''How It Began: A Time Traveler’s Guide to the Universe '' is a

non-fiction Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with be ...

book by the

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

Chris Impey Christopher David Impey (born 25 January 1956) is a British astronomer, educator, and author. He has been a faculty member at the University of Arizona since 1986. Impey has done research on observational cosmology, in particular low surface br ...

that discusses the

history of the universe History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

, with chapters ranging from the proximate

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. Acc ...

to within an iota of the

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

. It was published as a hardcover by W. W. Norton & Company in 2012 and as a paperback in 2013. It is actually the prequel to his 2010 book ''How it Ends: From You to the Universe'', which talks about how everything, from individual humans, to the human species, to the Earth, and finally, the universe, might one day end in the future.

Summary

''How It Began: A Time Traveler’s Guide to the Universe'' is a

book by

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...

professor

on the origins of everything from the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

to the

. The finite

speed of light The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit ...

and the vastness of space turn modern large telescopes into time machines and

astronomers An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

into armchair

time travel Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a w ...

ers. Looking out in space is looking back in time. Each chapter has vignettes that place the reader in increasingly unfamiliar physical situations that are increasingly unfamiliar. ''How It Began'' has an associated web site containing source material on each major topic. The first third of the book deals with the proximate universe. The journey starts with the Moon and its formation from an impact with the infant Earth. Next stop is the

outer Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...

and the amazing process by particles of dust grew into

planets A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young ...

. The nearest star is the place where star formation is considered, followed by the

Orion Nebula The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the nig ...

, where young stars are forming at a furious rate. The last stop in the nearby universe is the center of our galaxy, site of a

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...

four million times the mass of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. The second third of the book examines the remote universe. Andromeda is seen as it was before humans evolved on the plains of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, and

galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...

are all seen over time spans that dwarf our existence. The next stop is the massive

Coma cluster The Coma Cluster (Abell 1656) is a large galaxy cluster, cluster of galaxies that contains over 1,000 identified galaxies. Along with the Leo Cluster (Abell 1367), it is one of the two major clusters comprising the Coma Supercluster. It is loc ...

of galaxies, a swarm of thousands of galaxies bound by invisible

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ab ...

. This section continues with a visit to galaxies that created their stars long before the Earth formed and it finished with the time when stars first congealed out of gas in the

expanding universe The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. The universe does not exp ...

, 200 million years after the

. The last third of the book ventures into the alien universe. The

microwave background radiation In Big Bang cosmology the cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR) is electromagnetic radiation that is a remnant from an early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation". The CMB is faint cosmic background radiation filling all spac ...

is a relic of time when stable atoms first formed and the “fog lifted” in the infant universe. Reaching back to the time when the universe was as hot as the core of a star, the Big Bang is manifested in the creation of

helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...

. The last chapters of the book cross into the realm of speculation, with descriptions the tiny asymmetry in the forces of nature that led to a tiny excess of

matter In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic partic ...

over

antimatter In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter. Antimatter occurs in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioac ...

, the early exponential expansion that flattened space-time, and the idea of the universe as one

quantum In physics, a quantum (plural quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a physical property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantizati ...

event among many.

Reception

''How It Began'' received strong reviews. Writing in the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', Manjit Kumar wrote “In clear, enthusiastic and occasionally lyrical prose, Mr. Impey takes the reader on a mind-blowing tour back through eons, stopping along the way to explain the

formation of the solar system The formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a ...

, the birth and death of stars,

white dwarfs A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes fro ...

supernovas A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last stellar evolution, evolutionary stages of a mass ...

spiral galaxies Spiral galaxies form a class of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work ''The Realm of the Nebulae''cosmic inflation In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity ...

string theory In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interac ...

black holes A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can def ...

and

M-theory M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory. Edward Witten first conjectured the existence of such a theory at a string theory conference at the University of Southern California in 1995. Witten's ...

”. ''

Maclean's ''Maclean's'', founded in 1905, is a Canadian news magazine reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events. Its founder, publisher John Bayne Maclean, established the magazine to provide a uniquely Canadian perspe ...

'' magazine notes “With Impey flexing his creative writing muscles, How It Began could almost be a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novel. But when he describes what we really do know about the universe—and questions we’re grappling with—it’s even more incredible than anything a science fiction writer could dream up”. Science fiction author

Ben Bova Benjamin William Bova (November 8, 1932November 29, 2020) was an American writer and editor. During a writing career of 60 years, he was the author of more than 120 works of science fact and fiction, an editor of '' Analog Science Fiction and F ...

said “Chris Impey has achieved the near-impossible: an accurate, up-to-date account of ‘the state of the universe’ that is told in gripping human terms. A great achievement and a ‘must-read’ book.” ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...

'' concluded its review with “An astute tour of the cosmos by a skillful teacher.”

Notes

External links

*
W. W. Norton

Amazon Author Page

Chris Impey's Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:How It Began 2012 non-fiction books Books by Chris Impey Astronomy books Astrobiology books British non-fiction books W. W. Norton & Company books