BEFORE THE BIG BANG. HOW THE UNIVERSE BEGAN AND WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE (RIZZOLI)

Gian Francesco Giudice, direttore Dipartimento di Fisica teorica CERN di Ginevra, autore di Prima del Big Bang. Come è iniziato l'universo e cosa è avvenuto prima (Rizzoli)

Giovanni Caprara, editorialista scientifico Corriere della Sera, presidente UGIS-Unione Giornalisti Scientifici

One of the most prominent theoretical physicists at CERN in Geneva is returning home by train from a conference, his eyes fixed on a dense article about quantum cosmology. Suddenly, a little girl’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “What are you reading?” she asks. “It’s the story of the universe,” he replies. “If it tells the whole story of the universe, does it also talk about me?” From this innocent question, and the physicist’s desire to explain—with the precision of a scientist and the accessible, engaging tone of a great communicator—the history of the cosmos and the theories that describe it, this book begins. It takes you on a journey through the evolution of the universe, reaching the current limits of human knowledge. The narrative weaves through general relativity and the cosmological constant, quantum mechanics and non-Euclidean geometries, spaces of positive and negative curvature, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and the multiverse. Gian Francesco Giudice masterfully blends science, the history of science, and the history of thought, retracing the debates that have animated the community of physicists and astronomers, from the hypothesis to the confirmation of the Big Bang—not as the “Beginning of Everything” often associated with this term, but as the well-established physical phenomenon that marks the emergence of a cosmos governed by known physical laws. He describes it as “the initial moment of a hot soup containing all the ingredients of today’s universe.” From the most heated debates to the first empirical confirmations of the Big Bang, this book retraces the discoveries of great thinkers and scientists, guiding us to the frontiers of current scientific research. It’s a fascinating and thought-provoking journey that tackles complex concepts with the fluidity of storytelling, allowing us to better understand the universe around us.