Before the Big Bang

A theoretical physicist returns by train from a conference, his eyes fixed on a paper on quantum cosmology. Suddenly, a little girl's voice interrupts his musings. "What are you reading?" "It's the story of the universe." "If it tells the whole story of the universe, does it say anything about me?" Starting from this question, this book explores our current understanding of the Big Bang, the primordial event that gave rise to the special mixture of space, time, and matter that we call the universe. It is a journey through cosmic history, pushing the limits of human knowledge, winding its way through general relativity, curved spaces, quantum mechanics and the multiverse. Giudice succeeds in uniting science and the history of thought, tracing the debate that animated the physics community, when faced with the hypothesis and then the confirmation of the Big Bang. This book recounts the great discoveries in cosmology and leads us to the frontiers of current scientific research. It is a fascinating and thought-provoking parable that addresses complex concepts with the fluidity of storytelling and allows us to better understand the universe around us.

"A fascinating, enchanting narrative. A fairy tale that tells a true story spanning 13.8 billion years. Exciting from the first to the last page."

Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director General

"In this beautiful book, of exemplary clarity, Giudice guides us by the hand through the history and mysteries of the Big Bang."

Giorgio Parisi, 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics

Auteur

Gian Francesco Giudice is Head of the Theoretical Physics Department at CERN in Geneva. A leading international figure in theoretical physics of elementary particles, he has carried out research in the United States and Europe, making fundamental contributions to the understanding of nature at the subnuclear level and its consequences for the early history of the universe. He is the author of A Zeptospace Odyssey (Oxford University Press, 2010), a popular science book on the LHC, the large particle collider in operation at CERN.