Undergraduate Book Report on Timothy Ferris's "The Whole Shebang"

The most interesting thing that I have learned from reading Timothy Ferris's "The Whole Shebang" is that matter in the early universe was able to move faster than light. However, this is only a true statement if one remembers that objects in the early universe did not exist in a static or absolute reference frame, i.e. space itself, but that space itself was being created and expanded during and following the big bang. Thus, the motion of matter in the early universe did not in fact move through space with a speed greater than that of light, but that they were existing in a space that was itself expanding.

"The universe should not be thought of as expanding "into" preexisting space. All the space the universe has ever had has been in the universe from the beginning, and the space is stretching. This perspective can also help us understand why the special-relativity rule that nothing can be accelerated to a velocity greater than that of light goes not apply to galaxies in an expanding universe." (Ferris, The Whole Shebang, pg. 44)

However, I do have some concerns about Ferris's analysis of space in the early universe. If one should grant that it is in fact the space that the matter is occupying that is expanding, and more specifically, as Ferris states, that all the space in the universe has always existed, it seems difficult to say how such a change could be perceptible from within the expanding universe itself. For example, should the space that an object occupies be stretched, then would not the object itself also stretch to occupy the same percentage of space, if the object can truly be said to be "in" space? Although, were the object not to stretch with its correlated space, it becomes easy to see how the expansion would be noticeable to beings like us within an expanding universe. In conclusion it was most interesting to realize that it is in fact possible to circumvent the speed of light as long as it is a result of space itself being stretched, not as a result of accelerating an object.

The largest piece of evidence presented by Ferris in favor of the Big Bang theory is the microwave background radiation whose existence had been predicted by the theory before the radiation was actually discovered. This is significant evidence for the theory because many other theories, such as the steady-state theory, fail to give an adequate account of the existence of this background radiation that gives space an overall temperature of 3 deg. K, as predicted by the Big Bang theory. Ferris also discussed the cosmic red shift that is caused by the Doppler effect. Hubble's discovery that all galaxies are moving away from us with speeds that are proportional to their distances from us was as a result of measuring the red shift of the light from these galaxies. The are several other theories that attempt to account for this effect, such as the "tired light" theory, but there has been no reason to accept these other theories because of the lack of experimental verification. Thus, it may also be concluded that Hubble's discovery is proof of an expanding universe, by which one can infer that the universe had to have been smaller in the past until at some point it was infinitely small and grew bigger, i.e. the Big Bang. Ferris therefore concludes that the Big Bang, in some form, must be the correct theory of the origin of the universe.

Perhaps the most important observation having been made at wavelengths other than those of visible light is that of the microwave detection of the cosmic background radiation. This is crucial to his presented evidence in favor of the Big Bang theory. Because the Big Bang theory predicted that the background radiation would not be in the visible band of light, it became necessary to utilize other wavelengths, viz., microwaves, to search for the background radiation. In addition to the microwave background radiation, other wavelengths of radio are used to view deep into the center region of our galaxy, a place from which visible light is unable to reach us. Higher frequencies, and consequently smaller wavelengths, have a much higher inherent energy level and are therefore much more useful for "seeing" the interior of our galaxy along its edge. Ferris speculates that there may in fact be one, if not several, black holes in or near the center of the galaxy, and if that is the case then other wavelengths must be used to detect their presence, e.g., by searching for the presence of Hawking radiation, et cetera. Ferris also notes that there is a large quantity of dark matter in the universe, the detection of which is imperative to solving the question of whether the universe's matter density is large enough to halt the expansion of the universe. Because the matter is non-luminescent, radio astronomy provides the only solution to the problem of the dark matter's detection. In conclusion, it is fairly easy to see the importance of radio astronomy to astronomy and to cosmology in general; a point which Ferris makes very easy to see in his book.