The Music of the Big Bang by Amedeo Balbi

Of course it is mostly about CMB, how it was detected and has become arguably the most important source of information helping cosmologists understand the geometry and contents of the Universe (other complementary source of cosmological knowledge are observations, such as the distant type supernovae or the distribution of galaxies in space). But let me tell you - this is very, very well constructed, short and easy to read popular science book. Not much I can add here to Product Description (Editorial Review). How loud it was can only say the One who witnessed it. New observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation show that early universe resounded with harmonious oscillations (acoustic sound).

Joe Silk, University of Oxford, a pioneering contributor to understanding the structure of the cosmic background radiation. 'This non-technical tour of the discovery and significance of the whispers of creation, the fossil radiation from the Big Bang, is a delight to read.' Prof. The book focuses on how the exploration of the cosmic background radiation has shaped our picture of the Universe, leading even the non-specialized readers towards the frontier of cosmological research, helping them to understand, using a simple language and captivating metaphors, the mechanisms behind the Universe in which we live.

This led to a giant leap in our understanding of the Universe, but the investigation is not over yet. Only lately, has this amazing cosmic sound been unveiled by such experiments as BOOMERANG and MAXIMA and, more recently, by the WMAP satellite. Most cosmological information is encoded in the cosmic background radiation by acoustic oscillations in the dense plasma that filled the primordial Universe: a 'music' of the big bang, which cosmologists have long been trying to reconstruct and analyze, in order to distinguish different cosmological models, much like one can distinguish different musical instruments by their timbre and overtones.

Two Nobel Prizes in Physics have already been awarded for research on the cosmic background radiation: one in 1978 to Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who first discovered it, the other in 2006, to George Smoot and John Mather, for the results of the COBE satellite. It was serendipitously discovered in 1964, and thoroughly investigated in the last four decades by a large number of experiments. The cosmic microwave background radiation is the afterglow of the big bang: a tenuous signal, more than 13 billion years old, which carries the answers to many of the questions about the nature of our Universe.

The Music of the Big Bang by Amedeo Balbi