The Big Bang, Third Edition

Rating:
Summary: This is probably only book you need to read in this subject
Review: I truly believe that this is the only book you need to read. It has all the concepts, theories about the story. Densly written and every sentence has concept, theory in it. Starts with the history of cosmology and continues with Cosmological Models, Origin of Galaxies, theory of Galaxy formations and star formations and future of the Universe. Inflation and other theories are all covered to the extend that space allows. What I liked most in this book is that it covers everything and you do not need to read ten books to get the idea complete. For more technical oriented person, book has Mathematical section at the end describing the concepts with formulas. Author always gives brief description of concepts and usually he explains any conclusion with reasons so that if you can not derive the conclusion by yourself there is the reason.This book together with Kip Throne's beautiful book on Black Holes will make it complete.

Rating:
Summary: Current and Complete
Review: The Big Bang, 3rd Edition Reviewed by: Chris McKinstry, VLT Operator.

This book is about the best introduction to the Universe that one could hope for. I think of it as a giant and highly detailed Scientific American article (including the illistrations and colour photographs.) This updated classic (2nd edition is 11 years old,) is both current and complete (it contains the most recent findings dervied from Hubble and VLT observations.) It even has a VLT picture I helped take of M104 that was released to the public just last month.

As with all good introductions, the math is in the background (actually in chapter notes at the end of the book) making this book accessible to everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Great textbook of cosmology.
Review: This may not be one of the easiest books to read, but it is definetely one of the most informative and up-to-date on the subject. The theories of universe creation, galaxy and star formations, etc., as well as the supporting evidence are presented in full. Speculations on the future, as well as alternative theories to the big bang are briefly covered as well.

The book's difficulty and the fact that it resembles a textbook is the only reason why I downgraded my recommendation from 5 stars. Silk wastes no time and space, and pummels you with facts and theories from the onset, with little in between. The textbook feeling is also conveyed through the author's completely objective tone throughout. This may even seem frustrating to some, especially in the early chapters when Silk presents dozens of competing theories and observations, without even a hint as to which is more likely or which he himself supports. Nevertheless, he does proceed to elaborate on all the major theories and specifies which currently carry the most support in the scientific community and why.

Overall, I highly recommend the book, especially to those who are not new to at least the basic ideas of cosmology. Others will need to be a bit patient as the reading is quite dense -- Silk packs about a 1000 pages of info into 400 pages of text; inevitably you may need to re-read certain parts at times in order to follow the logical flow and development of presented theories. I found the observational data to be too technical sometimes as well, and just took the author's word that it supports the theory forementioned.