The State of the Universe

The universe is a mess. Or rather, our understanding of it is. That's the message of this lively introduction to the conundrums shaking up the field of cosmology. Pedro Ferreira, a noted lecturer in astrophysics at Oxford, explains how a universe once ruled by Einstein's simple equations has given way to a more complex and confusing one: where mysterious "dark matter" outweighs visible matter a hundred to one, and "dark energy" seems to be hurling the galaxies apart. Ferreira takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of astronomy to show how we arrived here, clarifying today's many contending theories.

Pedro Ferreira is a Lecturer in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Tutor and Fellow of Oriel College. He studied physics at the Technical University of Lisbon and obtained a doctorate from Imperial College, London in 1995. He has been a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, at CERN in Geneva and was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2000. He has given seminars and lecture courses at more than fifty institutions and has published over eighty scientific papers, conference proceedings and popular articles. His work focuses on the relic radiation left over from the Big Bang and the physical principles of the beginning of the Universe. He has a keen interest in education in Africa, teaching at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town, and has hosted or collaborated with a number of artists on the interface between art and science.