John Gribbin is the author of nearly 100 popular science books, including the best-selling IN SEARCH OF SCHRODINGER'S CAT, and seven science fiction novels.

He has received awards for his writing both in the United States and in Britain, including the top UK science writing award, administered by the Association of British Science Writers and sponsored by Glaxo.

The holder of a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge, he still maintains links with research as a Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex, and was a member of a team there that measured the age of the Universe. While still a student, he received the prestigious Annual Award of the Gravity Research Foundation in the United States, the only student, and the first Englishman working in England, ever to receive this award.

He has worked in radio, making and presenting programmes for the BBC, and in television, occasionally in front of the cameras but more often as an adviser on science programmes.

This book makes cosmology accessible to everyone. John Gribbin navigates the latest frontiers of scientific discovery to tell us what we really know about the history of the universe.

Along the way, he describes how the universe began; what the early universe looked like; how its structure developed; and what emerged to hold it all together. He describes where the elements came from; how stars and galaxies formed; and the story of how life emerged. He even looks to the future: is the history of the universe going to end with a Big Crunch or a Big Rip?