2007-10-18 a great read

as usual, chown tells a brilliant story.

this book starts with the realisation that the milky way is just one galaxy amongst billions of others and goes on to explain the significance of that knowledge with reference to the more recently proposed big bang theory.

it's a fascinating tale. chown relates the serendipitous discoveries that astronomers and cosmologists have continued to find. these are men and women of gigantic intellect and genius. in short, you will probably find it as fascinating a read as i did.

on the other hand, it IS a shorter book than chown's other works. but that's not necessarily a criticism.