Three Steps to the Universe

This book takes a novel approach to explaining cosmology to the public. Most attempts give the gee whiz approach and state the findings as if they were set in stone. After all how could the reader understand even in a general sense how cosmological science has come to its findings? The authors have successfully answered this question. They explain how science of cosmology has worked and how we have built up our understanding of the universe by use of critical measurement and logic. I found myself taken through the facts and reasoning in a readable fashion. The discussions of star formation and the forces at work in the eventual collapse to neutron stars and black holes were very illuminating. In one sense this book is a primer on how science is done. What is known is described but the cosmological front lines between the known and unknown are also made clear in descriptions of dark energy and dark matter.