cover image Creation: The Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe

Creation: The Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe

Barry Parker. Plenum Publishing Corporation, $22.95 (297pp) ISBN 978-0-306-42952-1

Contemplating the Big Bang, scientists now speak of the Planck era, the electroweak era, the lepton era, etc.minute subdivisions of the first nanoseconds in the universe's birth. In a delightfully readable tour for the layperson, Parker ( Einstein's Dream , Search for a Supertheory ) keeps getting deliberately sidetracked as he takes us back to those earliest moments, for, to understand the primordial universe, one must understand quarks, pions, bosons, weak and strong forces. The author, a professor at Idaho State University, bounces around this strange subatomic world. He also interweaves earthy profiles of Edwin Hubble, George Gamow, Andrei Sakharov and other cosmologists. By halfway through this illustrated survey, the reader is able to make some sense of current dilemmas, such as: Is the universe made of space-time foam riddled with mini-black holes? Why do vast, bubble-like voids separate superclusters of galaxies? Parker sheds light on the latest batch of enigmas. (Oct.)