The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the UniverseThe age of the universe has been one of the great scientific mysteries of our time. This engrossing book tells the story of how the mystery was recently solved. Written by a brilliant science writer who was involved, as a research astronomer, in the final breakthrough, the book provides details of the ongoing controversies among scientists as they groped their way to the truth - that the universe is between 13 and 16 billion years old, older by at least one billion years than the star systems it contains. In clear, engaging language, Gribbin takes us through the history of cosmological discoveries, focusing in particular on the seventy years since the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe. He explains how conflicting views of the age of the universe and stars converged in the 1990s because scientists (including Gribbin) were able to use data from the Hubble Space Telescope that measured distances across the universe. |
Contents
All Things Must Pass | 9 |
Age Limits | 39 |
Into the Blue | 95 |
Hubbles Law | 113 |
Revisionist Cosmology | 137 |
New Rulers | 165 |
When Time Began | 198 |
Afterword | 222 |
Other editions - View all
The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe John Gribbin Limited preview - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
amount Andromeda Galaxy Andromeda Nebula astronomers atoms average Big Bang bigger brightness calculate calibration century Cepheid distances clouds cosmological cosmologists density diameter discovery distance scale Earth Eddington Einstein Einstein-de Sitter model electrons energy error bars estimate of H expanding fainter globular clusters gravitational gravitational lens H-R diagram heat helium Hipparcos Hubble Constant Hubble Space Telescope Hubble's Humason hydrogen idea Kelvin Key Project km/sec known Lemaître light line of sight main sequence mass Megaparsec Milky Way Galaxy Mount Wilson moving novae nucleus objects observations Observatory oldest stars orbit parallax parsecs particles percent photographic plates physics planet protons radiation radioactive redshift redshift-distance relation S-Z effect sample Sandage Shapley Sirius Slipher Solar System space spacetime spiral galaxy spiral nebulae stellar supernova Tammann technique telescope things timescale tion Universe value for H value of H velocities Virgo Cluster white dwarf