Special Relativity Book

'Curiosity' is a curious thing! It's the only quality that differentiates humans from all the other living organisms (well, at least on the surface of Earth!). Solely driven by this 'exclusive feature', Man has discovered the intricate design of nature and invented his way to mimic it. If one speculates enough, he will find that all our technologies are simply based on the happenings going on around us in the nature. If you are a romantic one and like to see the nature's creation as a Grand Opera, then perhaps, it won't be too wrong to say that our technologies represent our rendition of this opera. The key to this derivation process is just raising a simple question, "How did this happen?" and raising questions is science. Science is a direct descendent of philosophy. While philosophy asks "Why?", science asks "How?". There are too many "How?" questions. The idea is if we can gather enough answers to these questions, they will eventually lead us to the "Why". Finding an answer to one "How?" reveals that there are lots of other "Hows" lurking in the darkness. It's like solving a ginormous cryptic puzzle. The clues are right before our eyes but they are way too scattered. You pick one wrong clue, you are horribly led astray and this is a very frequent case. Throughout the course of civilization, humans often forgot to raise questions, picked up the wrong clues and acted upon doctrinal views. These were (and still are) the obstacles in the way of finding the answers of "How". The point today science is standing at, is achieved by walking through such an uneven path and the history is often bloody as well. Starting from the Greek philosophers' era to the modern times, people have been wondering about the origin of everything and the idea of a "Big Bang" seems to give us the answers, finally. Today Big Bang has become a very common concept and almost everyone you find on the streets can spend a few words on it. Like many other science theories, Big Bang also had to fight a tough battle to survive. It might sound a little exaggerated, but Big Bang theory is said to be human kind's greatest achievement (accumulating all the philosophical and scientific disciplines). So, one naturally can ask now how this great idea, that explains the creation's origin, was conceived?

British science writer Simon Singh produces a weighty tome on the history of Big Bang that tells the enthralling tales of the origin of the universe. There is science and there is history, a lot of history. Singh proves himself to be a great story teller who makes the highly complicated ideas very much accessible, literally to anyone. This book proves again that one doesn't have to be a science major to learn the science. You will have a good idea how scientists are calculating the enormous distances from our planet to the stars just by reading few paragraphs. No mathematical manipulation, no tedious calculation, nothing! You will be badly hooked on this book once you start it, I can almost bet on it! The way the book is organized also allows you to keep things in mind without much stress. The tales of the mavericks, the mad scientists, based on whose contributions the Big Bang model is established, are very inspiring and fascinating. Famous astronomer Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" inspired many to become real life astronomers. I think it won't be surprising if Singh's "Big Bang: The Origin of The Universe" plays a similar role. For aspiring astronomers, physicists, even science writers, this book will be a great head start.

The Universe is quite old. The Big Bang model gives us an average age of 13.8 billion years, as of today. Once people asked how we were created and many centuries later we found that Big Bang is probably the answer. Now another question has already been raised. "What happened before Big Bang?" Well, this certainly will give birth to a very hot philosophical (and religious too) debate and I do not possess enough knowledge and audacity (probably the scientists do not either!) to continue this discussion. Instead, I will simply quote St. Augustine (b. 354 AD) as Singh himself did in the epilogue of the book. I am putting it here for the sheer fun of it and nothing serious!

"What was God doing before He created the Universe? Before He created Heaven and Earth, God created hell to be used for people such as you who ask this kind of question"!