The Vindication of the Big Bang: Breakthroughs and Barriers

Idaho State physics professor Parker is a better stylist than most working cosmologists. This was evident in his previous books, including Invisible Matter and the Fate of the Universe , and is borne out in this history of--and testament to--the theory of the Big Bang as the most convincing of all cosmological theories. Reports in 1992 from the COBE satellite and other discoveries in recent astrophysics research led Parker to bet his entire stake on immanent, necessarily inconclusive proof for the Big Bang. In this exegesis for the general reader, he neither oversimplifies nor climbs out on a metaphysical limb. Except for the few, sometimes dramatic, discoveries pithily presented in this chronicle, all of Parker's proofs have been raised in similar ``cosmology for the intelligent but perplexed reader'' books on the topic, including Parker's own. Illustrations. (May)