Our Cosmic Habitat

New Edition

Lord Martin Rees (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

232 Seiten

2017
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-17809-7 (ISBN)

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Our universe seems strangely "biophilic," or hospitable to life. Is this happenstance, providence, or coincidence? According to cosmologist Martin Rees, the answer depends on the answer to another question, the one posed by Einstein's famous remark: "What interests me most is whether God could have made the world differently." This highly engaging book explores the fascinating consequences of the answer being "yes." Rees explores the notion that our universe is just a part of a vast "multiverse," or ensemble of universes, in which most of the other universes are lifeless. What we call the laws of nature would then be no more than local bylaws, imposed in the aftermath of our own Big Bang. In this scenario, our cosmic habitat would be a special, possibly unique universe where the prevailing laws of physics allowed life to emerge. Rees begins by exploring the nature of our solar system and examining a range of related issues such as whether our universe is or isn't infinite. He asks, for example: How likely is life? How credible is the Big Bang theory? Rees then peers into the long-range cosmic future before tracing the causal chain backward to the beginning.
He concludes by trying to untangle the paradoxical notion that our entire universe, stretching 10 billion light-years in all directions, emerged from an infinitesimal speck. As Rees argues, we may already have intimations of other universes. But the fate of the multiverse concept depends on the still-unknown bedrock nature of space and time on scales a trillion trillion times smaller than atoms, in the realm governed by the quantum physics of gravity. Expanding our comprehension of the cosmos, Our Cosmic Habitat will be read and enjoyed by all those--scientists and nonscientists alike--who are as fascinated by the universe we inhabit as is the author himself.

Martin Rees is Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, a former director of the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy and author, most recently, of the bestselling Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe.

Preface To The Princeton Science Library Edition ix

Preface xv

Prologue

"Could God Have Made the World Any Differently?" xix

Part I From Big Bang to Biospheres

1 Planets and Stars 3

2 Life and Intelligence 15

3 Atoms, Stars and Galaxies 35

4 Extragalactic Perspective 49 C

5 Pregalactic History 65

6 Black Holes and Time Machines 87

Part II The Beginning and the End

7 Deceleration or Acceleration? 99

8 The Long-Range Future 113

9 How Things Began: The First Millisecond 123

Part III Fundamentals and Conjectures

10 Cosmos and Microworld 141

11 Laws and Bylaws in the Multiverse 157

Appendix Scales of Structure 183

Notes To The Chapters 187

Index 197

Erscheinungsdatum	03.01.2018
Reihe/Serie	Princeton Science Library
Vorwort	Lord Martin Rees
Zusatzinfo	19 b/w illus.
Verlagsort	New Jersey
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Gewicht	227 g
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie ► Astronomie / Astrophysik
ISBN-10	0-691-17809-7 / 0691178097
ISBN-13	978-0-691-17809-7 / 9780691178097
Zustand	Neuware