by Katie Mack
While physicists may have borne the brunt of my technical queries, I have spent much of the last two years endlessly pestering nearly everyone I know with questions, drafts, advice requests, anxieties, and a general obsessiveness with all things book-related. I am deeply grateful to my friends and family for their patience, and to all the authors I know for lending me their perspectives on the writing and publishing world. Thank you to my family (especially my mom and my sister Jennifer) for encouraging and supporting me all my life and for letting me fill all our family gatherings with science and book talk. Thanks to Mary Robinette Kowal for writing tips and title ideas; Doron Weber for supporting my venture into this new space of public engagement; Daniel Abraham, Dean Burnett, Monica Byrne, Brian Cox, Helen Czerski, Cory Doctorow, Brian Fitzpatrick, Ty Franck, Lisa Grossman, Robin Ince, Emily Lakdawalla, Zeeya Merali, Rosemary Mosco, Randall Munroe, Jennifer Ouellette, Sarah Parcak, Phil Plait, John Scalzi, Terry Virts, Anne Wheaton, and Wil Wheaton for extremely helpful book-writing advice; Charlotte Moore, Brian Malow, and the LA Nerd Brigade for endless encouragement and idea-bouncing; and Andrew Hozier Byrne for both inspiration and a killer soundtrack.
As a pre-tenure professor, I would not have dared to even begin this project were it not for the support of North Carolina State University, whose innovative Leadership in Public Science Cluster program made it possible for me to carve out an academic path that makes space for connecting with the public. The Physics Department and College of Sciences have been wonderfully supportive, helping me to find ways to balance the roles of author, researcher, mentor, and instructor.
Researching this book gave me the opportunity to travel to a number of institutions to interrogate my fellow physicists and to gain a new perspective on what this whole endeavor is all about. I’m particularly grateful to the people at CERN, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Perimeter Institute, the Aspen Center for Physics, Imperial College London, University College London, the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at Cambridge, and Oxford’s Beecroft Institute for their hospitality during my visits.
And finally, special thanks to the wonderful staff of Jubala Coffee on Hillsborough Street, where the bulk of this manuscript was written. Your green tea and oatmeal gave me life.
About the Author
Katie Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist exploring a range of questions in cosmology, the study of the universe from beginning to end. She is currently an assistant professor of physics at North Carolina State University, where she is also a member of the Leadership in Public Science Cluster. Alongside her academic research, she is an active science communicator and has been published in Scientific American, Slate, Sky & Telescope, Time, and Cosmos Magazine, where she is a columnist. She can be found on Twitter as @AstroKatie.
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Katie-Mack
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Index
A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.
Aguirre, Anthony, 99
Albrecht, Andreas, 100, 102
Andromeda Galaxy, 51–52, 62–63, 88
antimatter CERN and, 192
imbalance between matter and, 162
quark era and distinction between matter and, 44
Aristotle, 3
Arkani-Hamed, Nima, 198–99, 201, 207
Askaryan Effect, 133n
astronauts, and overview effect, 7
Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP2) experiment, 171–72
Bekenstein, Jacob, 92–93
Big Bang, 21–27, 32–50 abundance of elements as validation of, 45–46
afterglow of, 39, 63–64
cosmic expansion set off by, 5, 61
cosmic inflation growth and, 38–39
cosmic microwave background and, 23–27
expansion of universe and, 5
GUT era and, 36–38
Hawking’s research on, 11, 92–93
human bodies built out of by-products of, 46
logic of theory of, 21–22
nucleosynthesis during, 45–46
Planck Time and, 35, 36, 37
popular conception of, 21
quark-gluon plasma phase in, 43–44
question of what was “before,” 33
reheating process in, 42
singularity at beginning of, 32–35
surface of last scattering in, 46–47
tracing history of the universe backward to, 22–23
uniformity problem in, 39–40
universe-antiuniverse pair in, 176
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, 45–46
Big Crunch, 51, 61–66, 128 cosmic distance measurements and possibility of, 69–70
critical density in, 68–69
cyclic universes and, 65
impact of, 62–63
redshift and blueshift measurements before, 62
signs of impending collapse in, 61–62
Big Rip, 105, 207 calculation of earliest possible date for, 115, 128
destruction process in, 112–14
electromagnetic forces and, 113–14
loss of galaxies and, 112–13
orbits of planets and, 113
phantom dark energy and, 115
star systems and, 113
timeline for, 114 (fig.)
blackbody curve, 28–29, 29 (fig.)
black holes Andromeda Galaxy–Milky Way collision and, 51–52
Big Crunch impact and, 63
Big Rip and, 114
cosmic expansion and, 61
cosmologists’ studies of, 10, 11
entropy associated with, 93–94
evaporation process in, 11, 89, 95, 96, 144, 151, 152
gravitational wave astronomy on, 158, 173
Hawking’s evaporation calculations in, 89, 151, 152
Hawking’s research on, 11
Heat Death and, 95
primordial gravitational waves and, 171
vacuum decay and, 150–53
virtual particles and, 94–95
Blekman, Freya, 183, 195–96
blueshift measurements Big Crunch and, 62
cosmic expansion and, 55–57
Boltzmann Brains problem, 102–3, 201
bounce model of universe, 157, 169–70, 173–74
Boyle, Latham, 175
branes, in ekpyrotic models, 163, 164–69, 170, 171
braneworld, 169–70, 172
bubble universes, 170
Burke, Bernard, 25
Caldwell, Robert, 110–12, 114
Carroll, Sean, 99, 103, 200
Cepheid variable stars discovery of, 118
distance ladder and, 118–19, 119 (fig.)
Hubble Constant calculation and, 127
CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), 128, 192–95, 196, 197
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan, 123–24
Chandrasekhar Limit, 124–25
closed universe, 75, 76 (fig.)
CMB. See cosmic microwave background
cold dark matter (CDM), 179–80
Coleman, Sidney, 154
colliders. See particle colliders and specific colliders
Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) collaboration, 196
Concordance Model ΛCDM), 179–80, 181, 188
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, 17
5, 190, 198
Copernican Principle, 18
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 19
Cosmic Dawn, 47, 48–49
cosmic expansion acceleration of, 76–77, 79–80, 96
baseball-in-air analogy and, 60–61
Big Bang start of, 5, 61
Big Crunch possibility and, 69–70
calculations of the age of the universe from, 71–72
cosmological constant and, 82–83
critical density between recollapse of universe and, 68–70
dark energy and, 85–86, 88, 96, 97 (fig.), 109
deceleration parameter calculations for, 72–74
de Sitter space after, 96, 97
discovery of, 54
Doppler effect in detection of, 54, 55 (fig.)
Hubble radius and, 83–86, 85 (fig.), 125
illustration of, 53 (fig.)
measurement of rate of, 69, 72–73, 77–81, 115
recession speed of galaxies during, 83–84
redshift and blueshift measurements in, 55–57, 57 (fig.), 73, 74
role of gravity in, 61
shape of universe types and, 75, 76 (fig.)
slowing down of, 72–74
supernovae distance measurement and, 125
three possibilities for the future after, 60
cosmic inflation, 38, 179, 191, 201, 208 age of the universe and, 71–72
beginning of the universe and, 6, 38–39, 167
cosmic microwave background and, 39, 41–42
cyclic universe idea as alternative to, 173
density fluctuations and, 40–41
ekpyrotic models and, 169–70
gravitational waves and, 172
reheating process in, 42
timeline in, 42 (fig.)
uniformity problem of same temperature and, 39–40
vacuum metastability and, 154–55
cosmic microwave background (CMB), 27, 187 Big Bang beginning and, 32
Big Crunch and, 64
blackbody curve and, 28, 29 (fig.)
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology and, 175
cosmic inflation theory and, 39, 41–42
dark energy and, 187
density fluctuations in, 40
first observation of, 23–27
Hubble Constant calculation and, 126–27
interpretation of variations in, 29–31
lensing, 188
map of, 31 (fig.)
seeing “edge” of universe and, 83
study of the universe using, 27, 29
uniformity problem of same temperature and, 39–40
cosmic ray collisions black holes and, 153
Moon study of, 132–33
public concerns about collider safety and, 132
vacuum decay and, 133
cosmological constant dark energy and, 80–81, 90, 96, 104, 106–8, 109–10
density over time, 97 (fig.), 111 (fig.)
Einstein’s early research on, 77–78, 79
end of the universe and, 82, 96
measuring speed of cosmic expansion using, 77–81
vacuum energy miscalculation and, 80
cosmological principle, 17–18
cosmology Hawking’s books and lectures on, 11
insight into the workings of the universe using, 8
“now” concept when viewing events in, 18–19
past viewed in, 15–16
progress of astronomical events observed in, 15–16
range of meanings of, 10–11
cyclic universes, 3, 157, 169–70 gravity and, 66
issues in possibility of, 65–66
question of what survive from one cycle to another in, 66
dark energy, 155 cosmic expansion, 85–86, 88, 96, 97 (fig.), 109, 111 (fig.)
cosmic microwave background and, 187
cosmological constant and, 80–81, 90, 96, 97 (fig.), 104, 106–8, 109–10, 111 (fig.)
dominant energy condition and, 111
equation of state parameter for, 109, 114, 186
gravitational effect of pressure and, 108
Heat Death and, 114
measurement of, 105–6
negative pressure and, 108–9
past rate of expansion and, 115
phantom dark energy and, 110–12, 111 (fig.), 115
reasons for studying, 106
Type Ia supernovae explosions and, 125
dark matter, 67, 105, 155 Cosmic Dawn and, 48–49
evidence for, 67–68
gravitational lensing and, 68
Hubble Constant calculations and, 128
David, André, 196
de Beauvoir, Simone, 4
deceleration parameter, 72–74
De Luccia, Frank, 154
de Sitter Equilibrium, 100, 101
de Sitter space, 96, 97, 100
Dicke, Robert, 23, 27
Dirac, Paul, 199
distance ladder distance measurement using, 116–17, 119 (fig.)
Hubble Constant calculation and, 126–27
distance measurements apparent size of galaxies and, 86–87, 87 (fig.)
Cepheid variable stars and, 118–19, 119 (fig.)
distance ladder for, 116–17, 119 (fig.)
light-year unit for observation of events and, 16–17
parallax and, 117, 118, 119 (fig.)
standard candle method of, 73–74, 117–18, 119
supernovae explosions and, 73–74, 75, 79, 81, 84, 118–19, 124–26
domain wall, 139n
dominant energy condition, 111
Doppler effect, 54–55, 55 (fig.)
Drake Equation, 202
dwarf stars. See white dwarf stars
Dyson, Freeman, 103–4, 177–78, 207–8
Dyson sphere, 104n
Earth Andromeda Galaxy–Milky Way collision and, 52
Big Rip and loss of, 113, 114 (fig.)
observable universe from vantage point of, 26 (fig.)
overview effect of astronauts’ view of, 7
red giant phase of the Sun and destruction of, 1, 121
Eddington, Sir Arthur, 124
Einstein, Albert, 110 bending of space around anything that has mass and, 68, 108
cosmological constant and, 77–78, 79
theory of gravity of (General Theory of Relativity), 8, 10, 32, 66, 68, 75, 77, 78, 124, 157
ekpyrotic models cosmos seen in, 166–69
inflation and, 169–70
introduction of, 166
observational evidence in, 171
scalar field in, 171, 174
3-dimensional branes in, 163, 164, 166, 167–69, 170, 171
electromagnetism, 138, 164, 181 dark matter and, 67
Grand Unified Theory and, 37, 43
Higgs field in early universe and, 134, 136
mathematical expression of, 138
quark era in early universe and, 44
electron degeneracy pressure, 122–23, 124
electroweak force Grand Unified Theory on, 43
Higgs field and, 136
quark era in early universe and, 44
research confirming theory of, 159–60
spontaneous symmetry breaking and, 134
electroweak symmetry breaking early universe impact of, 139–40
Higgs field and, 140, 142
process leading to, 136
Ellis, John, 197
end of the world Big Rip and, 112–14, 114 (fig.)
cosmological constant induction of, 82, 96
cyclic view of the universe and, 3
dark energy and, 106
extra dimensions of space and, 155
new scientific findings and new perspectives on, 7–8
Nietzsche’s view of, 3
red giant phase of the Sun and, 1
religions and vision of, 2–3
secular views of, 3–4
seeking meaning of existence and, 4
entropy black holes and, 93–94
direction of time and
, 91–92
disorder and, 90–91
Heat Death and, 173
increase over time of, 91
Epoch of Reionization, 49
equation of state parameter, 109, 114, 186
eschatology academic research on, 178–79
cyclic view of the universe and, 3
definition of, 2
secular views in, 3–4
vision of End Times in religions and, 2–3
Espinosa, José Ramón, 192n, 197–98
evaporation process, in black holes, 11, 89, 95, 96, 144, 151, 152
expansion of universe. See cosmic expansion
false vacuum, 143, 143 (fig.), 147, 154
fermions, 121–22
Ferreira, Pedro, 183, 191, 209
Finn, Kieran, 175
flat universe, 75, 76 (fig.)
Frost, Robert, 1, 4
Future Circular Collider (FCC), 195–96
Gaia star map, 113n
galaxies ability to see distant galaxies, 83–84, 85 (fig.)
Andromeda Galaxy–Milky Way collision, 51–52, 62–63, 88