Overview

By most popular accounts, the universe started with a bang some 13.8 billion years ago. But what happened before the Big Bang? And how do we know it happened at all? Here prominent cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi and science communicator Phil Halper offer a tour of the peculiar possibilities: bouncing and cyclic universes, time loops, creations from nothing, multiverses, black hole births, string theories, and holograms. Along the way, they offer both a call for new physics and a riveting story of scientific debate. Incorporating insights from Afshordi's cutting-edge research and Halper's original interviews with scientists like Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, and Alan Guth, Battle of the Big Bang compares these models for the origin of our origins, showing each theory's strengths and weaknesses and explaining new attempts to test these notions. Battle of the Big Bang is a tale of rivalries and intrigue, of clashes of ideas that have raged from Greek antiquity to the present day over whether the universe is eternal or had a beginning, whether it is unique or one of many. But most of all, Afshordi and Halper show that this search is filled with wonder, discovery, and community--all essential for remembering a forgotten cosmic past.

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Niayesh Afshordi is professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo and associate faculty at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. His prizewinning research focuses on competing models for the early universe, dark energy, dark matter, black holes, holography, and gravitational waves. He has contributed to Scientific American and was a consultant to PBS's NOVA, and his work has been featured in numerous popular media outlets, such as the covers of Scientific American and Science, as well as in the Guardian and the New York Times. Phil Halper is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a science popularizer. He is the creator of the popular YouTube series Before the Big Bang, which has had several million views, and was previously journalist in residence at the Penn State Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos. His astronomy images have been featured in major media outlets including the Washington Post, the BBC, and the Guardian, and he has published several papers in peer-reviewed journals. He lives in London. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, to parents who journeyed from India to the United States, Nas Mehdi is an American actor of Indian descent who also has Turkish, Persian, and Afghan heritage. Inspired by his love of films, he pursued the performing arts early on in his adolescent years via theater/speech tournaments and, subsequently, as a lead actor in professional theatre in Dallas. He carried that passion into television, playing numerous guest and recurring guest star roles in shows such as Graves (Epix) opposite Nick Nolte, 24: Legacy (Fox) opposite Corey Hawkins, Nashville (ABC) opposite Chris Carmack, and Drop Dead Diva (Lifetime) opposite Brooke Elliott, and films such as Focus (Warner Bros.) opposite Will Smith. Coming off the success of narrating Payam Zamani's bestselling novel Crossing The Desert, Nas has also successfully ventured into the world of commercials, including a national network spot with Verizon, and voice-over. Trained at the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, and the Markland Studio, he regularly performs stand-up comedy in the San Fernando Valley and is on the board of the Classics Theatre Project. He also enjoys beekeeping and not zealously referring to himself in the third person.

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