The Infinite Cosmos Questions from the Frontiers of Cosmology

In The Infinite Cosmos Joseph Silk takes the reader on a tour of the universe, past, present, and future, showing how the very latest observations and theories are unlocking clues about its origin and structure: X-ray, radio, and high-energy views of space are revealing fossil radiation leftover from the big bang and providing us with unprecedented views of the most distant reaches of the universe. Theories from the frontiers of current research seek to explain its structure from the first moments to the present day, and we are beginning to understand its extraordinary nature andpossible fate. This is a story involving the visible and the invisible; subatomic particles and unusual forces; long ages of darkness and spectacular and violent events. It tells of supernovae, dark matter, dark energy, curved spacetime, colliding galaxies, and supermassive black holes. Weaving the ideas of poetsand writers as well as scientists into the story, from Kant and Keats to Einstein and Lemaitre, Silk explains our present state of knowledge, and how much more there is to understand about our infinite cosmos.

Joseph Silk is Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford. He has published a number of books on cosmology for the general reader, including The Big Bang (W. H. Freeman), The Left Hand of Creation (with J. D. Barrow, published by Oxford University Press), and On the Shores of the Unknown (Cambridge University Press).