Before the Beginning

I read dozens of books a year, usually more than 50, and among them I try to read several books on cosmology or physics. So I was pretty familiar with the material in this book even before I read it. The reason I read it anyway was because Rees discusses some of my favorite speculations: Andrei Linde's inflationary multiverse theory and Lee Smolin's theory of fecund universes. I am in no position to evaluate those theories, but I just have an old-fashioned hunch that Linde's theory must be true, while Smolin's is merely possible. But I like them both, and I hope they're both true. So I read whatever I can on them. What I got out of it that I didn't expect was a deeper respect for Chandrasekhar and Hoyle. Otherwise, I got what I wanted. Now, if you don't read about cosmology or physics much, I honestly wouldn't recommend this book. John Barrow is on the cover saying it'd be a good first book, but I firmly disagree. Ahead of it, I'd recommend Ferris' "The Whole Shebang," which, until something better is written, is the best cosmology book available: the best thing since Sagan's "Cosmos," in fact. Don't ask me why it isn't more widely appreciated. It has a wider scope than this book, it goes into greater depth on every point (so it's longer), it's better-written, and its explanations are clearer. Rees' book is a little hard to get into because some of his writing is simply wooden, and he often doesn't trouble himself to explain things very carefully, however. BUT - it's not that bad really; it just compares unfavorably to Ferris' book, which I strongly urge you to read before this one. Or just hang on awhile; within a few years something better has got to come out because neither of these books, nor any book that I know of, provides a good introduction to cosmology that includes recent work on the large-scale structure of the universe and the recent, cosmos-shaking discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Here's a major gap in the pop-sci literature, and it's bound to be filled soon. If you want to read something by Rees, I suggest checking out "Our Final Hour," his more recent, and more provocative book.

Before the Beginning is one of Sir Martin Rees best endeavors in unraveling the concepts of cosmology for the average reader. As Royal Society Professor at King's College, Cambridge--succeeding Fred Hoyle to the privilege--and Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, his research spans the breadth of astrophysical research, including issues about cosmology, galaxy formation, black holes, and high energy processes like gravitational waves. While his participation in the forefront of research gives Martin Rees eminent credibility, his ability as a writer gives him great accessibility as well. I am not really a math-physics person, although I enjoy this type of popular work on physics and cosmology and read extensively in the genre. I found this title to be thoroughly understandable. I was lost somewhat in the final chapters of the book especially "How Constant are Nature's 'Constants,'" but pulled more out of the material after rereading it a couple of times. I think that most readers of a skill level of high school and above will understand the material. Even precocious junior high students with an interest in the topic should be able to comprehend much of it. The author is very methodical in his approach to his topic, introducing it from the point of view of the history of original thinking and research in the field. He gives credit to each participant in that history, even those whose failed attempts have put others on the right path to discovery. He is especially complimentary to Fred Hoyle, who while he helped to create and thoroughly supported the concept of the Steady State Universe, was open minded enough to actually supply some of the tenants of the Big Bang as well. Much is made of the collective contributions of workers in the field, even those who "almost ran." Most important, credit is given to Russian contributions that had been ignored, minimalized, or denied during the Cold War years. By approaching his topic from an historical vantage point, Rees helps the reader to think much the way the discoverers did as they added each additional piece of information to the body of cosmological research as it stands today. While much of actual physics is a plethora of numbers and intricate mathematics even more of it, especially in cosmology, involves logical and creative thought. From an instructional stand point, the book might be a good way of introducing high school science students to the manner of thought of scientists, to the ideal professional relations between them, to the step by step cumulative logic of this type of thought, and to the actual product of scientific effort.

This is an exciting and accessible book of cosmological speculation tempered by rationality and an awareness of the scientific method. Consequently I was very happy to read here about the possibility of "universes" beyond ours; or differently put, something beyond the big bang. I used to speculate about what happened before and beyond the big bang, but I was told that such speculations were unscientific because by definition the universe and all of time and space came into being with the big bang. Like Fred Hoyle, I never liked this theory of the beginning of the universe, and wished that his steady state model would gain some serious credence. It didn't and the evidence for the big bang grew. Now however, as Rees makes clear, the perspective and even the terminology has changed. Many scientists now speculate that our universe (notice we now have an "our") may just be a budding off of one "universe" from perhaps an infinite potential. One page 158 Rees writes about the universe at the Planck time (ten to the minus 43 seconds) which is as early as we can get, and incidentally the universe at that time was as small as anything can get: "At this stupendous density...quantum effects and gravity would both be important. What happens when quantum effects shake an entire universe?" Now that is a question! And the way it is put propels us into something like a glimpse of the universe at that ultra early stage. The Planck time is a constraint on the size of anything including space. One of the things that this means is that spacetime is not infinitely divisible. Space itself has a quantum-like quality. Really? On page 24 he is talking about communicating with other intelligent beings: "It would be easy to devise signals that would be incontrovertibly artificial: for instance, attention could be attracted by a series 1,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29... These are prime numbers: no natural process could generate them, but they would be recognized by any culture that was interested in (and capable of) picking up cosmic radio waves." Notice how simply but beautifully put this observation is. On the same page he makes the point that even though we might get some startling advice from a more advanced civilization, there is some question about whether we would follow it, or even if we could benefit from it. He writes: "Optimists claim that such signals could convey enlightening messages of such import that they would enable us to bypass centuries of scientific endeavor and discovery... But such a gap would be hard to bridge, even within human culture. Could, for instance, a short `message from the future' have guided a leading intellect from an earlier era toward some aspect of modern scientific knowledge? Could Newton have been steered from alchemy toward chemistry...? It would be a daunting challenge to bridge even a few centuries of human cultural change, essentially because scientific advance depends on

As a person who reads complicated books on everything from cosmology to politics in Imperial China just for fun I tend to get in over my head sometimes, delving into books far beyond my reach of everyday comprehension. So for me "Before the Beginning" was an absolute joy.I had only a small understanding of cosmolgy before reading this book, but afterwards I feel as if I may be able to debate some points with the best of them. Usually in the midst of stuffy scientific rigamaroll I find my mind wandering to anything but science, yet "Before...." held my attention all the way through. It's clearly written and devoid of too many overwhelming and incomprehensible bits of jargon. I appreciate and enjoy Sir Martin Rees' dry British humor which makes reading about neutron stars more fun than it should be.I think if you are someone like myself who has an interest, but not ovewrwhelming passion, in astrophysics this just maybe the perfect book to pick up, and afterward you may just find cosmology a minor passion.

The book is a beautifully written for a lay reader. It is broken up in to short sections, each dealing with a specific topic in astronomy and cosmology. It makes it easy to pick up the book for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. You never feel that you are in the "middle" of some heavey topic that in order for you to understand you need to complete a lengthy chapter. Very sophisticated ideas are presented in bite sized chunks and yet are thoroughly explained. This is a great read!