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Title: The First Three Minutes: A Modern View Of The Origin Of The Universe
ISBN: 0465024378
Author:
Steven Weinberg
Publicate Date: 1993-08-17
Publish: 1993-08-17
List Price: $16.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $8.49
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.94
Amazon Merchant Price: $11.53
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| Customer Review: |
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1: enlighting, good analysis
text is good, explains things well.
don't have to be a nuclear scientist to understand it.
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2: Steven Weinberg: Nobel leaureate and biographer of nature
In 1979 Steven Weinberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.
This book is his 1976 take on the origins of the universe.
To understand why Weinberg was honored we need to understand first how nature is organized. As it stands, there are four fundamental forces in nature:
1) Gravity -- best described by Albert Einstein in his 1916 general theory of relativity -- gravity is the property massive objects have to distort the contours of space time itself.
2) The strong nuclear force -- which operates to hold the nucleus of all atoms together.
3) Electromagnatism --still best described by James Clerk Maxell over 100 years ago whose unification of electricity and magnetism actually prompted the likes of Albert Einstein to his turn of the 20th century discoveries.
4) The weak nuclear force -- which operates among leptons.
It was these last two forces that Weinberg preseciently forecast the unification of in 1971 and for which he won the Nobel prize.
As has been rightly pointed out by other reviewers, this book is a democartically short 149 pages making it accessible, well, to anyone, willing to take the time to read them.
And in exchange for that time, one is rewarded with Weinberg's then existing take on the origins of the universe (most of which still holds up) as well as is thoughts on the direction of physics itself.
Long story short: Weinberg said that the Big Bang was like a great freezing which hid the original constituent elements of nature in a great phase transition. So just trying to infer which atoms went where in a glass of water from their current status as ice cubes we're necessarily a little at a loss trying to figure out what todays hadrons were doing prior to the end of the first billionth of second after the Big Bang.
Interestingly enough Weinberg's bottom line remains todays bottom line: we don't know.
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3: Have to disagree
This is NOT a book for non-physicists. I have a doctorate in Dentistry and began reading the book, thinking it would become less obtuse. Ten pages later, I resorted to flipping each page in the hope that I would find something that made sense to a "layman"...no such luck. It could have been written in a medieval Persian language and I would have learned as much from it.
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4: Failure to Planck?!
Steven Weinberg is without a doubt the closet thing
we have to a Newton or Einstein alive today.
But he isn't perfect as much as his books are almost required reading in physics!
This popularization was imitated by others...
Weinberg made the big bang go off in modern times.
But he fails to mention a basic in modern cosmology:
the Planck scale.
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5: A Classic--Any Edition
True that the first version of this book--appeard some time ago, that does not diminish its usefulness to the layman or person interested in the history of the popularization of cosmology--which is a steady business with many competitors.
To find one such book so clearly written is valuable in itself, even as a landmark in this stream of such publications. As such, it belongs on any amateur astronomer's bookshelf, as well as any true scholar who wishes to place more recent findings in their appropriate context. I can add one personal note, my father, Dr. Ralph A. Alpher, commented to me when Dr. Weinberg's book appeared that this was the first book to have the history of cosmology through 1977 "right." And he was in a position to know...on that basis alone, I'll recommend it--if you can find the early paperback edition, it is a fun and short read, also.
Highly recommended!
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