The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe

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Summary: Wonderful. A source of ideas.
Review: A masterpiece. Weinberg was able to keep all the physics, with almost no mathematics. There is, in this book, a sense of drama seldom to be found in scientific books. You should start your cosmology studies here, independently of how far you intend to go.

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Summary: A creationist's fairytail on moving sands
Review: At least some comments from a professional theoretical physicists who does not share major premises of Prof. Weinberg's physics. Just for those readers who are taking everything in books of this type for granted.

Which "3 minutes"? It is a true curiosity: General Relativity was invented to eliminate an absolute Newtonian concept of time from physics. But now, in the most ultra-relativistic situation one can imagine, Weingerg's physics is just back with the concept of absolute time - or better to say - any external time, because the concept of time is physically completely undefined by these cosmologists.

But there are also fundamental questions about Weinberg's interpretation of another underlying theory - quantum mechanics. Another paradox: Weinberg obviously believes that quantum wave functions are some real physically existing objects, and also that probabilities are physically real. But this is definitely not the view of Quantum Mechanics of Bohr, Heisenberg or Schroedinger, who recognized and emphasized that quantum probabilities are just representations of our incomplete information. In similar misleading way Weinberg also struggles with another intrinsically probabilistic theory - Statistical Thermodynamics, and associated Second Law. This makes for Weinberg extremely cumbersome to make the time-origin (singularity) compatible with the Maximum Entropy Principle, to avoid a "heat death" paradox in "his" universe, to define a physically meaningful time near his singularity by entropy, etc.

Concerning the Big Bang and three notorious arguments of its believers: (1) A strong link between the Red Shift and Doppler effect, supposed also by Weinberg, is still very uncertain; some other natural explanations exist in physical literature and has only been ignored, but still never refuted by any serious analysis; (2) Planck's black-body radiation law can hardly be used for any decisions between prospective geometries of the universe, as the same law is resulting for different geometries of the universe; (3) Arguments from particle physics are highly circular, because they actually presume the cosmological model to be proven.

But there are perhaps even more fundamental questions about the Big Bang hypothesis, e.g. its elementary clashes with thermodynamics and information theory, never mentioned by (and maybe unknown to) Prof. Weinberg and the Big-bang camp.

In summary, the whole cosmological narrative of Prof. Weinberg might be still closer to a fairytail than to science, and even his interpretations of basic underlying theories (quantum physics, general relativity, statistical thermodynamics) are highly questionable or even misleading. For creationists and people with some religious philosophy (which is also Prof. Weinberg's case) the Big-Bang narrative might be appealing, but definitely not all competent scientists necessarily see things this way. In my opinion, this is not emphasized enough in this highly speculative and physically somewhat too-fast book.

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Summary: Brilliant book but some physics knowledge required
Review: Beautifully written and highly recommended. Some physics knowledge is required but not much - certainly not undergraduate level. I wish Amazon would provide some editorial presence and delete the gibberish previous post titled "A creationist's fairytail on moving sands". This person populates his so-called review with a smattering of physics terms but makes absolutely no sense at all.

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Summary: You don't have to be a physicist to understand this book
Review: I am a true layman, having had NO education in physics beyond high school "physical science." However, I have read Hawking's "Brief History of Time," Timothy Ferris' "The Whole Shebang," and read Scientific American. I say this to point out that you do not need to bring a great deal of knowledge to the table to appreciate this book, provided you have some aptitude for cosomology. And, sure, it helps to have a passing acquaintance with General Relativity, Special Relativity, and some of the basics of particle physics. I can't imagine anybody would pick up this book if they didn't already have some passing interest in cosmology and had read a few magazine articles.

The text is clear and, considering the subject matter, amazingly brief. The author does not dummy down the mathematics too much either, which is a fault of some books written for laymen. On the other hand, he also doesn't overwhelm the reader with mathematics either. He wisely chooses to include a mathematics appendix and lets you either explore the math or not.

Quantum mechanics and general relatively are not particularly "intuitive" topics, so any beginning reader is going to have to read this slowly, carefully, and with some patience. But the book is as clear and open to lay people as I've yet encountered.

And, frankly, I think any educated lay person should have a BASIC understanding of the principles in this book. For the curious, this is a great place to start. And even if you've been through the "story" before, this book is great for reinforcing the story of the birth of the universe in a concise, holistic layout.

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Summary: A classic documentary on the origin of the universe
Review: Stephen Weinberg received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Harvard university and has taught at the university of Texas for decades. He won the Nobel prize in physics in 1979 and has worked with such distinguished personages as the late Richard P. Feynman. In short, he is one of the leading minds in his field.

The First Three Minutes is an unusual book in astronomy / cosmology because it is now over 20 years old & yet it is STILL one of the classics of the "story" of the universe for the layman & non-expert. The book takes us on an exhilerating journey all the way back to the Plank epoch (10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang). Weinberg also deals with Einstein's theory of Relativity (which predicted the Big Bang), the Hubble Red Shift (the discovery that the universe is expanding) as well as the detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in the 1960's by Ralph Wilson and Arno Penzias. All three of these factors, plus numerous other details all form the foundation for the way most scientists think about our universe (presently known as the Big Bang theory).

One of the things about Weinberg that I admire is that, like Carl Sagan, he concedes that he MIGHT be wrong, but that what he has to work with is the best paradigm available. This is brutally honest & also quite a refreshing approach. I tire quickly of reading science books that are written by individuals who are so conceited as to believe they know everything there is to know. One certainly does not have to worry about that type of arrogance with Weinberg.

So, if you even have a passing interest in cosmology, I would HIGHLY recommend this book. The book may be especially appealing to many people as it is 150 pages in & out (anyone who has ever browsed the science shelf at their local bookstore can readily see that there have been far longer books written on this topic). But oh, what a plethora of info that Weinberg furnishes in those 150 pages!

All in all, this is a very readable book which deals with a quite recondite topic.

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Summary: Clear, Brief But Not Too Intuitive - The First Three Minutes
Review: This book is thrilling. You will learn of the first three minutes of our existence in this universe. Not only do you learn of what is believed to have happened during the first three minutes, but you will also learn the exciting story of how it was discovered. The book is written at a level that can be understood by the lay person.

Rating:
Summary: Difficult to understand if not knowledgeable on the subject.
Review: To appreciate this book you'd have to have a few college classes on cosmology. Because I haven't this book put me to sleep. There is a lot of terms and diagrams, and unless you have a previous understanding of elementary particles and astronomy I don't recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A classic of twentieth century science
Review: Why do I still like this book, written back in the 1970s, long before, say, the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating?

Well, I like it because it is well written. What it says is solid and valid. There's very little speculation, and when something speculative is said, it is clearly labeled as such.

This explains what we Know about the Big Bang. Not what we think happened, but what we can prove happened. What we know because we see the expansion of the universe, because we see the cosmic microwave background, and because we see the leftover helium from Big Bang nucleosynthesis in those awesome three or four minutes in which our universe was truly a hot place.

You need very little background to appreciate this book: just an interest in what happened in our Universe in less than four minutes, more than ten billion years ago. And even if you know plenty of physics and astronomy, if you haven't read this book, it's worth the time it takes to read it.