Spoiler Alert: COBE totally gives viable evidence of inflationary theory!

This book is an accounting of science as it ought to be done. George Smoot was the project head of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite that in the early nineties mapped the radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1964. COBE's discovery of "Wrinkles" in this radiation gives a beautiful picture of what the universe must have looked like only 300,000 years after the Big Bang.

So yes, dramatic evidence of a cosmological theory is always interesting, you say, but you've read A Brief History of Time, and you don't really need to know anything more about inflationary theory.

This book is not about inflationary theory.

This book is about doing research. It is about designing a satellite to be launched by the space shuttle only to have the Challenger explode and shuttles put on indefinite hold. It is about working obsessively to make every carefully designed instrument half of its original size in order to fit it on a Delta rocket. This book is about traveling to Antarctica for a month in order to rule out every other possibility before publishing your extremely promising data. Therefore, I would argue that this book isn't just about finding extremely compelling scientific information; this book is about conducting reasonable, responsible, resplendent science.

I highly recommend it.

The first part of this book was a slog: Smoot made the history of Cosmology as dry and dull as he possibly could. However, once the story switched to his personal search for the structure in the microwave background it picked up. I was an undergraduate when the COBE results came out in 1992 and I remember how excited people were around the JHU Physics & Astronomy Department. I didn't fully appreciate what these observations meant at the time - but it certainly made it feel exciting to be becoming an astronomer. Big Things were being discovered - we knew so much and so little, there was lots to do and I was heading off to do some of it! It was rather fun to read about all the things going on in the background, all the hard work and persistence that lead up to this momentous announcement.

Not merely a great book, but an absolutely essential reading for any physics and wholly Science curious explorer. A certainly must buy and must read.

Very readable

Good book discussing the experimental aspects of cosmology. However, some text passages should have been updated in the latest edition (the SSC was cancelled in 1993!).

The first part is a standard expositon of the Big Bang. The last and best part is the development, deployment, and analysis of the COBE satellite that confrimed a major aspect of the Big Bang.

An interesting memoir covering the more practical side of cosmology, so to speak -- the nuts and bolts of actually carrying out cutting-edge experimentation. And yes, I'll happily admit I found this book thanks to Sheldon Cooper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXV4Cw...

Buena información pero un libro no tan agradable de leer.

Good account of the Smoot et al. work on experimental measurement and interpretation of the CMB.

Worth the read for improving the explanation narrative but doesn't make the top ten on the topic.

When I was younger and was interested in this topic (and more up on my chemistry and physics) I would have enjoyed this book more. Dr. Smoot mentioned that he had to pared down the manuscript from 600 pages and lost a lot of personal dynamics...I may have been more interested in that manuscript.

If you are physics, cosmology, or astrology enthusiast...you will find this book very rewarding!

Loved the book. Clearly the title plays on Hawkings A Brief History but the subject matter is very different, dealing with the origins of space and time and the adventure that the author and his team embarked upon attempting to discover why the universe is not just comprised of dust. For the curious mind with a bent for science, a must read.