Birth of a Universe

No illogical, folklore-spouting Vellkovsky, George Gamow, Consultant to the A.E.C. and Prof. of Theoretical Physics at George Washington University, certainly has a throught grasp of the concepts involved in "The Creation of the Universe." His treatment of subjects ranging from: "The Private Lives of the Stars" to "The Critchfield H-H Process," while easy to read and follow, is altogether sound and rigorous.

"Creation" is easy to read because Gamow is skillful at finding simple, apt illustrations for complex ideas. One good method for determining the age of rocks is based on the transmutation of heavier radioactive into isotopes of lead. Gamow likens the lead accumulations to dung deposits in a corral full of cattle: the cattle represent the radio-actives, the corral--rocks, and "primordial dung"--lead present before the transmission began. Then, he says, by considering the rate of dung-deposition of the cattle (or the half-life of the radioactive elements), we can tell when the cattle entered the corral, and likewise, when the radioactive processes began.

Gleefully using such devices wherever possible, and speeding along in a clear, scholarly style, Gamow develops the universe from a primordial, exploding "something" to the currently popular, expanding, gravitationally unstable dust cloud. Then follows the accepted course through local condensations to the bare, rocky planets circling--about their central suns, and thence, by devious organic evolution, to mankind.

Accompanying the text are forty figures and eleven plates from the Mt. Wilson and Palomar observatories.

A sequel to "The Birth and Death of the Sun" and "Biography of the Earth." "Creation of the Universe" completes Gamow's cosmological trilogy.