The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins

Alan H. Guth

Vintage, 1998 - Science - 358 pages

This classic Big Bang text neatly describes what happened after the bang. Yet, until recently, particle physicists and cosmologists were stuck on many questions that the Big Bang Theory still couldn't answer, primarily: If matter can neither be created nor destroyed, how could so much matter arise from nothing at all? Alan Guth's Inflationary Universe Theory answers these vexing questions. When NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite measured the non-uniformities of the cosmic background radiation for the first time in 1992, the patterns agreed exquisitely with the theory's predictions.

About the author

Alan Guth, after receiving his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, held positions at Princeton University, Columbia, Cornell and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. He is now the V. F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics at MIT. He has been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been awarded the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in London.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins
• Author: Alan H. Guth
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: Vintage, 1998
• ISBN: 009995950X, 9780099959502
• Length: 358 pages
• Subjects: Science / General; Science / Physics / General; Science / Space Science / Astronomy; Science / Space Science / Cosmology