Dimensions
130 x 197 x 16mm
How We Measured The Age Of The Universe
This is the story of one of the great scientific puzzles of our time - the mystery of the age of the Universe - and how this mystery was finally solved.
In the 19th century astronomers, geologists and evolutionists first suggested that, contrary to what the Bible said, the Earth and Sun were (at least) millions of years old. By the early 20th century, many astronomers were tacitly assuming that the Universe was infinitely old. Then in the 1920s Edwin Hubble's discovery of the expanding Universe, combined with Einstein's general theory of relativity, pointed to a Universe with a beginning - the Big Bang.
The work and the debate continued in the 1970s and 1980s, with great hopes pinned on the Hubble Space Telescope. In the 1990s measurements from the HST shattered this hope, by seeming to support a relatively young age for the Universe. By mid 1997 John Gribbin and his colleagues had achieved the elusive breakthrough, which finally established that the Universe really is older than the stars it contains.
This is an intriguing tale of false leads, blind alleys, and groping in the semi-dark towards the truth, told by a brilliant science writer.
