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STERNGLASS, ERNEST J. Before the Big Bang: The Origins of the Universe
New York and London, Four Walls Eight Windows. 1997, First Edition, First Printing. (ISBN: 1568580878) Hard Cover with dust jacket, 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Collectible, ix, 294 pp. illus. biblio. index; 24 cm. Tight, clean copy. Stated "First printing: October 1997." Dust jacket protected in a mylar book cover. "What is the nature of the universe? How did it begin, and what is its future? To consider these questions is to delve into the riddle of our very existence. Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass envisions a universe like a system of immense whirlpools, where not only the Earth spins on its axis as it revolves around the Sun, but our Solar System, the Milky Way galaxy of which we are a tiny part, and finally the universe itself all spin, in a sort of grand cosmic dance. His theories address the following issues, among others: scientists have detected planets orbiting stars many millions of lightyears away: what kinds of star systems will, and in fact must, have planets? how do solar systems and constellations form? what is the mysterious 'dark matter,' the invisible (to the human eye, at any rate) matter that takes up the majority of the universe? why does space 'curve,' as it must, according to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity?..Sternglass conducts a brief tour of modern particle physics and cosmology. He describes how the theories of Kant, Gödel, Einstein and others led to the idea of an expanding but ultimately stable, rotating universe. And he recounts his firsthand exchanges with scientific greats such as Albert Einstein, Louis de Broglie, Niels Bohr, and Richard Feynman. Drawing on decades of experimentation and theorizing, Sternglass discusses his idea for the nature of the 'primeval atom,' and the fundamental entities in the universe: the electron and its oppositely charged 'twin,' the positron. From these two particles, everything else evolved. The universe began with a single such pair, rotating close to the speed of light - containing the entire mass of the cosmos in a volume less than a trillionth of an inch in diameter, long before the explosive formation of ordinary matter in the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang also explains some of the most intriguing discoveries made by the Hubble Space Telescope, such as why galaxies first appear spherical, and then over the eons expand and eject spiral arms - like those of our own galaxy. / Born in Berlin in 1923, Ernest J. Sternglass emigrated with his family to the U.S. when he was a boy. Scientific director of the Apollo Lunar Scientific Station program at the Westinghouse Research Laboratory from 1960 to 1967, Dr. Sternglass is the recipient of many honors. Elected a Member of the Astronomical Society and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, he is professor emeritus of radiological physics at the University of Pittsburgh, where he established the Radiological Physics and Engineering Laboratory. He has done research at the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris and Stanford University, and taught at the universities of Cornell, George Washington, Indiana, and Pittsburgh." - Publisher. Fine/Fine.
Offered for US$ 30.00 by: Left Coast Books - Book number: 023399