, though, John himself gets to claim a not inconsiderable footnote in the history of science, as one of the Sussex University team who finally found a way to accurately date the age of the universe.

In the 1970s, two rival camps of cosmologists used the same evidence to argue for what seem at a first glance to be radically different ages for the universe: one less than 10 billion years, one more than 13 billion years. Stars, according to one model, were older than the universe described in the other model! But marvel rather, Gribbin argues, that both camps came up with answers with roughly the same number of noughts at the end--a fact that brought considerable relief to both sides of this cordial controversy. Marvel even that we ever worked out--and that only recently--that the universe had any sort of beginning at all! Gribbin, in one of his very best books, takes the reader through a fascinating if claustrophobic tour through earlier models of the universe--models that until this century had no room for other galaxies, nor much happening before 4000BC. Seeing how much extraordinarily hard work and clever intuition brought us from there to our current state of knowledge will have readers spellbound, and not a little dizzy. --Simon Ings

Book Description

The story of one of the great scientific puzzles of our time -- the mystery of the age of the Universe -- and how this mystery was finally solved.

Edition details

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 029782001X
• ISBN 13: 9780297820017
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216