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  • Published: 21 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9781529194364
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $19.99

Before the Big Bang

The Origin of Our Universe from the Multiverse




A revolutionary new account of our universe's creation from one of the world's most celebrated cosmologists

What came before the Big Bang, and what exists outside of the universe it created?

Until recently, scientists could only guess at what lay past the edge of spacetime. But as pioneering theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton explains, today new scientific tools are giving us the ability to peer beyond the limits of our universe and test our theories about what is there. Her groundbreaking research suggests that we sit in a quantum landscape whose peaks and valleys hide a multitude of other universes, and whose topography holds the secret to the origins of existence itself. Recent evidence has revealed the signatures of one such sibling universe in our own night sky, confirming Mersini-Houghton's theoretical work and offering humbling proof that our universe is just one member of an unending cosmic family.

A mind-expanding journey through the multiverse, Beyond the Big Bang will reshape our understanding of humanity's place in the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos.

  • Published: 21 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9781529194364
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $19.99

About the author

Laura Mersini-Houghton

Prof. Laura Mersini-Houghton is an internationally renowned Cosmologist and Theoretical Physicist leading cutting-edge research in the physics of the universe at extreme energies and the nature of space time, based at the University of North Carolina (UNC). She was born in Albania when it was still under a communist dictatorship. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States and is now a regular visiting professor at several universities around the world, including the University of Cambridge.

Prof. Mersini-Houghton has delivered over 200 speaking engagements for both the public and scientific communities on four continents. Her theory of the origins of the universe has attracted international media attention and has been tested by recent observational discoveries, with recognized success.

Praise for Before the Big Bang

What if our universe, vast though it may be, is but an infinitesimal fragment of reality? What would this 'multiverse' be like? What would be the implications? And how could we possibly test the idea? There is no better guide to the bizarre, and sometimes paradoxical, cosmic super-realm than Laura Mersini-Houghton, who has devoted her research to seeking the tell-tale signs in the sky hinting that our universe is indeed not alone

Paul Davies, Arizona State University and author of What's Eating the Universe? And other cosmic questions