Almost everything in this book is true. My lawyer strongly suggests I should leave it at that.

a little heavy at times, but still pretty easy to follow along without a science degree in anything.

Disfruté esta lectura. Es el primer libro medianamente extenso que leo sobre ciencia y me gustó. Primero, si hay muchas partes donde un lector común no entiende, en muchas explicaciones técnicas me perdía. Sin embargo, la mayoría es muy entendible, utiliza un lenguaje común. George Smoot nos relata sus logros científicos a través de este libro de manera amena, no es solo una explicación científica de su descubrimiento, sino que nos relata todas las dificultades que sufrió y sus anécdotas, eso hace muy llevadera la lectura. Además, todas las preguntas que se plantea a lo largo del libro, sus conclusiones y el final es muy bueno. Finalmente, esta lectura me gustó, nos hace comprender nuestro origen y nos plantea muchas preguntas, sobre todo nos insta a no perder las esperanzas y esforzarnos por lo que nos gusta.

"Todos nosotros estamos hechos, literalmente, de polvo de estrellas."

Very good book if you like science and people who love it.

A descriptive, well-written book about the history of advancement of our understanding of cosmic phenomena. Nevertheless, the mix of travel, ballooning, and budget adventures with historical and contemporary scientific advancements bewilders the serious and the lay reader alike.

Did the author really need his formally attired persona on the front cover?

POSTED BY ME AT AMAZON 2008
...I bought it in 1995. Since then I have cherished books about cosmology, especially chronicling the most important discoveries based on observation.
We have had currently three major important milestone developments, changing our perception of the space-time:
--In 1981 Alan Guth and Andre Linde introduced rapid, exponential, near zero time "inflation theory". It was crucial theory explaining why it is natural for the Universe to be expanding close to the critical rate today. Today inflationary model still prevails over other models among majority of cosmologists.
--Scientists were able to obtain a background measure at all in the Universe, using COBE satellite. In 1992 George Smoot announced existence of primordial seeds of modern-day structures such as galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and so on. Later these infrared readings were called "face of God".
--In 1998, acceleration of visible space expansion (that occurred about 6 billions year ago and still continues) was officially acknowledged as a breakthrough of the years. Robert Kirshner- supernova guru from Harvard, is one of the most important scientists studying this "acceleration" phenomena. Dark Energy component has been introduced.
George Smoot's work belongs to this category of essential "collector's item". Reader will learn first hand how COBE project has been planned, completed and its results confirmed by measurements of Milky Way's radio emissions taken at the South Pole. Book delivers substantial amount of basic information about Universe as well. As for today, it is a bit of outdated info because COBE project had been completed before we gained knowledge of acceleration and concept of dark energy. Still - author's writings about personal life, work and experience are definitely recommended and by all means worth of perusal.
Alan Guth's "Inflationary Universe" and Robert Kirshner's "Extravagant Universe" will be two other milestone books being written by directly involved scientists.

this is one of the first popular science books I read -- I think it was an xmas gift from big brother.

such narrative of that life of that young man left me unconscious of some things is very interesting

As someone who is interested in cosmology and astronomy, I found this book to be very interesting. Smoot does a very good job of explaining the history of cosmology and the background to COBE, his satellite to study the cosmic microwave background radiation. He also adds a little bit of personal experiences to lighten the tone - so it's not ALL science-speak. And then he rounds it off by talking about the experiment and its findings. The book is not very difficult to read, like some science books can be.

I noticed that another reviewer made the comment that Smoot is very self-congratulatory. I would have to agree that, by his writing, he thinks very highly of himself and his accomplishment. But I did not find this to be distracting. He was proud of what he had done and rightly so; this tone did not detract from the book for me.

It is interesting, but it gets me tired. So I read a little and leave it alone, and them pick it again...

It was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. Basically you get the story of how an important discovery was made - what the scientists had to do to get answers to the problems they were trying to solve and how they had a lot of interesting adventures in the mean time from Brazilian jungles to the South Pole.

A certain thing to take away from reading this book - doing scientific experiments on high altitude balloons is a nerve-wrecking business.

This is a book on physical cosmology intended for the general public. After the briefest of introductions to the field the issue at hand resolves to defending the big bang theory by accounting for the formation of structured matter (galaxies, nebulae and the like) in the cosmos. The portion of this work done by Smoot and colleagues is detailed.

In fact, much of this book would not be readily accessible to the general public. Personally, I found much of it dull and obscure, though I did appreciate his treatment of 'dark matter.'