Before Time Began
The Big Bang and the Emerging Universe

What is the origin of the universe? What was there before the universe appeared? We are currently witnessing a second Copernican revolution: neither our Earth and Sun, nor our galaxy, nor even our universe, are the end of all things. Beyond our world, in an endless multiverse, are innumerable other universes, coming and going, like ours or different. Fourteen billion years ago, one of the many bubbles constantly appearing and vanishing in the multiverse exploded to form our universe. The energy liberated in the explosion provided the basis for all the matter our universe now contains. But how could this hot, primordial plasma eventually produce the complex structure of our present world? Does not order eventually always lead to disorder, to an increase of entropy? Modern cosmology is beginning to find out how it all came about and where it all might lead. Before Time Began tells that story.

Helmut Satz is Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, where his research focuses on thermodynamics of strongly interacting matter. He served on the staff of CERN in 1989-1995 and Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1985-1992.