After some subtle and challenging discussion of what we think we know, rather than what we think we know (author’s italics), Gribbin begins with what, for the time being at least, we think we know as the beginning of our Universe: the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, otherwise known to physicists and cosmologists as “time zero”. He then moves on chronologically (although aeonologically might be the better word) through the phases in the Universe’s life to now - and beyond.
There are many felicities along the way. “Just as bosons can be thought of as field quanta, so fermions are regarded as the quanta associated with ‘matter fields’ that fill all space ... Bosons can be created out of pure energy without limit - every time you turn a light on, billions and billions of newly created photons flood out ... But the total number of fermions in the Universe has stayed the same.”
Such clarity and simplicity characterise this entire account. I, for example, had always been puzzled that the huge variety of proteins that makes up life comes from just 20 amino acids. Gribbin gives a very helpful analogy. “A lot of information (this book, for example) can be conveyed by a set of twenty-six letters.” It is far too soon to say whether the Universe will end with a bang or a whimper. But if either is looking likely, on this evidence I would ask Gribbin. If anyone knows, he will.
The Universe, by John Gribbin
Penguin, £7.99