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

The classic Big Bang 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 exqusitely with the theory's predictions. This book is Alan Guth's exciting, passionate, and poignant story of his quest to understand the origins of the universe.

After receiving his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alan Guth 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.