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Books > Science & Mathematics > Astronomy, space & time > Cosmology & the universe
On March 21, 2013, the European Space Agency released a map of the
afterglow of the Big Bang. Taking in 440 sextillion kilometres of
space and 13.8 billion years of time, it is physically impossible
to make a better map: we will never see the early universe in more
detail. On the one hand, such a view is the apotheosis of modern
cosmology, on the other, it threatens to undermine almost
everything we hold cosmologically sacrosanct. The map contains
anomalies that challenge our understanding of the universe. It will
force us to revisit what is known and what is unknown, to construct
a new model of our universe. This is the first book to address what
will be an epoch-defining scientific paradigm shift. Stuart Clark
will ask if Newton's famous laws of gravity need to be rewritten;
if dark matter and dark energy are just celestial phantoms? Can we
ever know what happened before the Big Bang? What's at the bottom
of a black hole? Are there universes beyond our own? Does time
exist? Are the once immutable laws of physics changing?
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