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Two smart books probe multiverses, dark matter – and sexual politics

Is our universe one of a myriad? How hard is it to be a woman in science? Beyond the Big Bang and The Elephant in the Universe explore these questions and more

By Michael Brooks

27 July 2022

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars in a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula.

Is our universe the result of a quantum fluctuation?

NASA/ESA/STScI

Before the Big Bang

Laura Mersini-Houghton

Penguin Books

The Elephant in the Universe

Govert Schilling

Harvard University Press

HUMANS have always wanted to understand the universe: where it came from, how it works and how it will end. It is, perhaps, the thing that sets our species apart. The good news is that after hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, we are finally getting believable answers – believable, that is, in the sense of passing certain experimental tests.

In a more …

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