Cheap The Accelerating Universe : Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos (Wiley Popular Science S.) (Book) (Mario Livio) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Accelerating Universe : Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos (Wiley Popular Science S.)

Harvest of the Quiet Eye
Within the last few years, tremendous progress have been made in the field of cosmology. The most notable of them is the determination of the non-zero lambda, which implies that the Universe will not only expand for ever, but it will do so with an ever-increasing speed. These results have mostly come from observations of supernovae in far-away galaxies, mainly using the Hubble Space Telescope. This concept of accelerating Universe is the central theme of Livio's book, and he has done an excellent job in conveying the sometimes esoteric ideas in a surprisingly simple and elegant manner. I very much enjoyed the book, and as a professional astronomer, I can attest to the fact that Livio has maintained all the rigor of correctness of the concepts, in all his attempts to simplify them. This book is a welcome contrast the numerous other similar books in the market in at least two significant respects. First, there is a constant underlying theme, namely, the beauty. The author is in constant search for beauty and elegance in ALL physical theories. Being an 'art-fanatic', he points out the eye-opening similarities between the beauty in the physical theories, and the beauty in the art. Even in the outwardly ugly theory of a cosmology with a positive lambda, which Eistein suggested as the 'greatest blunder of my life', the author does not give up his search for an underlying beauty, and paints a remarkable picture of beauty and splendor. Second, the book is up-to-date in its content and authoritative in its style. Although the book is written in a popular style, the author, being an active researcher in the field, takes the reader right into the most advanced current research topics in the field. And he does so with an inimitably lucid style, with umpteen every day examples, which brings even the difficult mathematical concepts within easy grasp of the reader. The book is very informative and a real pleasure to read.

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Good general summary but problematic premise
This book furnishes an excellent overview of the observational finds of the past few years that have so shaken up the astronomical community with their implications. As the title indicates, Livio's book examines the discovery that the universal expansion is apparently accelerating rather than slowing down, as previously believed, due to some mysterious driving force. Livio is on the front lines, as one might say, as scientific director of the Hubble Space Telescope project, and he presents an insider's view of things.

Livio unfortunately dallies with something that he calls the cosmological aesthetic principle-- his term-- as a new framework in which to provide and organise cosmological theories. One of the central criteria is the theory's aesthetic appeal, something related to it's symmetry, copernican nature (i.e. not singling out any particular epoch or place as being special), and its overall simplicity. Livio does present some reasonable arguments. But overall his suggestion here is of dubious merit in large part because, as is apparent throughout the book, there is too much emphasising what is desired to be seen, rather than what actually is seen. There is inherently a prior presumption about how the universe should be and should behave-- a product of a particular theoretical tradition-- when the recent findings in this and other respects suggest many surprises up ahead, even at the fundamentals. The author also seems a bit too sure of himself in regard to the recent theoretical models and ideas as well as the observations themselves. The recent findings and the constantly changing nature of science itself would argue for more care in such interpretations. So the book is worth a read as a general summary, but has problems in its basic ideas.

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...
Mario Livio, the scientific chief of the Hubble Space Telescope project, has written a book with a lot of potential. Considering the implications of recent discoveries that distant galaxies are farther away (and thus receding faster) than expected, with the concomitant suggestion of accelerating cosmic expansion, Livio ponders what this means for cosmological models. He concerns himself here with the junction of scientific theories and aesthetic concerns, the beauty and elegance that seem to have characterized some of the best theories (e.g. Newton's mechanics, Einsteinian general relativity). He suggests that 3 key criteria be used to evaluate the quality of a new cosmological theory-- symmetry, simplicity, and the Copernican principle (the "principle of mediocrity" or, generally, the idea that earth is nothing special in the universe).

Livio's book fails, unfortunately, for several reasons.

(1) One problem is technical: For all the emphasis that Livio puts on beauty and the relation of excellent scientific theories to great art, his book has oddly omitted the occasional figure with an example of such great art-- paintings, sculptures, illustrations, something that a reader can relate his ideas to.

(2) Livio is clearly enthusiastic about his field and his work with the Hubble Space Telescope, and this is a good thing overall. But he becomes too enamored with the recent discoveries and does not properly think through what they are implying. Rather than humbly admitting what astrophysicists and cosmologists constantly repeat in the journals-- the fact that we simply don't know what the current observations truly mean, and what is impelling them-- Livio overreaches here. We don't know the source of the "cosmological constant" that seems to be doing the accelerating, nor exactly how it manifests (or how it did so in the past). Yet Livio claims that it basically maps out the trend of cosmological progression, then proceeds in all kinds of unfounded detail about what it means. This comes out when Livio suggests that the future is now better known than the cosmic past-- an obviously ludicrous conclusion, since not just cosmological theories but fundamental ways of regarding the cosmos and basic assumptions change, and (especially recently) with rapidity. Moreover, no matter what process is discerned, it is simply not possible to say more than the vaguest thing about what it means overall since, in general, our understanding of the universe and spacetime is developing yet still nascent in so many ways. Most puzzlingly, Livio proceeds from this shaky basis to map out a picture of the cosmos which he claims to be beautiful, but is simplistic and downright dull. Which leads to the third problem:

(3) In choosing his criteria for evaluating theory, Livio introduces a regrettable bias. Desires for symmetry and simplicity have been present since Galileo's time. But Livio seems almost obsessed with the Copernican principle. I myself share his predilection for the principle, and would hope that theorists would tend to formulate cosmological models without having to invoke anything special about earth or what has happened here. But we cannot assume up front that this is going to be the case; the evidence has to decide that, not a personal preference. When Livio cites the Copernican principle it seems to be in response to the so-called anthropic principles, the "strong anthropic principle" suggesting some kind of life-promoting design in the cosmos and the "weak anthropic principle" stating the obvious-- life is here on earth, and there must be something about the physical constants and forces that is conducive to it. Livio is justifiably hesitant with regard to the strong version, but is in danger of neglecting the obvious fact of the weak version. Earth, in some sense, might seem "messy" and "incongruent" with regard to the criteria that Livio sets up, but the planet may indeed turn out to be special, especially when the enigma of earth's biology is considered. We should not assume that up front, but nor should we rule it out; cosmological theories have to be open to different possibilities. As one reviewer below pointed out, Aristotle's musical spheres picture was very beautiful, but it turned out to be flat wrong. Accurate theories in cosmology may turn out not to have simplicity to be comprehensive, and the Copernican principle may not be appropriate, at least in certain respects; we have to be open to that possibility, which suggests that Livio's Cosmological Aesthetic Principle might be a questionable set of criteria.