A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE (AND OUR PLACE IN IT)

Science comes of age by the light of an ancient sky.

“Ever since our ancestors traced the paths of the twinkling lights across their night skies, our collective gaze has been drawn to the heavens,” writes particle physicist Malik. Indeed. And ever since our ancestors began writing cosmology books, they have penned sentences just like that one. (Or this one: “From the earliest days of our awakening, the rapturous wonder of the world in which we find ourselves has held our collective fascination.”) Malik traces the history of all this collective gazing, from Babylonian skywatching to science experiments run by rovers on Mars. She retells well-worn stories of cosmological discovery: Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson thinking pigeon droppings were messing with their radio telescope only to realize it was leftover radiation from the Big Bang; Vera Rubin clocking the stars sweeping across the outskirts of Andromeda, only to find they’re moving too fast to explain given the gravitational tethers of visible matter. Such ordinary matter—the kind that constitutes us and everything we see and touch—accounts for a measly 5% of the universe, the rest consisting of dark matter (25%) and dark energy (70%). As Malik says, “we are still very much in the dark.” Theorists have always tried to make sense of such observations, often turning reality upside down in the process. In the early-20th century, Newton’s clockwork universe came unhinged when the theory of relativity shook up our notions of space and time and quantum mechanics replaced its gears and cogs with a fog of uncertainty and probability. Today, mysteries remain. Where’s all the antimatter? Are there other dimensions? Is there life elsewhere in the universe? Malik doesn’t offer her own views, only boilerplate summaries. The effect is a book that skims along, frictionless, like well-written Wikipedia fare—a collective take on the universe. For readers brand new to the history of physics, this is a gentle and wide-ranging introduction. Those familiar with the subject will find their gaze wandering elsewhere.

A knowledgeable but generic guide to the cosmos.