Ripples in the Cosmos: A View Behind the Scenes of the New Cosmology

On 23 April 1992 a major science story appeared in headlines around the world. The announcement of the discovery of small-scale fluctuations in the cosmic microwave radiation, ripples in the cosmos, took most of the world's cosmologists by surprise. This was ''the discovery of the century, perhaps of all time.'' What are the ripples? Why are they of such fundamental importance? What do they tell us about the beginning of the universe? This readable book sets the discovery in its wider context, that of the search for an explanation of how galaxies, clusters of galaxies formed in a universe which was initially of almost perfect uniformity. Illustrated.