Big Bang

On the last day at Ittiam, was gifted this book with lots of well-wishes graffiti. From the cover page the book looked like a parody on the Big-bang model. Had never heard of Simon singh, so was surprised if people wanted to give a jocular touch to my sermons on the "creation". However, I was assured that it was one of the most famous books in the field.

With a mixed feeling finished the day, wishing everybody best of luck. Had to rush for a dinner treat by few loved ones at Cafe Masala and finish the packing for the next day trip back home, Bhagalpur.

All the time while packing over the weekdays, had a wish to buy a good book and spend the luxurious train journey (luxury in the sense of time and disconnection) with it. Never found time to do it owing to last minute rushes and meeting up with people. But this book, for sure turned out to be a serendipity.

Many of the points, after reading "Brief history of Time" was not very clear, looked more like a "modern art" painted by Hawkins. However Simon has been very lucid in painting the folklore. I guess he seemed more of a historian of astro/cosmo/particle physics. The difference and significance of cosmologists and astronomers comes very vivid in the book.

The book starts with a very nice background of B.C. era astronomy and logically tells how the mysteries around earth's diameter and measuring distances in solar system were solved. While talking about the development on cosmological sciences, Singh delves deep into the logic of science and describes why a particular model stuck for a long time even though it suffered from a known lacuna. For example, Newtonian Physic obstructed Einstein's theory for a long before it would give to new facts discovered by astronomers. Somehow, I felt that Indian contribution to astronomy should also have been covered, but probably the Indian contribution was not main stream before the likes of Chandrasekhar and Narlikar, so probably the book misses on allocating a rung on the ladder by Indians.

How astrophysics progressed over the time and how still it relies on just few basic principles of science is remarkable. The journey through these discoveries have been very gripping and Singh has been superb in attributing contributions to various people associated with discoveries and serendipities. This seems to make the most lovable feature of this book, as it discusses people and science politics along with giving an unbiased account of it there by giving a human touch to heavenly studies.

In all this book is a really great one to follow up on the journey of one the most beautiful and non-commercial fangs of science. I would certainly recommend it as a pre-requisite for reading Stephen Hawking.