The Amazing Unity of the Universe

In the first chapters the author describes how our knowledge of the position of Earth in space and time has developed, thanks to the work of many generations of astronomers and physicists. He discusses how our position in the Galaxy was discovered, and how in 1929, Hubble uncovered the fact that the Universe is expanding, leading to the picture of the Big Bang. He then explains how astronomers have found that the laws of physics that were discovered here on Earth and in the Solar System (the laws of mechanics, gravity, atomic physics, electromagnetism, etc.) are valid throughout the Universe. This is illustrated by the fact that all matter in the Universe consists of atoms of the same chemical elements that we know on Earth. This unity is all the more surprising when one realizes that in the original Big Bang theory, different parts of the Universe could never have communicated with each other. It then is a mystery how they could have shared the same physical laws. This problem was solved by the introduction of the idea of inflation, a phase of extremely rapid expansion of the Universe during the first fraction of a second following the Big Bang. The author explains how the unity of the Universe finds its origin in the Big Bang prior to inflation. The book addresses the many fundamental questions about the Universe and its contents from the perspective of the Big Bang: the formation of structure in the Universe, the questions of the mysterious dark matter and dark energy, the possibilities of other Universes (the Multiverse) and of the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe.

Edward van den Heuvel received his Ph.D.in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Utrecht in 1968. He worked at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1968 to 1969, at the University of Utrecht from 1969 to 1974, and at the University of Brussels from 1970 to 1980. Since 1974 he has been Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam and until 2005, Director of the Astronomical Institute there. He has been awarded the Physica Prize (the highest prize of the Netherlands Physical Society NNV), the Spinoza Prize (the highest science prize of the Netherlands) and the Descartes Prize (the highest science prize of the European Commission). Professor van den Heuvel is a Board Member and Chair of the Netherlands Space Research Organization, Chair of the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy, a Board Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, and the Founding Chair of the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy. Professor van den Heuvel's fields of expertise include stellar evolution, the physics of neutron stars and black holes, X-ray astronomy and radio pulsars.