The Book of Universes

The Book Of Universes

Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

The old gentleman walking down the street looked the same as ever – distinguished but slightly dishevelled, in a Bohemian style, a slow-walking European on an American main street, sad-faced, purposeful but not quite watching where he was going, always catching the attention of the locals as he made his way politely through the shoppers and the contra-flow of students late for lectures. Everyone seemed to know who he was but he avoided everyone’s gaze. Today, he had a new companion, very tall and stockily built, a little the worse for wear, untidy but in a different way to his companion. They were both deep in conversation as they made their way, walking and talking, oblivious of the shop windows beside them. The older man listened thoughtfully, sometimes frowning gently; his younger companion enthusiastically pressing his point, occasionally gesticulating wildly, talking incessantly. Neither spoke native English but their accents were quite different, revealing resonances with many places. Intent on crossing the street, they stopped, lingering at the kerbside as the traffic passed. The traffic lights changed and they continued quietly across the street, both momentarily concentrating on light, sound and relative motion. Suddenly, something happened. The taller man started to say something again, making a dart of his hand. The traffic was moving again now but the old man had stopped, dead in his tracks, oblivious to the cars and the hurrying pedestrians. His companion’s words had consumed his thoughts entirely. The cars roared past on both sides leaving the two of them marooned in their midst like a human traffic island. The old man was deep in thought, the younger one reiterating his point. Eventually, resuming contact with the moving world around them, but forgetful of where they had been going, the older man led them silently towards the pavement – the one they had stepped off a minute ago – and they walked and talked their way from whence they had come, lost in this new thought.

The two men had been talking about universes. The place was Princeton, New Jersey, and the time was during the Second World War. The younger man was George Gamow, or ‘Gee-Gee’ to his friends, a Russian émigré to the United States. The older man was Albert Einstein. Einstein had spent the previous thirty years showing how we could understand the behaviour of whole universes with simple maths. Gamow saw that those universes must have had a past that was unimaginably different to the present. What had stopped them both in their tracks was Gamow’s suggestion that the laws of physics could describe something being created out of nothing. It could be a single star; but it might be an entire universe!

Reprinted from THE BOOK OF UNIVERSES: Exploring The Limits Of The Cosmos by John D. Barrow. Copyright © 2011 by John D. Barrow.  Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.