In the week which marked the death of Stephen Hawking on 14 March 2018, many people will be prompted to read one of his books or another on cosmology. Afterglow of Creation is one from which I learned much and enjoyed reading.
This is the story of the cosmic background radiation, the ‘afterglow’ of the Big Bang in which the known universe was born. Fifteen billion years after the event, the afterglow still permeates all of space, making it the oldest detectable relic and providing an imprint of the universe as it was in its infancy. But the most astonishing thing about the ‘afterglow of creation’ is that it wasn’t discovered until 1965, and then only by accident. This was in spite of the fact that it had been predicted in 1948 and the technology to detect it existed during World War II.
Marcus Chown (https://marcuschown.com/bio/) brilliantly weaves a tale of the search for the origins of the universe. Beginning in the 1920s and culminating with the flight of the COBE satellite and what it found, this book discloses a galaxy of wonderful facts about cosmology.
Check if this superb book on cosmology is in stock at your local library by consulting the online catalogue at https://www.sllclibrary.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/MSGTRN/OPAC/BSEARCH
222 pages in University Science Books
First published 1996
ISBN 978-0935702408
Marcus Chown